The SHIVA era: Why old rules no longer work

Editor's note: Alexey Sitnikov is a Russian expert in management, psychology, and strategic communications. He holds a PhD in Economics, serves as a business trainer and consultant, and is recognized as a speaker and author at the intersection of leadership, marketing, and the psychological aspects of management. Sitnikov conducts training programs, courses, and seminars where he discusses new approaches to business development, professional communication, and personal growth.

Friends, it seems we are entering an entirely new era of human development . After 1945, when World War II ended, virtually all of humanity understood that one more war would leave nothing of us. That is why, in 1945, the United Nations was established, and various treaties and alliances began to emerge. Even between the different blocs that were at odds during the Cold War, there were still agreements and rules of the game.

Oh, and another example is the Non-Proliferation Treaty—an agreement to prevent the spread of nuclear technologies and materials.

Despite the intense confrontation between the world’s two political systems at the time, there were still control mechanisms in place: limits on the number of warheads, oversight of nuclear materials, diplomatic relations, and consulates.

Have you noticed how, nowadays, when you turn on the TV, another country seems to withdraw from yet another treaty every day? And the most alarming part is that the main agreements have vanished. The most fundamental one is the agreement to actually fulfill agreements—keeping one’s word. Let’s be honest, the whole world was shocked when the President of the United States, despite promising seven times (not to grant amnesty to his own son), did exactly that on a whim—making a laughingstock of himself in the annals of history.

So, we see how the world is changing. Until 2019, thanks to the U.S. military reporting to Congress on why they failed in Operation Desert Storm, our world was described by the acronym VUCA. The first letter stands for “Volatility.” Those four letters—volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—defined our world before 2019. They allowed the American military to say, “Listen, we kept preparing for war, but it turned out to be a completely different kind of war. We were preparing for the old one, so we failed.”



Starting in 2019, with the onset of COVID, our world began to be called BANI—a term coined by the Japanese futurist Kassho. BANI stands for “Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible.” And from 2022 onward, our world has been labeled SHIVA. Let me remind you that Shiva is the ancient Indian god of destruction. The first word in this new acronym is “Split,” referring to something that has already been shattered—meaning the world has already broken apart. We are entering a new phase in which the rules of the game, which shaped the world for centuries, have changed. We have to live in this new world, and so do our children.

Let’s examine which laws are going to prevail in this world. It appears we are entering it literally right now, as the New Year unfolds. Astrologers and astronomers once predicted that we would move into the Age of Aquarius, an era of “yin” energies, transitioning out of the “Age of Pisces” (masculine) into “yin” energy. It seems this has indeed come to pass.

How do I see the patterns and laws of this new world?

First law: We must learn to work with our inner states, take responsibility for our lives and ourselves, and learn to control our attention, our focal points of interest, and our mental conditions. Although human lifespans are gradually growing longer, we still cannot extend the lifespan of the brain. We still do not fully understand how dementia arises or how to prevent it. A person’s body might live longer, but unfortunately, the brain can’t always cope with the load. A single issue of The New York Times today contains more information than a person in the Middle Ages would encounter in their entire life. Back then, a typical individual might experience 9,000 thoughts in a lifetime, while each of us today has about 60,000 thoughts per day. Managing one’s internal state and preserving mental health is thus the first skill we all must learn.

Second law: Emotional intelligence, rather than intellectual intelligence, now takes center stage. Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand what is happening within human society, to lead people, to organize processes, and to create collaborative spaces. This skill is more crucial nowadays than simply being “smart.” Our children no longer come to us for information. They ask Siri or artificial intelligence and receive an answer far more extensive than any we can offer. My father, whom I greatly respected for his talent and intelligence, built his authority with me because I would go to him and ask, “Dad, who was Napoleon?” and he would explain it all. The same with the Hundred Years’ War—he would tell me the whole story. Today, kids don’t come to me with such questions. They ask a computer or a phone instead. So what will my authority be based on now? It becomes more complicated—it will be based solely on my actions. You’ll agree that this is much harder than just knowing who Napoleon was, as it used to be.

Third law: Striking a balance between being informed and being overloaded with information. How do we manage that balance? On the one hand, we need to stay aware of what’s going on in the world; on the other hand, we must not overwhelm our brains. A variety of tools can help here, including artificial intelligence that can summarize a book you might spend a week reading, producing a condensed overview in minutes. Specialized services can “read” books for you, create summaries, and then present their reviews in user-friendly formats, complete with infographics. There are also specialized news agencies that filter information based on your interests, sparing you from unnecessary “noise.” After all, 90% of global content is copy-pasted, meaning it’s just recycled information. Genuinely unique, substantive content is not so abundant.

However, to keep our finger on the pulse of world events, we need a coherent worldview—an understanding of how the world works, how our specific field or profession operates, and where we ourselves fit into it. Without a worldview, we have nowhere to “store” any fact we come across online: that fact simply remains noise and never becomes genuine knowledge. If we misunderstand it—meaning it doesn’t fit into our worldview—we will make mistakes because we’ll be using formulas that fail to consider crucial variables.

Fourth law: Cognitive flexibility is becoming essential. In the past, being goal-oriented—planning meticulously and pursuing one’s objective with unwavering focus—was highly valued. Companies that planned 20, 30, or even 50 years ahead were the winners. Corporations built their own corporate universities and prepared talent for the future, effectively raising their own future Gref, their own future Elon Musk, their own future Warren Buffett. Today, however, it’s harder to predict anything over such long stretches. Certainly, we still need visionaries of the Buffett, Musk, and Gref kind, but we also need people who can swiftly pivot—who can wake up one day and realize that yesterday’s objective is outdated, so it’s time to adopt a new one.

Each of our traits has a flip side—what we call duals. Every weakness is the reverse side of a strength, and every strength has a corresponding weakness. People who excel at being goal-oriented, methodical, and systematic unfortunately often have the dual weaknesses of rigidity and inflexibility: they are unable to quickly decide that their current goal has become obsolete and must be replaced. Nowadays, it is not those who think at length who win, but those who can make decisions quickly.

Fifth law: Make the right decisions, not the “proven in the past” ones. That means decisions that may not have been tried before. The world moves so fast now that by the time you send a request to a consulting firm and wait a year for them to calculate the potential of some market, your competitors will have lapped you a hundred times. Today, the winners are those who take risks and invest here, there, and everywhere. They might fail 99 times, but on the 100th try, they gain a thousandfold return. For better or worse, that’s how the world is set up, and it is precisely those risk-takers who succeed.

Sixth law: An emphasis on emergent systems rather than hierarchical ones. The power of force, authority, position, and rank will gradually decline. We will witness the rise of virtual states. We will see “yin” energies triumph, with “yin” projects prevailing over “yang” projects. Material resources and hierarchical systems will disintegrate, and emergent—meaning spontaneously arising—systems will come out on top. Nassim Taleb’s concept of the “black swan” and antifragility has gained significant traction in business schools for this very reason: one absolutely must become “antifragile.”

Finally, we must develop tolerance for uncertainty. We need to accept that we do not know what tomorrow will bring, that we cannot predict it, and stop letting that unsettle or sadden us, make us ill, insecure, or burned out simply because we don’t know which direction to go. We must learn to set goals, clearly understand what we need, and move toward those goals—even if they’re not strictly tied to our work. Note how many people around us, especially during COVID and under the sanctions encircling our country, set entirely different types of goals: someone took up triathlons, another started running marathons, someone else took up kitesurfing or windsurfing, or began collecting items, or learning Toccata and Fugue in D minor, or studying Japanese. To our subconscious, it doesn’t matter what new goal we choose—what matters is that we have one at all. Once we do, the subconscious kicks in with dopaminergic and noradrenergic mechanisms that energize us with life, keeping us healthy and helping us live longer.

(If you possess specialized knowledge and wish to contribute, please reach out to us at opinions@news.az).

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