International Society for the Systems Sciences keynote address: Building a global superorganism, a new paradigm for a species in peril

The growth‐oriented economic strategy that has largely prevailed in Western societies over the past two centuries is literally at a dead‐end, along with our global system of independent and sometimes deeply competitive nation states. As we have seen once again with the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the devastating global economic recession and, more important, our rapidly escalating climate crisis, the world is becoming ever more interdependent—and more precarious. We are facing a collective choice like none other in our long, multi‐million‐year history (and prehistory) as a ground‐dwelling bipedal ape. There are only two paths going forward. We must either create a more integrated and cooperative global society and political order or else our species will very likely be consumed by lethal competition and conflict, and perhaps even devolve and go extinct. Only an organized process of cooperative social, economic and political change on a global scale offers us genuine reason for hope. Biologists would call it a “superorganism”—a whole with many parts that are tied together and have a shared fate. The term is commonly used with reference to an integrated, socially organized group in the natural world. Here, I will provide a very brief outline and roadmap for how to achieve a new, more legitimate, and sustainable economic and political world order—a global superorganism. A new social contract will also be required.