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On or about 11 January 2006, under the guidance and coordination of OPUS, Listening Posts aimed at providing a snapshot of the societal dynamics of each country at the dawn of 2006, were held in twenty two different countries around the world (Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, USA and Britain). These were all reported in a similar format (see ‘Britain and the World at the Dawn of 2003’ in Organisational & Social Dynamics, 3(1): 165-169), researched and analysed by the authors, to produce this Global Report.
The authors self-defined their task as follows. To research and analyse the National Reports with a view to:
identifying common themes arising within the thirteen Reports;
to explore relationships between themes and to reduce these down to major or dominant themes;
To collate supporting information from the Reports for analysis of these themes; and
to formulate hypotheses arising therefrom.
For the sake of brevity this Report will only document the major interrelated themes identified, followed by an analysis and hypotheses regarding each.
As was the experience in the past two years, the world is going through a period of unprecedented and revolutionary social change that still shows no signs of relenting. The nature of the change, which was referred to as ‘death of a way of life’ in 2004, is still powerful and