For the longest time I have envied my grandparent’s generation for the 100 year period they lived through. Their generation experienced the greatest technological advances of all human history. Their generation went from horse drawn carriages to space travel; from teletypes to cell phones; from canon balls to nuclear bombs; from the abacus to the super computer… What, I wondered, could top that?
Today is MLK Day and tomorrow is the historic inauguration of the first African American US President. I now know that will top my grandparent’s generation. We are about to embark on the greatest Human advances in history, and never have I believed that more strongly than now. I believe, just as the 20th century ushered in more inventions than all other centuries combined (I read that somewhere), the 21st century is about usher in the same abundant and prolific advancements for humanity and human interactions. Sadly, it won’t all be good. But the net gain will be phenomenal.
OK, ok, I hear you, the world is a scary place and you only need to look at the news last week in Gaza, or the recent autocracies in Mumbai, or the 3 trampling deaths of Black Friday to try and dispute this, but I actually see those events as support for the theory rather than evidence against. We are reaching a tipping point. I believe the vast majority of people are seeking resolution, not resistance; compassion rather than hatred; solutions, instead of roadblocks and we’re living the human equivalent of the Doppler effect. As this tipping point gets near, the roar of violence and negativity gets louder, the sound waves get tighter and the intensity builds. But, the second it passes, the second we cross over this tipping point (whatever it is), the sound wave stretches out, the noise dissipates and it shifts from pushing against us to pulling us into something different, something new. That’s what we are going to experience in this human century. This intensity that is building and causing such intense pain, will pass, and as it does, it will leave us looking 180 degrees in the opposite direction and we are going to find solutions that today we can’t conceive of.
Try telling my grandfather at the age of 15 that we would fly to the moon, or carry telephones in our pockets, or drive street cars that can break 200 miles per hour – or elect a black president – and yet we are. Try telling the generations of today that we are going to beat terrorism, not with weapons, but with humanity, that compassion will become a part of our collective human experience, or that world can be united in a common good that respects differences but somehow allows for individuality and reward just the same, and you will likely get laughed out of the room. But it will.
I know, many great people have come before: Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, what makes this century different? It’s a fair question. I don’t quite see the answer yet, but I think it lies in the fact that the world is shinking by the day and there is simply no place to hid. We’re getting collectively smarter and questioning more. And an increasing number of people are tired of the crap. As the 16thC. Unitarian minister Francis David said; “We need not think alike to love alike.” And I believe more and more people are coming to that realization. As any successful person in business will tell you, the secret lies in duplication. It’s not making a dollar once that makes you wealthy, it’s making that dollar over and over and over again in a way that generates itself that makes you wealthy. The same will be true with this human evolution. The momentum is duplicating it among more and more people and just as a successful company breds money, this new century will bred compassion and solutions to human problems. It’s time. The fact that we can’t see how it happen is irrelavant, the first step is to dream that it’s possible. Only then can we move into believing that it’s possible, and once we believe it’s possible, the tipping point will happen and we will see how.
If you are on Facebook, please check out the group titled: Global Human Strategies Initiative. Join it if so inclined, and share it with others.
