Someone once told me the difference between a manager and a visionary: A manager builds a factory while the visionary goes to the top of a mountain and yells down at the manager, “You’re building in the wrong location!”
There are several visionaries whom I rely upon to understand what’s happening around me. I’d like to share three of them with you: Beau of the Fifth Column, George Friedman of Geopolitical Futures, and most recently, author Yuval Noah Harari.
Beau of the Fifth Column: Beau has a channel on YouTube where he makes three broadcasts per day. They’re short — 3 to 12 minutes—in which he shares his thoughts on the news events of the day, both national and international.
If you type his name into a search engine you will find that he has thousands of commentaries about a vast array of topics.
You may be put off by his appearance: He wears a baseball cap, and has an unkempt bushy beard. He speaks from a work shed in the wilds of western Florida. He calls himself an anarchist, but most of his commentaries are moderate.
Beau strongly values freedom for everybody, especially women and minorities. His main topics are national and international politics and coping with climate change. Beau’s goal is to cut through the rhetoric and propaganda to explain what is really going on around us.
Beau’s real name is Justin King; Beau was his nickname from childhood. Over a decade ago, he served 41 months in prison for bringing in illegal immigrants to work in factories in Florida. Beau also calls himself an “adversarial journalist” and was also an ex-private military contractor. Through his internet channels he raises money to help victims of natural disasters like hurricanes and floods. Beau also tries to get people to act to bring about positive change in the world.
George Friedman and Geopolitical Futures: Friedman is a former college professor who started his own business predicting future political trends. His thesis is that geography is the real determiner of relationships between nations, not personalities, or even political systems. He and his staff research events in different countries and then make predictions about what will happen as a result. For Friedman, all nations are affected by their geography.
Russia, for instance, is located on a large plain that stretches into Asia. The country has few natural barriers, and as a result, have been invaded several times throughout history, both from Asia and from Europe. These events have deeply influenced the thinking of Russia’s leaders and their people.
In contrast, the United States has two major oceans to protect and buffer it from attack and two weak neighbors to the north and south. As a result, the U.S. is a major sea power that projects its influence throughout the world. Its geographic advantages have allowed for the growth of democracy. An abundance of natural resources and the Mississippi River basin have turned the United States into the superpower it is today.
Friedman’s weakness is that his thesis does not take personalities like Putin, Xi Jinping or Joe Biden into account. All that matters in the long run is geography which causes certain types of leaders to arise.
Yuval Noah Harari: Harari is a Hebrew University of Jerusalem history professor who has written three books about where the world has been and where he expects it to go in the future. Harari has written three bestseller books: “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”, “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow”, and “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”. He is an excellent writer who is very clear and easy to read.
Since the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, western nations (the U.S. and Europe) have created a new religion: humanism, which has manifested itself in three sects: Liberal humanism, social humanism, and evolutionary humanism. These three sects fought two world wars in the 20th century. Harari believes humans will evolve into Homo Deus — Man-God through artificial intelligence and biotech. He is brilliant with his sweeping vision for the future.
Harari’s weakness is that he is a determinist. He doesn’t believe that humans possess freewill. We act the way we do based upon our life experiences. The decisions we make are based on chemical reactions in the brain, nothing more, nothing less.
All three of these visionaries have gone to the mountain top and have spoken from on high about the direction the world will be taking. While I have disagreements with all three, their views expand my thinking and make me more aware of the present.
Any time we can become more self-aware, we stand a better chance of being able to affect our future — if only we will act on our vision.
