Growing up at the turn of the century and the turn of the millennium has put my generation at something of a crossroads. We are the first generation to have easy access to the immense technological advancements of the late 2000s and the early 2010s.
One of the most meaningful pieces of social advancement in recent memory is not only the creation of social media tools, but the use of those media to discuss, analyze, and, in many cases, expose social issues and conflicts. Facebook is covered in links to blogs and articles, each one addressing a different issue. Comments spark debate and get some traction on the world’s feed.
It isn’t, as some may believe, that the world is a more screwed up or confused place than it has been in the past. There is, though, evidence that we are advancing too rapidly to actually come up with solutions to the issues that plague our society. Instead of finding ways to fix these problems, we all-too-often put band-aids over the issues.
A perfect example of this is our education system. Education in America is a hugely divergent resource, in that the product that a student from one school receives is quite different from the one from a different school. Not all high school diplomas are created equal. This is especially true in many urban areas, especially those environments with ethnic minorities. To attempt to provide a level playing field for all public school students in the United States, there have been many attempts to get better teachers into environments without good educators. There have also been attempts to use government funding to create charter schools, which have received equal amounts of praise and disdain.
Do either of these solutions solve the problem? Definitely not. In fact, according to some, we aren’t even sure that it is making any difference at all. That doesn’t mean, though, that we shouldn't keep trying to come up with something that does work.
This challenge is not unique to the education issue. We, as Americans, are confronting more social issues at one time than almost any other time in US history. Sexual orientation, disability awareness, poverty, race, the list goes on and on.We are constantly bombarded by the pet projects of our friends and colleagues. It can be next to impossible to actually do anything, rather than just taking it all in.
The challenge has three major solutions, none of which are easy. First, we need to develop some level of focus. Not everything can get solved in one lifetime by one individual. I find myself struggling to decide which issues I want to dedicate my time, energy, and attention to. I can blog about many of these concepts, but if I want to actually help to tackle one or two, I need to narrow my focus. At first, this sounds terrible. Why can’t I do everything I can to fix as much as I can?
This leads to my second call to action: we need to be more creative when evaluating the social and economic challenges of today’s world. In many cases, these issues are arising because of the changing times. Homesexuality wasn’t an issue that was discussed in the 1950s, or at least not very much. It is the confrontation between what is now and what we want the future to look like that causes these dilemmas. Why do we continue to look for past or even current solutions? The simple answer is that we lack the creativity to think outside of the context of the way society is currently. We are afraid of the discomfort that comes with leaving the perspective or context we are familiar with, in favor of one that will make the world better. Sometimes we don’t even realize how suffocating the social laws and rules we have created are. To actually go about making things better, we need to be able to think in new and different ways. If there was a solution using “conventional” methods, we most likely would have found it by now.
The final step is that we need to listen. We need to be willing to hear the ideas of others and share our own. We need to engage in dialog to attempt to figure things out.
The world is a complicated and often frustrating place. We are constantly bombarded with different issues and social conflicts that beg for our attention. We, as citizens of the world, have to confront how we will handle each of these issues. WIth a little bit of focus, creativity, and willingness to listen, we have a fighting chance of actually making our society just a little better.
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