“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” John Maynard Keynes
“Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend or a meaningful day.” Dalai Lama
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.” George Bernard Shaw
I just returned from a week in Paris and London with my 11 year old grandkids. We visited many of the iconic sites that make those two cities such draws for people around the world: Notre Dame, the Paris National Museum of Natural History, the Louvre, Musee d’orsay, the London Tower, the London Natural History Museum, etc. What struck me as we walked through the streets of these amazing cities and their treasured museums is the juxtaposition of the old and the new. We saw art from 4,000 BCE, we viewed a timeline of the evolution of life over the 4 billion years on this planet, and we saw the integration of ancient buildings and modern architecture seamlessly interwoven throughout the cities. We even watched the play, Hamilton, in the London theatre district which reminded us that many of the people who signed our constitution (Hamilton, Burr, Monroe) were less than 21 years of age at the signing. Finally, I was able to observe the experience of 11 year old American kids as they learned about the old and the new in an up close and personal way.
They saw how civilizations were able to survive whatever disruptions they encountered and emerge even stronger. London and Paris are vital, bustling, high energy cities still growing, changing, and adapting to new challenges after the devastation of World War II. They absorbed all THIS and processed the experience with fresh, open and creative minds untarnished and un-jaded by the realities of our past or the pessimistic probabilities of our future.
The experience reinforced my view that it’s time to start turning to our youth and listening more carefully to their points of view. After all, they are stuck with what we have created. Perhaps, just perhaps, they will show the kind of resilience and innovation that has enabled us to get to this point in history.
Currently, however, we are way out of balance with old and new perspectives. In the US Senate, the average age is 64 years old with an overwhelming majority of white men making decisions about our future. There is no evidence that they are in touch with the demands we are facing as a civilization nor any indication that they take ownership for the outcomes of past decisions. For example, what role did old, white men play in:
- Getting us into failed wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Ukraine etc.?
- Bringing us to the brink of climate catastrophe?
- Creating inequalities?
- Failing to prepare adequately for pandemics?
- Developing the highest price health care system in the world lacking access, choice and quality outcomes for all?
- Defeating women’s right to choose?
- Promoting racism and sexism?
- Electing Donald Trump?
- Perpetuating gun violence?
- Fostering fascism?
- Gutting regulations?
The answer is undeniable. Old, white men played a dominant role.
The question is, “What are the causes and motivating factors behind the problems listed above?
To me, there are four primary reasons for all these problems: Power, profits, privilege and policy. The old way of doing things (even if old men are being replaced by young, male entrepreneurs in business) has yielded obscene privilege, power, profits, and policy perks for a small group of white men. And these men will do whatever they can to keep the “old way” in place for as long as they can. Given the choice between profits and principles, they will use their power to maximize their profits, advance their privilege and enhance their policy perks practically every time.
So what would the shift from the “old” to the “new” look like – a shift that might lead to a different set of outcomes? For me, we would need to move from:
- A Competitive mentality to a collaborative mentality
- Independent thinking to interdependent relating
- Pessimism or optimism to possibilism
- Power imposing to power sharing
- Profit driven to principle driven
- How much to how well
- Exclusivity to inclusivity
- Controlling to freeing
- Cruelty to compassion
- More to less
Here is where I see the hope. I believe younger people of all ethnicities and orientations are already making those shifts. I see it in my grandkids, and I see it in youth movements around the world. And now they have the power, in an increasingly digitized world, to make those shifts real if they can avoid getting seduced by the cultural pressures for power, privilege, profits and policy perks.
Old, white men are not going to stay abreast of rapidly changing technologies, like AI, that are changing everything. Through their adoption of new technologies, young people will have a source of power they have never had before. They can use these technologies to mobilize, motivate, and manipulate in ways old, white guys like me can’t even imagine. I’m hoping they will use that power to pursue moral meaning instead of material wealth.
My intention in this post is not to denigrate or diminish the accomplishments of the past or to cast dispersions on all old men like me. Visiting museums in Paris and London, and experiencing the vibrancy of those cities, gave me an appreciation of the resiliency and innovation required to survive 200,000 years of human existence. While I honor what has been accomplished in the past, I don’t think we can afford to be stuck in it. I also believe that as our life expectancy keeps getting longer, we are at increased risk of people hanging on to positions of power and resisting the need to share power with younger generations. Think Succession with Logan Roy – he held on until the day he died.
As John Maynard Keynes said, “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” The Dalai Lama reminds us that the important thing is to find meaning in life and George Bernard Shaw implicitly implores us to keep playing with new ideas as we grow older.
I’m hoping my grandkids and all the young people in the world will keep playing with new ideas and will continue their search for meaning throughout their lives. I’m hoping we will search for possibilities in the liminality between a dying old world and a new world that may be emerging. And I’m hoping that old, white men will let go of their obsessions for power, profit, policy perks and privilege. May it be so.
Also published on Medium.
Amen brother!