The speed of innovation has accelerated at a pace previously unimaginable and with that comes a lot of amazing changes. Our cars will one day drive themselves, our electricity will come from entirely renewable sources, our computers will be smart enough to have full and complete conversations. But with these changes come a bunch of questions and even fears about our place in this future. What will happen to everything we know to be true today from our jobs to our homes to our cars? Couple this with rising income inequality, global populist movements, and highly unstable political systems, and you’ve got a recipe for chaos.
“When the world is flat, it’s tough to see the horizon or accept that the sun will rise in the morning…”
Those who feel disenfranchised by what they perceive to be changes to the system, (globalization, automation, etc.), are pushing back, fueled by divisive rhetoric, anger and fear. And they’re not wrong in how they are feeling. We have left too many people behind for too long and gaps in education, income, knowledge, standard of living, etc. continue to broaden. The gaps were always extreme on a global scale but now the difference between you and your neighbour can be so vast, it’s tough to see the world from their eyes.
Arguably, a big part of the challenge is that we simply aren’t having the right conversations and we aren’t delving into the systemic issues that are plaguing our communities today. Instead, we sensationalize stories for impact, facts are being touted as ‘fake news’, fake news is being positioned as fact and real information is becoming harder to discern. Our tendency becomes to retreat into our insular bubbles to manage through the complexity, further shutting off our ability to look at a problem objectively. When the world is flat, it’s tough to see the horizon or accept that the sun will rise in the morning. When the world is round, it’s difficult to imagine it any other way.
We have a lot of work to do to get things back on track and start solving problems as a collective. Progress is not linear but our general advancement as a human race works best and works fastest when we are all working together.
This is a broad request but what are the questions that we need to start asking?
Image Source: a plot of the Lorenz Attractor
