EVERY year during the last week of January, politicians and leading businessmen meet at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. This year's theme was ''Redefining the basic assumptions of the world economy''.
The Forum's organisers believed that ''the new assumptions were not the result of some external mechanism'' but were ''shaped by the actors themselves''. And the goal must be ''to create change with added value . . . a change where mankind is better off afterward''.
Among the businessmen who paid substantial sums to attend, the Forum invited leaders from the fields of science, the media and the arts to join in the deliberation. In order to redefine assumptions about the world, politicians and businessmen need to better understand the changing assumptions that are taking place in other fields.
The Forum also invited a range of people under the age of 43 who were regarded by the Forum as having achieved some influence and responsibility in their respective countries and who have demonstrated a commitment to public affairs. The visions of a younger group were thought to be important to the Forum.
I attended the brainstorming session for the younger participants. We were randomly divided into 10 groups of about eight. My group had two women and six men. We came from South Africa, Mexico, Finland, Australia, the US and Hong Kong. Our backgrounds covered business, politics, the environment, health care and the media.
Each group was given an hour to put together a three-minute summary of what it thought were the basic assumptions in the world which required redefinition. This was the statement from my group: ''We believe the concept and the workings of 'government' need to be redefined. There is a widespread impression that governments around the world appear to be collapsing, either because of changing ideology and/or governments are seen as lacklustre and inefficient.
''We believe that 'government' and 'politics' are important to society. We do not wish to see these concepts marginalised, or worse still, be regarded as unimportant.