But the agenda has a chastened look this year. It's laden with doom, gloom, dark portents and global challenges, with sessions like 'Is 20th Century Capitalism Failing 21st Century Society?', 'Global Risks 2012: The Seeds of Dystopia', and so on. Even the conference's main theme has (maybe unwittingly) adopted the name of a book written by one of capitalism's greatest critics: 'The Great Transformation'. Apparently, even the 'Masters of the Universe' are starting to feel a bit twitchy.
Have the 1% - the global financial elite, as the Occupy protests call them - been humbled? Last year, the boss of J.P. Morgan hit out at banker bashing, and when the conference attendees were polled in 2009, the majority stated confidently that the world would emerge from the doldrums and begin to pick up the economic pace quickly. So much for that, and expectations have been adjusted downwards for 2012.
For all the horizon scanning, hand wringing and soul searching (there are sessions too on 'the values context'), the overwhelming sense is one of cautious confidence. That whatever the risks, they can be intelligently managed; whatever the challenges, they can be negotiated; whatever the social damage, it can be ameliorated.
Perhaps they're humbler but not yet humble, wiser but not yet wise.
So, here's a message to those 2,600 people who were in Davos - maybe someone there will get the email. It's for people caught between fear for the future, and occasional bullish confidence that they can make it through and come out on top if they're just smart enough. The message is, you are not the Masters of the Universe.
Or, in the words of James (4:13-14): 'Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.'
Paul Bickley
Senior Researcher, Theos
