The sociologist and futurist, Kingsley Dennis, is a man that will make you feel better about the future. In his recent book, The Phoenix Generation, he lays out how over the next 15-20 years it will be the current crop of children being born on the planet that will take us out of the current lower levels of consciousness that have stagnated human attempts to achieve higher levels of cooperation, collaboration, and co-creation.
Mr. Dennis explains that this new group will be carrying a lot less ideological baggage than their elders because they instantly have access to technology and information that their predecessors did not. As a result:
…they will be arriving with minds that see things differently than we currently do. That is, their thinking patterns will not automatically accept many of our beliefs, ideologies, or our socio-cultural systems. Especially, they will finds themselves at odds with our orthodox systems of education and health, for example. In terms of education, they will require – or rather, demand – a tech-assisted educational platform the likes of which we have never seen before – because we have not created it yet. Learning modules will become more individually customized. Students will have more influence in directing their learning process in according to their needs, wishes, and motivations. The old model curriculum of preparing students for an industrial workforce will no longer apply. [If you want to see what this might look like in more detail see Seth Godin’s excellent manifesto on reimagining the k-12 educational system here.] In the health area, there will be increased confidence and support of what are now considered “alternative” health practices. This will emerge as our sciences continue to validate the principles and properties of quantum energy fields. The concept of energy exchange, and vibrational medicine, in healing will become more commonplace, and sought after. This includes the use of human consciousness in non-local healing.
I don’t think Kingsley means to imply that technology is a panacea, rather, that technology gives us access to the best information and insight located anywhere on the globe and in so doing, tampers down the build up of personal, historical, and cultural biases, misinformation, and half-truths.
This new access to truth that the upcoming generation will grow up with will herald in a new rise of consciousness across the planet. Mr. Kingsley sees it manifesting itself in the following ways in the current generation of children who will behave differently than their elders:
- Young minds will have had enough of a fear mongering, fear-sponsoring media. [Us adults can start now by adopting a new media diet – See 21 Ideas to Free your Mind from Mass Media]
- There will be a shift in media programming toward what elevates a person rather than what closes them down. The young minds and hearts of the Phoenix Generation will increasingly reject negative news and influences, and naturally shift away from such energies.
- Those of the Phoenix Generation will themselves be content producers – producing, creating, and distributing their own inspired content-driven media. They will also become their own journalists.
- The Phoenix Generation will instinctively know that the most destructive decision that an individual can make is to give away their own authority and decision making power. This new era will herald the rise of participatory politics. The survival of politics as we know it will will depend on the ability of personages and processes to re-calibrate and be in alignment with the increasing numbers of awakening individuals.
- People will seek out those experiences and impacts that are positive, and which bring harmony to life rather than disorder. Desirable lifestyle traits sought within these years will include reconciliation, harmony, coherence, non-judgement, forgiveness, conscious communication, love, understanding, transparency, honesty, integrity, and of course humor.
- There will be a greater appreciation of the role and place of meditation within people’s lives.
Dennis sees global technological integration leading to human interconnectedness at a grand scale which will lead to a rise in collective human consciousness and creativity:
Simultaneous and instant communication across space and time will nurture within the Phoenix Generation a sense of living within a planetary society. They will feel in constant contact with like-minded people across the world. This physical connectivity will help to stimulate and catalyze collective empathy as people will feel an innate sense of being energetically connected to others. The instinctual intelligence within the younger generations especially will be shared around the world almost instantly. This fostering of collaboration will lead to an acceleration of inventions and new discoveries.
In terms of timescales, Kingsley’s model would predict the current generation of children being born in the last few years to reach early adulthood sometime in the range of 2030. At that point as they start entering the workforce and adult life, they will start to alter the existing economic and political systems that are badly in need of an upgrade of consciousness.
There has been a lot of work that has lead up to this moment in history and much remains to be done to allow the Phoenix Generation to do the work of rebuilding the planet. I believe if we go back to the 1960’s we start to see the first breaks in existing thought paradigms starting to appear. This was aided by a new global exchange of ideas and people between East and West as more of us could travel, correspond, and share information more easily.
From the 1990’s till today, the rise of the internet has allowed for a global knowledge interconnectivity to emerge that is giving way to a rapid rise in collaboration and learning. The Phoenix Generation walks directly into this new world of interconnectedness enabled by new levels of technology and human connectedness. They will then extend this model to full human interconnectedness (and with the resultant rise in consciousness, more effectively manage future technology progress so that it is in service of humanity and not the other way around).
Of course, a lot of work remains to be done by their elders (us) in helping to create systems and structures to allow the Phoenix Generation to properly launch their world changing initiatives. Between 2015 and 2100 we will witness a major upheaval in established structures – economic, political, educational, health, cultural, religious, and more. As this occurs, new models for each of these structures will need to built that support a new human understanding of interconnectedness. Money and intellect will need to shift to these new pathways. And, fallout will need to be managed as people will have to be retrained, financially supported, and mentored on how to live in a new world reality. Nothing will happen smoothly as there will be plenty of resistance and noise from the status quo, but as they say, disorder and chaos are strong catalysts to change.
Much of the turmoil we are seeing around the world today is precisely a result of the information revolution that has occurred over the last fifty years. Truth is emerging and the people who benefit from it being kept hidden are fighting hard to maintain their power. But the truth genie cannot be put back in the bottle. Every year more and more of the true nature of reality is being revealed to more people. Progressive scientists will be a key component of this change effort. I am confident we will be able to experience major breakthroughs in scientific thinking in the next 30-50 years as higher levels of consciousness spread and allow existing scientific paradigms to shift into previously uncharted areas. Radical break throughs on the energy front for example will dramatically shift the world economic order that is built upon the access to and price of energy. Economic models that couldn’t be contemplated before will now be feasible. Established prices for goods and services will change substantially and lead to new ways of human living that are not yet possible.
The political and technology developments around the globe in the first 15 years of the 21st century have been breath taking. The 15 years leading to 2030, when the Phoenix Generation come of age, may be even more spectacular. Buckle your seatbelt. It won’t be an easy ride, but for those who are aligned with cooperation, collaboration, and co-creation, it will be a smoother journey and it will be an opportunity for great service to the birth of a new interconnected human reality. The children really are the future…
-Jay Kshatri
www.ThinkSmarterWorld
