What is the appeal of forecast books? Future Shock, Next...Is it to receive some hope of future comfort from the chaos happening now? Does it increase the sense of control? Does it give us the illusion that we have heard all the bad news, so we feel more prepared?

This latest offering is from Jacques Attali, former adviser to the French President, Francois Mitterand, and also the man who was given the job of turning the Eastern European countries into market economies. He's also written 40 books, and even plays the piano!

His book is arrogant in its pretentions! He gives a history not just of the future, but of the past… from the dawn of time. In some ways this is very wise, for some would say that to be a good forecaster you need first to be a good historian!

However, Attali's history is limited by his worldview. As a pioneer of the "new socialism", he sees all of history through the lens of the struggle for individual freedom. This impacts on his view of the place of religion, for example, which he sees as a power which sets the hours of prayer, marks the agricultural seasons, and moderates access to the afterlife. Other powers he mentions are military (organises the hunt, defence and conquest), and mercantile (produces, finances and markets the fruits of human labour).

He explains that every human cosmogony has a god of gods, a god of war and a god of power. Curiously, he neglects to acknowledge that this is not so with four major world religions: Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

Even in his history of capitalism there are shortcomings:

"¢ He fails to acknowledge the contribution of monasteries to pioneering farming and initial industrial techniques and organising labour, during medieval times.
"¢ He fails to acknowledge the development of the Protestant Work Ethic, as the spirit behind the rise of capitalism, as explained by Max Weber.
"¢ In fact he defines Christianity as the enemy of individual freedom and capitalism, and powerless to stop the mercantile drive.

So, this is a very biased history and view, and that surely influences his prediction of the future also.

He suggests that there will be religious wars, with Christianity and Islam initially united in their criticism of the greed, excesses and lecherous lifestyle of the mercantile powers; and then a geographic/religious division between the West and Islam; and finally war between followers of the religions.

This war will be superseded by a planetary war over water. Attali argues that already half the world's rivers are at risk, we have drunk 80% of our freshwater supplies, and 22,000 people die every day from drinking polluted water.

Attali predicts that the American empire will end within 30 years, coinciding with the rise of China, which will grow rich by funding America's debt. Eventually the world will consist of borderless states caused by the mass globalisation of economies, and mobile technology that will enhance a nomadic lifestyle. Communities will centre around language groupings rather than national borders.

Eventually, the environmental disasters facing the world and the global conflicts over scarce resources will put our planet on the brink of destruction. Attali believes survival of humans depends on the rise of transhumans: altruistic, optimistic beings, full of good will. They will be social networkers, creative, designers and carers.

While it is a pretty bleak outlook for the next hundred years, the force of Attali's argument is that the seeds of the weeds of the future are here right now: global warming, scarce resources, terrorism, growing disparity between rich and poor, greedy lifestyles… There is a hidden warning that rather than pondering the future, we need to deal with the pressing issues of the present.

The irony is that the description of the transhuman is astonishingly Christlike, and the renewal of the planet described by Attali sounds very much like the New Earth descriptions of Revelation. Perhaps there is real recognition here of the evil in our hearts, and the chaos in our world, that needs intervention from outside human scope and imagination.