As discussed in the last issue, Generational Thinking necessitates the ability to put long periods of time into context.  This issue aims to give us insight into the subject and attempts to help re-frame the way we look at time.

Most of our daily thinking is confined to the decisions we constantly have to make; what to eat, what to wear, what work needs to be done - amongst the myriad of other things to decide.  These decisions are a part of being human; we are decision makers above all else.  One of the goals of this forum is to bring Generational Thinking into those daily decisions.  The simple fact is that each decision we make individually adds up to a collective direction in which we’re all governed by.  We forget this fact on a day-to-day basis.  Conventional wisdom assumes that the decisions we make today only affect us as individuals, and occasionally, our immediate circle.  But the fact is, a decision that someone makes 10,000 miles away, has an affect on me personally, my family and even my community.  A quick decision to buy McDonald’s instead of making lunch at home affects us on multiple levels – my tax rate (how much goes into health care), the price ratio of healthy food vs. fast food (which dictates our collective eating habits), how much meat is imported into the area (which is a trigger for long-term supply), etc.  It’s a malevolent cycle in which our daily decisions are omitting the long-term view, directing us in a way that doesn’t take into account our collective future.

This month, we’ve provided a few different perspectives on time.  We've tried to move away from traditional conceptions of time - that of the clock and the calendar.  Hopefully, these lenses we bring to bear will allow us to change our daily applications of time, and make us aware of how the implications of our choices manifest themselves over time's various horizons.

We conceptualize time in different ways depending on what we’re using time to describe.  A long time could be 40 minutes if you were waiting for a meal at a restaurant, or it could be 12 hours if you’re on a trans-Atlantic flight.  It could also be nine and a half months if we’re talking about a pregnancy, or it could be 123 years when describing the oldest person alive.  The common denominator of these long periods of time is that we mostly think of time in relation to human years.  We rarely use our perception of time to think beyond those terms.

On occasion we will step outside our comfort zone, when we speak of the automobile’s invent ...Read more

In order to include Generational Thinking into our decisions, it’s important to understand how our brains are able to assimilate new lenses to view the world around us.  Informational DNA is the process by which this happens.

Informational DNA (iDNA) is a living, breathing form of life.  Just as the DNA in our blood, it has evolved and it pro-creates.  Biological DNA keeps a record of how cells and organisms physically develop and reproduce.   The double helix DNA molecule is a physical record which can be read by its atomic sequence structure (genes); this is how we’re able to prove ...Read more

For an interesting and in-depth scientific perspective on time, check out this interesting talk from theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Sean Carroll.

Carroll explains why time moves forward - a concept many of us would never question because it seems to be the obvious way our world works.  However, this is a question many of humanity’s most brilliant minds throughout history have endeavored to explain, people such as Lucretius, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.  Once you get past the complex theoretical information and dissect the math, theories and philosophy, there’s one simple truth tha ...Read more

The trouble with history, is that there is so much of it.

Yet, the ability to grasp our past - its enormity and its longevity - is crucial for us to understand ourselves and our role in the universe.

It is a form of art to converge both the thorough understanding of a specific subject and the distillation of its core concepts.  Two books involving our history are classics in the field. The first is ...Read more