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Thoughts of Where We Go

 

Where we’re going

When I begin to think about the future of our society, I first look back into history to see the path that humankind has taken and why it is we’ve arrived at this juncture in time. About humanity, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry is quoted as saying, "I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We're still just a child creature, we're still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We're growing up, we're moving into adolescence now. When we grow up - man, we're going to be something!" (Daum, 2016). Considering that most of us that have been parents probably feel that the maturation of society is much like that of raising a child, in that we go through stretches of ups and downs that involve teachable moments. In essence, we’re training our children to understand right from wrong while guiding and navigating them through the perils of life. In many ways, this is the same of the entire human race, partly because as a group, human beings are complicit to sit back and let society take us on the journey of life rather than choose to do our own thing. But also, because a small fraction decides to take their destinies in their own hands.

21st Century Enlightenment

In the video by RSA (2010), narrator Matthew Taylor describes many topics ranging from the disequilibrium in society to how policy makers have failed to compensate for globalization. The video is titled 21st Century Enlightenment because through the use of key phases and snappy animation, it builds up to show that people have a choice and have had a choice to change the way our society dictates humankind’s path forward. The Age of Enlightenment occurred in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, in which humans moved away from the more barbaric violence that previously ruled the world and evolved into a more sophisticated society. The 21st Century Enlightenment talks to how as a world, together we can explore another enlightenment that moves us towards using and developing more empathic capacity in this new century.

Taylor provides numerous examples of how we arrived that this point in time by providing the historical background that laid the foundation for enlightenment. He dives deep with this narration that highlights how he believes that people can adapt and live differently, but that it requires us to change how we think. What he means by this is that as our world continues to be more globalized and we as a society want to become more enlightened, we cannot continue to think and behave in the same manner that brought us to this point in time. Just as the Age of Enlightenment occurred 200-300 years ago, it took a different type of thinking to make those changes.  

Taylor argues that we need "to resist our tendencies to make right or true that which is merely familiar and wrong or false that which is only strange" (RSA, 2010). This statement hammers home the philosophical point that we must stop treating things in the same way as we did yesterday if we want tomorrow to be different. Rather than stipulate something is right, true, wrong or false, look at it or analyze it differently and use these new thoughts and outcomes to guide you.

Challenging your own or someone else’s thinking requires discipline because as humans, we’re creatures of habit. It is difficult to change our ways, especially as society has spent hundreds of years dictated them. The example of this I want to share from my current workplace is how people have come forward to support those that have a different sexual identification from that which was assigned at their birth. Even to this day, many places around the world consider someone that identifies differently from the sex that was assigned to them as sinners, monsters and culprits of crime. My organization has taken a stance to protect these individuals from discrimination by providing them with the same employee rights as everyone else regardless of race, color or creed. As a leader, I take the protection of all my coworkers to heart, but especially that of minority or disadvantaged classes. If more people did this, rather than continue to think in the same old fashion that people who are male remain male and females stay female, I believe we could elevate our society to greater things. Such leaders call for sacrifice in the pursuit of moral principles and higher goals, validating such altruism by looking beyond the present moment to frame a future worth striving for (Goodwin, pg. 235).

Taylor continues to argue this point by saying we must stop using popular culture to degrade each other. In the same ways that society has split decisions about how to treat the LGBTQ community, our role as leaders puts the emphasis squarely on everyone’s shoulders. Together, we can make this demonizing method go away by supporting everyone, regardless of their views by using positivity, empathy and the healthy activity of public disagreement. Further, Taylor talks about atomizing people from collaborative environments and the destructive effect on their growth. The implications of Taylor’s comments for organizational change efforts is that it must evolve, and it must change. The organizational development we see today was built decades ago by a society that thought differently than how Taylor sees the 21st Century Enlightenment Project working.

In summary, society’s role in our lives has one of the largest, if not the largest impact in how we think and behave. The popular culture that we are connected to influences humans from the moment they can comprehend it until the day they die. The implicit bias we have against change makes it difficult to change our thinking, as such and to Taylor’s point, creative people who want to make a difference have a million and one opportunities and distractions (2010). I feel the message from the RSA video (2010) can help to empower more people to start changing the way they think. However, it will take a lot of convincing to truly change society, popular culture and the policies intertwined within it.

References

Daum, K. (2016, October 4) 21 Gene Roddenberry Quotes That Inspire a Great Future. Inc. https://www.inc.com/kevin-daum/21-gene-roddenberry-quotes-that-inspire-a-great-future.html

Goodwin, D.K. (2018). Leadership: In Turbulent Times. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

RSA. (2010, August 19). RSA Animate: 21st Century Enlightenment. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo&feature=emb_logo

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