Life in the 21st Century

Many people are still shocked on hearing that expression, because they grew up in an age in which the 21st century was so far away into the future -- that it is shocking to think that it could be now, and even yesterday. They’re just getting used to things in the 20th century -- as the latest and greatest, state-of-the-art.

Undoubtedly, in many places, they’re still awaiting the first industrial revolution -- that the majority of civilization went through in the 19th century, resulting in one of the first widespread liberation movements. All but a few are aware that not only was a much celebrated civil war of liberation fought in the United States in that century, but there were similar revolutions in Russia, France, China -- that were changing the status of slaves, serfs, rabble and peasants. Naturally we assume that people everywhere have experienced that psychological evolution of liberation.

Those who haven’t, still have what we deride as the “plantation mentality,” which is the acceptance of overseers to do their thinking for them. It is familiarly the top-down organization chart and information flow. What we know, has to be passed on down from the top, and it is not allowed, to do one’s own thinking unless one is at the top. So all one’s time, energy and efforts, were expended to get to the top, but once one got there, one could do anything one pleased, and the only thing that had to be done, was to keep another from being similarly on the top.

The shift in the 21st century is the realization that if everybody can be king, then anybody can be king -- including oneself, and all but a few would agree, that is the society they wanted to live in and create. A few argued, “What was the point in having a society like that if one could not be above everybody else?” That is the old mindset at work. It thinks that the only way anyone can win, is for everybody else to lose.

Nowhere is this more evident than editorials and letters to the newspapers -- pitting one individual and faction against another, creating the unnecessary arguments that distract and detract from productive focus and work. Most of that society’s energies are sapped in this constant battle to prove who is on top -- and then maintain that status quo by preventing others from similarly riding on top.

That is the old culture and mindset dying away at this time. It should not be the model for modern conditioning activities provoking competition -- even with oneself. It is psychologically damaging to have this mindset that “one is not good enough,” as one’s motivating drive because that is the message one is reinforcing in oneself. It should also not be the paradigm for contemporary relating and communications -- reinforcing a hierarchy of the knowledgeable over the ignorant.

What that does is discourage people from acknowledging their ignorance -- which distinguishes the intelligent person; in him, there is no shame in not knowing, because that is his motivation for finding out.

http://thinkingdifferently.blogspot.com/