Plenty has been going on in the past few decades that have a profound impact on our future; a future – if you care to examine close enough – that knows no borders. From political turmoils/conflicts driven in by fundamentalism (religious and/or racial) to economic meltdowns and critical environmental indicators — we face many challenges ahead and we’re essentially passing the buck to the new generation to deal with the mess. But hold on, that’s actually not quite true because what we are doing – either deliberately of inadvertently – is ensuring this mess is sustained if not doubled. How you may ask? Well, by infecting their ideology so that it follows our own archaic worldview rather than help them find better answers than what we’ve come up with thus ensuring an evolution of approach both in solving big problems and more importantly in working collaboratively to help get there sooner rather than later; they need to think out of the border that we’ve boxed them in so to speak and we’re talking Immigration here. There may well be efforts regionally – like in the EU – to get youth more active/involved in many areas of policy but that’s still a box. These boxes are forms of separation that do nothing but promote racist ideologies at one extreme or merely ignorance/stereotyping at another; all elements that ensure the mess is sustained and problems remain unresolved. What we need in my opinion is one global project dedicated towards promoting a continuous dialogue between the youth of the world on the many issues we face today so there is an exchange/coordination in the evolution of new approaches to deal with these issue including governance models/freedoms so that mistakes are not repeated and workable solutions found. This is not just about helping solve problems but also about learning/experiencing how to work together while appreciating/embracing the context of a global/interconnected system that feeds off each component rather than what we have today of a broken/boxed components that can only work within the confines of their box. We need to make this dialogue accessible to everyone so that young people who have been raised in an ultra-conservative environment are able to participate or at least peek over the fence to see what this fuss is all about.
In brief we want is the youth of the world to define their own future through their own worldview not ours – one that is based on facts/experiences not fiction/biases – because with the challenges they face they need to more time collaborating/solving rather than arguing/posturing.
Just a thought for the bucket.