Today I am particularly addressing the 25(+/-10) year olds who have a chance to still be around in the full bloom of their lives in 2050. I claim that you have more reasons for optimism than for pessimism. Let us try to imagine your future together. I would go so far as to say that there is a very good chance that you will be living in paradise thirty years from now.
The conditions for this are not bad:
1. All of today's dictators are dead.2. Most of the fraudulent banks are bankrupt.
3. All the terrible weapons of yesterday and today are scrap.
4. Global warming is no longer an issue for the next few centuries.
5. The few children you have left are finally the most important thing you have.
6) Being able to secure the happiness of these children permanently will give you the feeling of living in paradise.
It could be as simple as that. Doesn't sound utopian at all, does it? But sure, it won't happen on its own. So what would we have to do in the coming years up to 2050?
Most importantly, you finally have a plan - the renaturation of human families. You know the necessary direction - to build Familiar Democracy. And you have the opportunity to start immediately. Yes, immediately. After 16 years of Kohl, and 16 years of Merkel, something new can finally be created. We have the means to do it. The Corona pandemic has exposed the sources. When it comes to the survival of the "old guard", suddenly billions of euros are available. So why not for the survival of our species?
I would even say that you could mobilise even more money. Tell Mr Scholz, for example, to tell the Americans that we need our 2% of GDP in the next 30 years not for new weapons, but for our future. Americans should pay for their own military junk themselves. Putin has understood this. He is already displaying his own weapons today (as a deterrent?) before they become unusable tomorrow, or the day after (praise be to Nature for the rust). Tell Mrs Baerbock, too, to refuse to clean out this stable of foreign policy of the "Old White Men". Tell her to create the most important ministry of the new federal government, the Ministry of the Family, a ministry independent of all others, with the right of veto in parliament and wherever that might be useful. She could even join you, and make her own grandchildren happy. Perhaps she is already thinking of that. But is she really doing everything possible to make the dream come true? It doesn't look like it. As a foreign minister among male competitors, she cannot make anyone happy.
And if one is already thinking together (with or without Ms Baerbock) about the near future of the youth, then two changes are unavoidable. Health and education. And these are precisely the two branches of our social life that the "old guard" will never change voluntarily. There must be coercion in parliament. That's where new laws have to go.
As for health, the solution seems obvious. All people in all professions in the health sector must earn twice as much as they still do today (some perhaps even more) from now on (i.e. from 1 January 2022). The eternal whining: "We lack skilled workers" should finally be punished. "By 2030 we will lack 10 thousand skilled workers"; so what? Is nothing going to happen? So you decide: tomorrow the decision is to be made: We recruit the best trainers in these professions. The day after tomorrow, the corresponding, excellently equipped schools are to open so that after five (or more) years thousands of new people can apply for these vacancies.
As far as general education is concerned, one must proceed just as radically. In a few weeks, the best minds (sociologists, psychologists, educators, human scientists, natural scientists; but not "old" ones, with many years of experience, but ones with young minds and ideas) must present a new structure of education for our children and youth. My proposal (in my latest book) is this.
Educational professions must become attractive. The hourly wage of all teachers should be doubled. School classes should be halved. For every class of 20 pupils, there should be three teachers at the same time. One teacher for the most talented 5 pupils, one teacher for the main group of the class, and one teacher for the five slowest pupils. All three groups are beneficial to the success of the collective education and should not be separated. If the majority of students in a class are dissatisfied with a teacher, a change of teacher must be guaranteed with a maximum of one month's notice. A teacher who has been rejected twice with justification may no longer work as a teacher.
They are all feasible changes. And they are necessary if we are really serious about doing something sensible for the future of humanity. So you 25(+/-10) year olds, will you at least try to make a paradise on Earth? It already worked ten thousand years ago. So why not again in 2050? I'm pretty optimistic about that.
I love this optimistic reality check.
There is an abundance of fiscal reserves to pay talent and to reconfigure dated paradigms. COVID is an exemplary example of the breakdown of infrastructures that were already wobbly, weaknesses in supply-and-demand chains and distribution, and hi-speed ingenuity when enough people (and the “right” people) deem it necessary.
A flower seems to “suddenly” bloom before our eyes yet we know there’s a hidden backstage of root systems at play before the flowering star appears centre stage. Hopefully the chaos we’re living amidst is like that same backstage root system, now being consciously displayed … in real time, for the very first time worldwide.
I am rooting for our root system, and its “sudden” bloom :-).
WOW! It’s our future: feeling before we think, and thinking about what we feel.
That, Peter Naturics, is a brilliant answer to begin a New Year unlike any other!