Andrew Carnegie (Wikipedia Link) , a human person, one of the richest men in history, was a human person who in the end believed in people, not just as a commodity – but the whole person.
Carnegie apparently said, "Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the factory floors……Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will have a new and better factory."
Is there a typical large corporation working today that still believes this?
Most organizations now have it backwards. The factory, the ROI, the infrastructure, the systems, the patents, the process, the manual… that's king. In fact, shareholders demand it.
It turns out that success these days is coming from the atypical organizations, the ones that can get back to embracing irreplaceable people, the linchpins, the ones that make a difference. Anything else can be replicated cheaper by someone else.
We need a new way of looking at old problems…perhaps a the new generation can do this. By their way of looking at things, their brilliance, ingenuity and fresh viewpoint of the new generations, to look at our current structures, and to invent new ways of looking at the world's most pressing problems, of social equity, financial equity, food, shelter, clean water and energy and some way to stop the rape of our planet without responsibility in pursuit of the almighty dollar – without considering the next generation.
A new curiosity is needed in our approach, to change our view of the world, our social structures, our political systems, our responsibilities to a more collaborative, less individualistic view point.
We need to be able to work smarter with what we have. As Einstein said (I paraphrase) … we cannot fix our problems with the same mind set that created them.
All of these things will take years, perhaps generations, but I feel that in my life time we will see the visible start of the necessary changes
However in my view, the world has changed, just imagine what happened in Bosnia & Afghanistan happening in the time of say Alexander the Great or Napoleon… where a quasi alignment of sovereign states sent in military missions to save lives… I am sure that there were points for this that were hidden, those hidden points are not so altruistic in the invasion of Iraq.
However this greater dispersal of social equity and sharing the assets of the world more equitably, cannot be implemented whilst we have a inherently corrupt political structure in place… there are very few responsible, equitable and transparent political structures in place, very, few in the so called civilised world, and almost none in the rest of the world.
In a way this is why I am doing what I am doing, by creating wealth, I am seeking to be a person who can incorporate a structure whereby I can be a catalyst, a singular part of a whole, a simple foot forward, a part of a world wide movement of change away from the id… the selfish pronoun of "me, me, me" to more one of "us, us , us" – the us being all of us…. including the planet.
Over the coming generations, the ethics of Governments will change (they hopefully will find some, a new people join the political organisations), greed will change, armies will be made redundant, money as we know it now will cease to exist…. as we move further into the Age of humanity, of curiosity, new inventions and creativity.
The Political system is corrupt across the world, a new era of consultation and humanity will evolve (this will take longer …), but not if I could blink my eye…and most of all.. I would like to believe that all people with live in a honourable, ethical way with a place in their heart for their neighbour…. next door, in the next suburb or across the world.
However that may be the goal, but whilst it is a goal on the horizon, in the mean time we live in the now, and we have to shuffle forward every moment of every day so that one day we will all be of the same mind set to make those changes ourselves… any attempt to force changes, will again be corrupt, as it will be driven by self interest.
An impossible dream, an Utopia, a Shangri-la - yes I hope so….
This brings me to one of the kindergardens for these new thoughts. The Singularity University (www.singularityu.org).
I wasn't aware of the actual organisation… until very recently, however to me it seems an excellent concept, an organisation to extend our commitment to the age of Aquarius.. to express our commitment to the whole planet and all of its people…
