It's easy to be optimistic about the future when sitting poolside on a summer's day in a land of peace and plenty. It is easy then, or at least easier. But maybe, just maybe, easy isn't always wrong. Or Pollyanna. Or simplistic. Or naive.
So I offer the wisdom and hope gathered pool side on a summer's day. . .
The changes wrought by technology (and they are many) combined with a new generation bring about the possibility of the elimination of the nation state as we know it and the birth of something entirely new, not before possible -- not globalization -- at least as we now use the term -- but something I don't even know how to name -- a sort of shifting tribalism.
I observe that folks my children's age move easily (at least more easily than I have and do) from group to group -- they're still tribal, these children of mine, but their tribes are not fixed constants -- rather, their tribes are fluid things that they leave and come back to and their contemporaries with them -- so that each time of return realizes a different tribe -- and that works for them.
Things are held more loosely.
Ideas are exchanged more freely.
Possibilities are envisioned differently.
Time is not wasted on what never was nor cannot be.
Authorities are shared based on competencies and vision.
Nothing is taken for granted.
If the world is to be changed, they believe that it is up to them to do it -- and they do it -- one person, one group, one tribe, at a time.
Children matter -- other people's children, as well as their own.
Families are made as well as born.
Needs are met simply because there are needs to be met.
Life continues.
I am hopeful for the future when I behold these people.
I hope I live long enough to see them come into the fulness of their marvelous potential, for every generation has its place, its time and this, in all its nascent wonder, is theirs.
So I offer the wisdom and hope gathered pool side on a summer's day. . .
The changes wrought by technology (and they are many) combined with a new generation bring about the possibility of the elimination of the nation state as we know it and the birth of something entirely new, not before possible -- not globalization -- at least as we now use the term -- but something I don't even know how to name -- a sort of shifting tribalism.
I observe that folks my children's age move easily (at least more easily than I have and do) from group to group -- they're still tribal, these children of mine, but their tribes are not fixed constants -- rather, their tribes are fluid things that they leave and come back to and their contemporaries with them -- so that each time of return realizes a different tribe -- and that works for them.
Things are held more loosely.
Ideas are exchanged more freely.
Possibilities are envisioned differently.
Time is not wasted on what never was nor cannot be.
Authorities are shared based on competencies and vision.
Nothing is taken for granted.
If the world is to be changed, they believe that it is up to them to do it -- and they do it -- one person, one group, one tribe, at a time.
Children matter -- other people's children, as well as their own.
Families are made as well as born.
Needs are met simply because there are needs to be met.
Life continues.
I am hopeful for the future when I behold these people.
I hope I live long enough to see them come into the fulness of their marvelous potential, for every generation has its place, its time and this, in all its nascent wonder, is theirs.
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