HuffPo | What if the next big thing really isn't a thing at all? What if it's a
way? And what if this way doesn't bring neatly folded answers but
rather a basket of disheveled questions? Often what moves our world goes
unnoticed because we are looking somewhere else for something else.
I am ever amazed at what I accidentally learn on the way to seemingly
more important things. I was recently part of a blue-ribbon panel on
the future viability of retirement. The primary topic of conversation
was the impending specter of a maddening throng of boomers using the
political process to tip the scales of economic fortune in their favor
to the detriment of all others. Prevailing logic has it that my
generation will use its strength in numbers at the voting booth to
maintain the status quo. This assumes that the generations that follow
us will naturally carry the burden of our age. Yet, what has been lost
in the conversation is the possibility that Millennials -- our
semi-adult 20-something children -- might just opt out of our plan and
more importantly our world view.
Many young people are now taking the opposite track of their parents'
and eschewing social and economic convention to challenge what we take
to be civil society. On our way to developing innovative solutions to
our imminent retirement debacle I learned from some of the most credible
researchers on the planet that our children aren't marrying; they have
become the refuseniks of our competitive corporate culture and have
effectively eschewed organized religion and even a belief in the
almighty.
It is indeed difficult to imagine a world absent of marriage,
capitalism and religion. For many of us these are the reliable struts
that keep us upright and brace us when our world is akilter. But try as
we might to hold firm to our ways the turn and churn of it all leaves us
spinning. True innovation is born out in the very places where there is
no solid ground.
Perhaps we should start with perfunctory look at some facts that suggest such an outrageous teaser:
