Understanding Contemporary Change. What is the

This piece, written as a question-answer dialogue in the (neo-)platonic tradition, investigates the current global systemic shift in an introductory and open manner. In order to identify the basic patterns of this shift, a seven-dimensional method of reconstruction, analysis and foresight is chosen. This method consists of the experimental inclusion of six basic discourse systems - or, in other terms, six macro-societal rationality types - which are those of 1) economics, 2) politics, 3) culture, 4) religion, 5) technology and 6) demography, into a multidisciplinary, complexely interwoven picture. The overall process of what is happening today is considered as the seventh, overarching dimension which is more than the sum of its parts and cannot thus be reduced to any of its constituent dimensions, nor to their specific interferences. In analyzing the interweavement of these basic logics of contemporary change by applying them to "symptomatic" cases, questions about the mechanisms and potential laws at work behind the curtains of the current phase of globalization are posited.