The five pillars of Third Industrial Revolution of Jeremy Rifkin

Jeremy Rifkin wrote that the third industrial revolution has five pillars that are connected each other and need to come all together:

1 – Changing for renewable energy.

2 – Local micro generators of energy.

3 – Storing of energy in all buildings and constructions.

4 – Sharing of energy among those “small” generators.

5 – Change the transporting vehicles to a kind o energy source that can be exchanged in a net of energy.  

The Third Industrial Revolution of Jeremy Rifkin

Jeremy Rifkin wrote about a “third industrial revolution” that is coming in this time that we call “after-postmodern era”. Rifkin thinks that a “lateral power” is emerging in a “collaborative economy”. The current crisis is closing the strength of the second industrial revolution that achieved its apex in the postmodern end of the 20^th century.

Creativity in Science can apply sustainability to obtain energy from other sources than the traditional ones. Computation can optimize this process and innovate most of all human activities. All of it together is going to lead to a new balance in politics and power beyond old polarizations. Decentralization and auto-sufficient micro-communities can establish new relations inside and outside the nations.

After-postmodern paradigms for society are under construction…     

Why some (not so old) tools do not work anymore?

The cycles in nature, in history, are inevitable. Even now, that we know about it, we can discuss about it, it is inevitable. There are forces in nature, and even in human history, that are beyond rationality and predictability.

In true, emotionality rules the world. We think that Science is pure rationality and so we have the illusion that rationality puts Science on the highest level of knowledge; at the same time Science puts rationality on the highest level of knowledge, denying emocionality...

Maybe this concept could be an assertion in the apex of postmodern times, the nineties of the 20^th century. The pragmatism of that assertion worked very well, apparently. But under a Jungian vision, human life and human person have light and shadow. Emotionality works more in the shadows of unconscious, mainly when we think that rationality is the only domain of conscious, and emotionality is restrained to fleeting and consumerist pleasures.

In true, emotionality ruled the world ever. The question is what people did or what we do with emotionality.  In postmodern times, pragmatism, efficacy, objectivity made subjectivity only a space of consumerism. As Guattari said, when anyone do not take care of its own subjectivity, another one will domain it.

But something happened in the first decade of the 21^st century and still continues. We are all in a “Macro Shift”, as said Erwin Lazlo. The tools of economic globalization did not work very well anymore.  

In after-postmodern times, respect for subjectivity may recover or even start new models of economy. Objectivity is necessary but it is not sufficient to embrace all sides of human being and human life.  We hear that “the stock market is nervous” or things like that, but that emotionality is only saw as a kind of “economic thermometer”, and the subjective side does not receive attention, except for the investor when he gets a myocardial infarction…

So maybe it is necessary create or find new tools, new paradigms, new correlations between rationality and emotionality, objectivity and subjectivity, all of that among human needs and dreams.    

   

After-postmodern “Pax”

On the apex of the Roman Empire, it was created the expression “Pax Romana” meaning the roman way to establish world peace under roman rules, mixing army strength and some level of tolerance with the local cultures. Pax Romana built concrete and symbolic bridges among several European e beyond cultures that resulted in some roots for many modern states and nations.

After the Roman Empire, other models of world peace came under different historical moments. Now, when we live a transition from Postmodern to After-postmodern times, we do not know yet what is going to be the new model "of and for world peace".

It seems that the After-postmodern “Pax” configures a new pattern of tools, a new paradigm of relation among peoples; now the main tools are becoming the dialog and the courage to go back and forth all the times necessary to practice more dialogs and more understanding. It is not easy and simple because weapons are still roaring, but we see that it something new is happening between war and peace in the world…       

Hypermodern times of Lipovetsky

Gilles Lipovetsky wrote about of what he considered a “third phase of modernity” that came after postmodernity. He calls it “hypermodernity”.

The Modern Period started at the beginning of 19^th century, with Industrial Revolution, Modern Science and establishment of Modern State. At same time that it was an acceleration of history, “discipline”, in a general sense, became stronger. It was also a time of dream and hope about possibilities of science and appreciation of ideals. The countercurrent of the scientism was the Romantic Movement.  

In the second half of the 20^th century the Postmodern Period was characterized by an accentuation on efficiency, results, individualism and less discipline.  The countercurrent of part of it was “the counterculture movement”.

Lipovetsky understands that in the last two decades of the 20^th century some characteristics of modernity and postmodernity improved and it was starting the “hypermodern times”. Together with hypermodernity came “hyperconsumption” and “hypernarcisism”. Lipovetsky thinks that one important factor of all that is the “logic of fashion”. Fashion started in modern times inside the aristocratic class. Step by step it achieved some level of society. In after postmodern times it reached almost all social classes, mainly in occidental world. In hypermodern times the “logic of fashion” was universalized and everything, or even everyone, can be a “product to consume”. So, the consumption became a activity by itself, under the desire of the consumer “to consume”. To be “up to date” all the time became a need, a commandment. This kind of consumption came together with a new hedonism under a feeling of insatiable pleasure, or insatiable aims of consumer. So, the impression of more liberty to buy  and choose actually disguise new kinds of discipline…   

  

   

Energy and waste in after-postmodern times

The unsustainable sources of energy are still working…

The sustainable ones are not enough…

Crisis is someway everywhere although sometimes it doesn’t seem too much.

The post-modern dream that hard technology could solve any problem doesn’t work so much.

We need new ways and new paradigms, creativity and initiative.

Maybe each one or each small community could take care of its own energy and waste.

It can be an “after-postmodern dream”, but we can see that step by step a kind of “delicate technology” is progressing in cybernetics or nanotechnology for example.

Maybe the power plants and the garbage solution can stay in the next corner ahead…

Social network, noosphere and new “mycro-revolutions”

Before the French Revolution, the meaning of the word “revolution” was a kind of “mechanical movement” like that of the Galilean Mechanics.

After the French Revolution, this word got the social and political meaning that everyone knows.

In the last decade of the 20^th century and the first decade of the 21^st century, children, teens and young people learned a new way of communication among them with and into the internet, mainly by social networks. That communication worked like a “neuronal network”. Each person made a new kind of exercise with fingers and muscles, with a new language that operated new “neuronal networks” inside each brain. At same time, all those brains, and fingers and screenings were connected by this new language.

At some point, all of those things started to work as a “big brain”, an “earth brain”, a “noosphere”. As any brain, this new “collective brain” activated “social muscles” to produce “movements”. So, through all the world appeared a new kind of “revolution”, maybe a “mycro-revolution”...

To understand “mycro-revolution” we need to find new tools…

Experts of politics and sociology try to apply old foundations to study new phenomena that are configured in new and unknown paradigms.

We cannot apply the word “revolution” to explain some social phenomena that happened before French Revolution, because that sense of the word did not exist. It could be an anachronism. Maybe we could say that “it seemed like a revolution”, but it was not quite the same thing. In that way, the “Scientific Revolution” of the 17^th century was invented after that new meaning of the word. Was it a true revolution?  

Maybe the meaning of the word revolution used in the last two centuries is changing, or going to be more complex, adding new meanings…

In after-postmodern era we must apply new concepts and tools to read the signals of “mycro-revolutions” coming from the noosphere of the earth brain…