watch the millennials

Did you know that creativity and innovation thrive much more under challenge and chaos than under privilege?  Did you know that the plague in middle age Europe helped to propel the Renaissance because it completely upset the apple cart?  And that the wealth and stability of Golden Ages promotes complacency?  Eric Weiner says so in his The Geography of Genius, which I am currently reading.

This is of relevance to our current cultural, political, and environmental drama, and seems to promise more creativity and innovation than in the relatively stable decades we have come out of.  As a matter of fact, as we watch the deconstruction of a very long yang-dominated era, an era characterized by warfare, domination, and competition, things seem to become quite a bit more messy out there.  This is a climate (pun intended) ripe for birthing new values, new ways of doing things, and leaving outmoded conventions behind.

The millennials are showing the way.  They've got it.  Look to the younger generation how they do things, how they think.  Tiny houses, cash instead of credit, sharing, less stuff and more sustainability, animal rights, women's rights, minority rights, hour exchanges, less work and more play - these are all examples of what's to come.  Sounds good to me.