CHAPTER 1
A window into possibility: coping with the beautiful mess

WHAT IT'S ABOUT

Today's children will become tomorrow's adults in a time of dramatic, often exponential changes. This chapter will explore some of these possible changes, and how we can prepare our children's thinking for the exciting new world they will find. Let's begin by meeting someone who is already creating this amazing future.

#thenextgeneration #promisingfuture #beautifulmess #predictingtheirfuture #transhumanism

A FUTURE FULL OF PROMISE

The future is meant to be a promise, not a threat. If Boyan Slat is any indication, our Next Generation will rise to that promise. This young Dutch entrepreneur is part of the new cohort determined to create an inspiring world up ahead. While he was still a teenager, Slat launched the Ocean Cleanup project,1 which has been dubbed the largest clean-up in history. His astounding proposal? That up to 40 per cent of all rubbish in the world's oceans be removed within 10 years.

This is no small ambition. About eight million tonnes of plastic enters our oceans every year, and the cost of conventional removal methods is prohibitive. Slat asked, Why move through the ocean with a clean-up, when the ocean can move through you? His ingenious system relies on the ocean's currents collecting the debris inside what is called an Ocean Cleanup Array. Much of the oceans' rubbish presently accumulates in five ocean garbage patches around the world. In 2017, the first pilot installation of an array became operational in the largest of them all - the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between Hawaii and California.

Their unprecedented entrepreneurial involvement will unleash one of the greatest economic and social evolutions in human history.

Boyan Slat is just one of millions of energetic young entrepreneurs determined to make the world an even better place. Around thirty-five per cent of the world's population is under 20 years old.2 It is they who will become the movers and shakers of the 21st century. Many already are. With increased access to the internet, and to learning opportunities that were simply not available at the start of the century, this generation will transform the planet. Nearly 90 per cent of these under-20s live in emerging countries in Africa, the Middle East, South America and Asia.3 Their unprecedented entrepreneurial involvement will unleash one of the greatest economic and social evolutions in human history.

For the purposes of this book, the Next Generation refers to two cohorts: Gen Z (born between 1994 and 2009); and Gen Alpha (born after 2009). These young people, who will become the leaders of the mid 21st century, will be the most educated in human history.4 Approaching the 22nd century, they will experience techno-enhanced lifestyles far beyond our present imagination.5

This is a good time for them to be alive. Most people in the future are likely to live much longer than those who came before them. Since 1900, average life expectancy has more than doubled.6 First-year infant mortality has dropped from 19.5 per cent to 3.69 per cent.7 Global poverty has plummeted from 44 per cent to around 10 per cent in the past 30 years.8

Here is one improvement in this new millennium that will astound most adults. Our present Gen Zs behave better than their parents did at their age.9, 10 You may want to think carefully before you share this information with your resident teenager. Rates of a wide range of discouraged behaviours such as smoking, drinking and even (gasp) sexual activity are much lower than for the previous generation.

Does this mean they are behaving perfectly? Of course not. There are still problems. Today's children are more overweight, and some of their dietary habits need lots of attention. Teenage depression appears to be on the rise. Sporadic violence by a small number is unsettling. A minority become cyber-addicted, and a few engage in cyber-bullying. However, the overall landscape can be viewed with some degree of optimism.

For the sake of our children and their future, let's set the record straight. Most indicators (although not all) clearly show that the standard of living has improved dramatically for many people around the world. Right now there are countless projects taking place that are as inspiring as the Ocean Cleanup, and they have been developed by young people who want to make life better for all of us.

But let's pause for a moment and consider: is everything really all that wonderful?

THE WORLD IS A BEAUTIFUL MESS

It's two and a half minutes to midnight right now, according to the Doomsday Clock, featured in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.11 First introduced in 1947, this symbolic clock face represents the assessment of a group of eminent scientists as to how close the world is hypothetically to nuclear disaster. In 2007, its brief was expanded to include the danger of catastrophic climate change. Its time setting has varied over the years, from a relatively optimistic 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 to the present more pessimistic evaluation.

If you are a pessimist looking for evidence that the world is in trouble, you will find plenty to justify your personal belief. Terrorist threats, global warming, refugee resettlement, youth underemployment, worldwide economic debt, and the increasing divide between rich and poor are probably never far from your mind . . . and they're only the long-term concerns.

We are also vulnerable to a litany of one-off events with the potential to reshape world history. Natural disasters, solar flares, recalcitrant robots, cyberwars and perhaps even the occasional meteorite could compromise all life on planet Earth. Will there be more of these types of events? You can bet your life on it.

So we can hardly say that life is perfect right now. Then what about the future? Will our children's world be entirely optimistic? Probably not. Will it be deeply pessimistic? That's equally improbable. The world of the future will most likely be a beautiful mess. It has always been so, and it always will be. So whose predictions are more valid, the optimists' or the pessimists'? Given that optimists invented the aeroplane and pessimists invented the parachute, both perspectives are useful.

There is another, more attractive perspective, though. Realistic optimism means a healthy balance between the two opposites. Think of people who keep an open mind to all possibilities while still applying a healthy degree of scepticism in their thinking. The future needs lots of these realistic optimists more than it does those at either end of the spectrum. Over-trusting optimists and bitter pessimists are less likely to live a satisfying life. Here's why.

The world of the future will most likely be a beautiful mess. It has always been so, and it always will be.

When you trust everyone and everything as an arch-optimist, you can fall prey to those who take advantage of your unquestioning nature. Even when the evidence indicates there is a problem, you will still convince yourself it's not true. You want to believe the world is perfect. If you are too pessimistic, on the other hand, you will miss out on many opportunities, convinced that there is a trap in there somewhere. You probably worry much more than is necessary, to the detriment of your own welfare.

Pessimists did indeed invent the parachute, but they also risk becoming entangled in its cords. Standing in the same prison cell, some people see bars where others see stars. French writer Anaïs Nin once wrote, 'We don't see the world as it is. We see it as we are'. When someone sees the worst in everything, this may not be a reflection of the world around them. It is just as likely to be a reflection of their inner world.

Imagine if pessimists were to reprogram their amygdalae. These two almond-shaped sets of neurons in our brain react to circumstances that are dangerous, rather than to ones that are safe and positive. In our distant past, this kept us cautious and alive. For most of us, today's risks are less dramatic. The dilemma is that our amygdalae fuel a negativity bias that compels us to pay more attention to what is going badly than to what is going well. And this bias is reinforced by most news bulletins in the mass media.

The better things get, the worse we think they are.

The negativity bias has led to a perverse belief: the better things get, the worse we think they are. Gregg Easterbrook wrote about this dilemma in The Progress Paradox,12 in which he documented two competing influences. One is the unrelenting improvement in many worldwide indicators of life quality; the second is our steadily diminishing level of happiness and perceived wellbeing over the past 50 years. Too many of us are choosing - or have been convinced - to believe that the world is not a good place, and are less happy as a result. So why is that?

Consider what shapes our thinking every day. Over 90 per cent of news coverage is basically bad news. Are all media journalists negative people? On the contrary, most care deeply about their profession, and pride themselves on providing a reasoned viewpoint. As much as anyone else, the general public are to blame. While we claim to recoil from the more horrendous messages, we signal that we prefer them to the good news. The click-through on negative headlines is 63 per cent higher than on positive...