My friend and Institute For The Future colleague Paul Saffo wrote a provocative essay for Cal Monthly magazine about the Ghost Dance, the name of a Native American ritual that has become "an anthropological shorthand for any millennial movement preaching a rejection of alien novelties and a return to traditional ways." In this engaging text, Saffo explores the myriad Ghost Dances intertwined with the tensions of today. From the essay:
…The Ghost Dance isn't danced merely in Madrassahs, or fundamentalist churches, but throughout the Global Village, from American churches to Shanghai malls to halls of power in Washington D.C. and capitals around the world. It was Armageddon-obsessed Christians who helped elect George W. Bush. Prominent Christian pundits as well as some in the Pentagon have cast the Iraqi War as a holy war of biblical prophesy. The "strict constructionism" of American constitutional conservatives is a political Ghost Dance. Elsewhere, political uncertainty leads to other nostalgic looks back. Communism seemed discredited in the '90s, but after a decade of corruption and widening divergence between rich and poor in the former Soviet Republics, a small but vocal minority advocates returning to the old order.
It is not just the past-lovers who embrace the Ghost Dance, for the Ghost Dance often exhibits itself as an utter rejection of the old in favor of leaping into appealing but unknown new worlds. Techno–theoretic "extropians''–believers in an unbounded technological future–argue that technology is not moving fast enough. While some ghost dancers desperately want to put on the brakes, these technological believers are convinced that redemption can be achieved only by stepping on the gas and fleeing into the future.
