Manifesto #9 / Now is the Time to Think about Reinventing Our Future

Create a Department of The Future: Communication, compassion, and future visions

Kids are stepping up and behaving like the adults in the room. They’ve taken it upon themselves to address the critical nature of changing our behavior around the accelerating Climate Crisis. They understand how it’s now up to them to get the word out every day, and begin remaking the world we live in. Probably not the burden they were expecting to be hoisted on their shoulders, but that’s the cards they’ve been dealt.

We aren’t living in a time when incremental change will do. We’re living in an age when big ideas about making things better aren’t just important, but vital. The Climate Crisis is happening now. All you have to do is walk outside to know this truth.

But, even the concept of truth has been chipped away at, through years of propaganda broadcast on TV and the Internet. TV asks, “Who you gonna believe, me, or your own lying eyes?” TV was our friend when all it talked us into was buying candy and soda we didn’t need, but now it’s brainwashing us with thoughts we don’t need.

We need a Department of The Future in the White House, to make daily assessments on the progress made in addressing the ongoing Climate Emergency, reality-based conversations on how to create global  peace initiatives, transparent talks on how to immediately address the global inequality of women and children, and actionable policies to take meaningful steps about daily human rights violations, also mostly directed at women and children anywhere and everywhere in the world. You can probably think up several more on your own.

Historians like to point out that democracy in America is a messy process. It’s set up to be slow and cumbersome, but common sense and our gut intuition tells us this approach stopped working long before the pandemic. No, not common sense in a “the whole governmental system’s broken kind of way, and we must privatize Social Security madness” but in a “let’s actually bring back common sense” type of way. Immediate solutions are required. About the Climate Emergency, Democracy, and worldwide Human Rights. Sometimes it seems like a single decision-maker would be far more efficient. But everyone knows those types of leaders are called Kings and Queens (or these days, Dictators), and our Founders sailed on leaky wooden boats across a vast ocean to escape a mad king and those types of humanity-stifling social structures.

While our original Founding documents have held up as sturdy social and legal tools over the past few centuries, perhaps we need a Declaration of Interdependence, as well as a Declaration of Independence. If, at this moment, we don’t truly understand we’re all in this together, one has to wonder what it will take. It’s been made as clear as a hurricane force wind slamming you to the ground, how the fundamental necessity of implementing transformative social change is now a matter of survival. Meaning, of course, social transformations that benefit all. As in Liberty and Justice for All.

Why not begin at the source? Start by forming a new governmental department: The Department of The Future. While we’re at it, create the Department of Human Rights. We’re all human beings. This should be important enough for us all to get behind. There are enough brilliant minds in our country to establish such departments and make them a reality. Time to lay the groundwork for a kinder society that takes care of everyone’s health concerns without bankrupting people is a good place to begin. If the United States doesn’t create and follow through on these types of global initiatives, who will? Canada and Sweden are prime examples of socially effective healthcare systems proven to work. Simply brushing off these workable systems as too costly or too socialist isn’t a real, much less thoughtful answer.

Our culture is starving for new and impactful solutions that aren’t part of a ten-year plan, but will deliver results this year, this month. People need help now. A culture where people aren’t pushed out of the system and left to fend for themselves is a good culture to imagine, and a necessary one to build. Envisioning a society where improving education isn’t fought over or debated in code—but reinvented by people with open minds used on a continual basis, is a culture-shifting idea most intelligent people can agree upon.

History has finally pushed us ahead, as a species and a culture. We’re still experiencing a full-on shock to the system, still dealing with the aftereffects of the worldwide pause, and a complete reassessment of how we live our lives. The reinvention of social, cultural, and political dialogue is already underway.

Intelligent and spirited young people, across the globe, have shown us the way, shifting the cultural paradigm around whether children could lead us or not. Turns out they can, and they are. They deserve our deep respect for what they’ve started. They’ve led, and inspired, older generations who have been lifelong activists.

It’s time to begin creating a future built on smarter ideas, real cooperation and compassion, and using the ongoing cultural reinvention we used to be known for around the world. These future visions will take us deeper into the New Now.

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