The Specials Sang
“Just because you’re nobody
It doesn’t mean that you’re no good
Just because there’s a reason
It doesn’t mean it’s understood”
I know you can help build the next generation
Here in the UK we are facing interesting times.
Last week we all heard the local election results and it’s obvious that we are living in a changing world. The political debate, particularly online has been interesting and I think people are missing the point.
The binary choice in relation to our politics is not working and everything it seems is more and more divisive. There seems to be less consideration of what it is we need to be doing and thinking and very little about the action we should all be taking.
There seems to be a thought process that thinks it’s all going to be ok. And I think the future may be just about OK but it does need to be pushed in the right direction, any less action.
I am a little fearful.
Mulling over some of the options, here is my take on how we solve some of the future problems. We start with ten year olds.
The skill I think we need to be teaching a 10-year olds is …
The skill of thinking.
The ability to teach a 10-year-old to sit in a room on their own without a phone or a connected device and just think about themselves and where they fit in this fantastic planet. Is going to be the most important skill we need them to master, that we need to teach them.
Both as parents, aunts, uncles and teachers.
They will need to be able to draw on the resources of the internet on the unlimited power that brings, the power of collaboration and the power of understanding to be able to translate that into something cohesive something they can do. They will also need to think.
It is obvious we are not going to be able to get them to do that, with an ‘smart phone’ stuck in their hands – with the supporting social FOMO.
If we are genuinely serious about saving the future of this place for others to enjoy then this is likely to be the main skill they will need.
And it is only by giving themselves (and us) the space to think and to be still, that we can expect the answers to be found.
Some of the situations we will find ourselves in in the future will be forced upon us, we have to consider carefully the environmental changes that are going on and we have to be able to work with them or workaround them.
And certainly in the short-term there will be great change.
But unless we start to be very careful about our thinking we are not going to arrive at the solutions the human species needs to be able to move this forward.
The future is going to be about collaboration it is going to be about learning to disagree and I certainly think the future is going to be more about I love you you let’s work through this rather than fuck off.
And it starts with our ability to think and understand exactly what we need to change and all of that has to come from the inside.
Our happiness and our financial futures all come from her ability to think.
By teaching our 10-year olds to have something to consider, to gaze out of a window for half an hour and be engaged with that. To be absolutely enthralled when an insect flies into the room. This is life right in front of us.
These seeds of hope, of life will engage us for a lifetime. There is a old Chinese proverb that tells us the best time to plant a tree was 50 years ago and the second best time is right now.
Planting trees in our own minds is going to be the next thing we all need to do. Looking carefully at our short and medium-term futures and understand exactly what needs to change is the next major skill we need to learn as a species.
We are incredibly good at a lot of things we have learned to manage our environment learned to create political systems that do work only of late have been incredibly one sided.
The means they need to be adapted and altered and managed again.
Even if you are in your 50s or 60s the skill is vitally important because it is possible to change our lives and to live in a very different way.
There is much that everyone can add back to society and we all need to engage.
You need to think very carefully
You need to plant trees.
We know how to do this stuff, we understand it and it starts with thinking carefully about it and you.
I’m not asking you to get all metaphysical about it or spiritual I’m just saying to you that you need to think and if you think in the right way you will change everything. That doesn’t mean you need to be controlled in your thinking in fact it means quite the opposite because without the free thinking without new ideas we are all fucked.
The best way to unfuck yourself. The best way to unfuck the planet it’s to start thinking and acting in the right way both for you and for everybody else. That does mean learning to disagree politely that does mean not having an opinion on things.
That does mean we need to create more demilitarized zones where everything can be discussed openly without recrimination. The kind of space where collaborative ideas the matter how appalling they seem to others we’ll have some merit.
Get in touch if you want to join a DMZ with me?