what can you do?
I am impressed with what I see around me. In tough times, people continue to be optimistic, innovative, and productive.
I am also impressed with some of the young people I meet. Many have very positive values — social responsibility, environmental awareness, and a belief in noblesse oblige regardless of one’s social status.
I believe some of the seeds were planted by the Woodstock generation. I say this because I’ve observed it directly, and because I have some context, being from that generation.
No one’s trying to take credit. And of course every generation benefits in some way from the one before. I’m only reporting what I observe. You don’t have to look far to see the manifestations: green business; insights from thoughtful writers such as Malcolm Gladwell; thought leaders in modern marketing; innovations such as Microfinance; and spaces such as GlobalMindshift and The Point, to name a few.
With the many problems we face in the 21st Century, all of them our own doing, it’s easy to be cynical (as a realist, I am most of the time). So these comments are an acknowledgment and a celebration of the good things that people from every generation are doing today. Perhaps a secondary point is: look what can happen when a profound change in social consciousness occurs (in this case, one that began more than 40 years ago).
Were there bad things that came out of the Woodstock era? Of course; there is good and bad in every generation. The question is how effectively we make use of the lessons learned, and how well we pay them forward.
One lesson might be that instead of seeing ourselves as different generations, we should see ourselves simply as people who are on this planet, at this time, who have the opportunity to work together as one.
We’ve made a good start, but this is not the time to let up. What can you do to change the world for the better?
reposted from not.yet.a.blog
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author’s opinion: Paying it forward is, among other things, about personal responsibility. Individual accountability. Giving rather than receiving. As such, it is the antithesis of a movement toward socialism or relying on government to provide.
