My wife's niece moved apartments today and while my wife helped them unpack, I took my daughter into the city to a park and then out for daddy-daughter coffee, as is our normal go-to even when we are together. I really enjoy spending the time with her as when it is just the two of us, we chat away for hours about a million things and there is never a moment of silence, except when thinking about or waiting for the next question.
I am not good at many things, but being a father suits me. But I am lucky, because I have the daughter I have and with so much complexity in the genetic process, as well as so many influencing factors outside of anyone's control, things could have been very different. For example, she could be mentally or emotionally imbalanced in some way, unable to communicate well or have various physical impediments that would completely change the way in which we interact. It is not that these things necessarily change our relationship, but considering them compared to what we have now make it clear that many things would change.
We all want what is best for our children I think, even the children of others, but it is hard to know precisely what that is when entering into an uncertain world. Yes, the technologies of the future are going to be largely blackboxes to me, but the conditions of life itself are likely to change heavily also, which is going to affect society and all things that are important to us. This means that the childhood I knew, is different to hers and at the speed of progress and degradation combined, adulthood will be even more different again.
As I see it, the preparation for this isn't to introduce technology as early as possible into the lives of our children, it is to develop the skills necessary to cope under change. A lot of people think that in order for a child to survive the future, they need to be able to use the gadgets now, but what I believe is more necessary is to develop the skills required in order to not only learn how to use them, but be able to create them too.
As I see it, the future is going to be owned by the creators of the world, and those who are able to invest into the creators if they themselves aren't able to create for themselves. However, in order to be able to invest, a person has to be creative too, just in a different way. But, the road that many parents seem to take with their kids is one where their child is a consumer, requiring tools in order not to be bored. Tools they can't create themselves.
It is very difficult to build problem solving skills as a passive consumer or someone who takes a narrow approach to information. Because we tend to surround ourselves with a narrow set of content that we enjoy and feed off, we tend to replicate what we consume - *we are what we eat.
It is because of this that many people these days quickly polarize into quite extreme views of the world, because one piece of content leads to a slightly more extreme one and soon, all that they are eating is the shit diet pushed to them by the mass media. It doesn't matter if they are on the left or the right, technological or luddites, they reflect what they are consuming, controlled by the narrative they have been fed.
We see it often on social platforms where people "pool" into interest areas and then continually ramp themselves up within their silos, believing they are the chosen ones of truth, beauty and the holy path. And because everything else points in another direction, everyone is a fool who just can't see the light.
It is incredible to read content from some of the "truthtellers" who believe that they know the way, that they are different, that they are going against the grain, when the examples they use, the memes they share, the terminology they spit, is identical to everyone else in the same group as them and, no one knows who started the trend, which is because very few of them did, because they are not creators, they are amplifiers of the message passed to them.
It is funny that those who believe they are "free thinkers" are actually distributing a centralized narrative being pushed out to do precisely what it does, get repeated by the target audience for clicks and shares. They are no better than Instagram influencers and Twitter bots, while in their delusion they are world changers making a difference by spreading the truth. They are populist replicators, just repeating what they have been primed to believe.
The interesting thing is though, it isn't even their truth, it is the truth handed to them. It is essentially repeating corporate slogans like "Just Do It" as if they created some kind of profound insight into the world. But, they can't see this because they are products of their environment, so they have been led down a path to a "logical" conclusion, making what they think feel like their own. It is stereotypical sales process - keep them saying yes, get them to imagine that they are making the decision themselves, to buy exactly what the sales person is selling to them.
My daughter is only five, yet because she is not yet indoctrinated into any group, she is free to think, free to create, free to question her world without thinking about what side she is on. Perhaps one day she will surround herself with narrow information and subscribe to some view of the world, but I am hoping that we will be able to keep her open enough and curious enough to recognize that no group or side is correct when it comes to the complexity of behavior in a dynamic and highly integrated environment of changing conditions, that are influenced by a great deal of unseen forces.
I am hopefully not raising a victim of the world, I am raising someone who will have the mental and emotional ability to always find away through the worst, by being her best.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
