The Enlightenment 2008

Joachim at Freedom Lab, writes about shifts in young people’s attitudes and approach to life. He references Neil Howe

Howe says that the new generation of today, the millenials, are typically stereotyped with the characteristics of generation X. They are expected to have no ideology, to have no political engagement and not to come to action. But, 2008 has been the year, as states Howe, in which reality has overtaken the stereotype, at least on the political side of society, and in which the millenials have shown to truly be a new generation that does have civil inclination.

Enlightenment in a word is ‘mankind’s exit from self-incurred immaturity,’ argued Kant in 1784. I quote this from Do we seek the comfort from Gutenberg’s ghost And I would say that is where we are right now staring at a new Enlightenment. Richard Sennett, in his book The Craftsman argues that we want to,

recover something of the spirit of the Enlightenment on terms appropriate to our time. We want the shared ability for work to teach us how to govern ourselves and to connect to other citizens on common ground.

And that has significant implications. Joachim asks

My view on this is that 2008 was actually the first time that the millenials where enabled to show where they stand, simply because regulation had controlled their political vote untill the age of 18. Now the question off course is then what to expect of this new generation when it will be enabled to express its voice on other areas as well. 2008 maybe has been a year in which we saw a major change, but my question is if it was the biggest one we will witness?

My answer to that is no – we will witness greater changes as I argue in System failure – reboot we are actually in the early phase of rebooting the system.

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Posted in: Culture, Engagement Civil Society, Engagement Politics, Ethics, Generation C, Government & Politics, Identity, Participation, Politics, Society, Trends

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