In the years ahead we are going to see great change sweeping through our diverse human societies. It will be change not only brought about by intentional minds and willing hearts; but also by necessity, by coercion, and from an evolutionary imperative. The 21st century will be equivalent to the dramatic ‘flat Earth to round Earth’ shift that was thrust upon humanity centuries before. Some may say we are in the midst of a 3rd Industrial Revolution. Yet rather than referring to this transition as an ‘industrial’ one, I consider this profound shift as a Revolution in Human Being – or rather as a Revolution in Human Becoming. The possibility of a genuine planetary civilization – with unity through diversity – and with the participation of an awakened and aware humanity, was never on the cards…until now. We have entered a phase where there will be new forms, new arrangements, new structures, new perspectives, and new emerging states of being.
We are, quite literally, shifting from one set of C-Values – Competition ~ Conflict ~ Control ~ Censorship – to a new set: Connection ~ Communication ~ Consciousness ~ Compassion. The world is re-arranging in order to come together in countless new ways – with innovative changes in our communication, our uses of technology, through conscious awareness, through people-centered action, and more. These are the seeds coming to harvest as part of a re-awakening, re-ordering, and re-balance upon this planet. We should recognize that the issues at stake are much larger than governments – they are global and dispersed throughout the peoples of the world. These issues are also too important to be left in the hands of governments alone. The future will be about visioning beyond our limitations – thinking anew, and in ways we are currently unaccustomed to. This is the new consciousness – not conceiving or perceiving within the old patterns. External change is not enough if there is no real change within each one of us.
The current generation(s) will be the ones who will have to shoulder the mental and emotional responsibility of change as they are forced to let go of both external and internal systems and states that are no longer beneficial to our future development. This is why I refer to our current generation(s) as the ‘Bridge Generation’, as it will be required of us to straddle both worlds. Those generations that come after us will be born as change rather than being born into change – this is a slight yet very significant difference.
Within the Bridge Generation we are experiencing the increasing diffusion of knowledge and information with an unprecedented rapidity. We are also grappling with the early waves of technocratic control that use insidious forms of surveillance for social manipulation. For those of us who accept to maintain this ‘bridge’, we will be required to deal with the grasping forces of authoritarian control whilst simultaneously assisting the transition clearly and calmly. It is a path that connects both sides during the transition. For this reason, it requires sincerity, integrity, and transparency. It is less about reliance upon external devices, and more about trusting one’s inner self and instincts.
In this respect the value of sincerity is of great importance, now more than ever, as we are surrounded by tales, stories, and false-mythologies selling us pseudo-spiritual escapism, media fear, and commodity idealism. The greater truth of this is more subtle and yet more powerful – it is the ongoing development of human society and the evolution of human consciousness. And it is an ongoing work in progress – and it is as simple and as difficult as that.
Those of us who form part of the Bridge Generation need to remain grounded, balanced, and work with the disruptive changes in society. In order to ‘build the bridge’ that will help steer us through the years ahead we will need not only to shift our perspectives but also to change the old system game-play by silently overwhelming the incumbent models – to make the new age the new normal. Many people in the Bridge Generation will feel the stirrings of a ‘calling’; a sense to activate something – some purpose or meaning – within them. Some may be attracted to books/writings, or to events, gatherings, or other signifiers. Other ways to activate a person’s calling – or actualized state – may come through doing; whilst others will be through being. Part of the process of opening ourselves up to what I have named abstractly as the ‘calling’ will be the need to prepare our minds to be receptive and open to new avenues of possibilities and potentials. The Bridge Generation does not yet share a common story, or even a shared consciousness. Yet these aspects within humanity are slowly beginning to emerge – and not just in isolated, individual pockets as in times past. With our awakenings we can begin to physically connect through our social technologies, and begin to build new potentials through this connectivity. We no longer have to work alone: by sharing what we know, feel, and what inspires us, we can participate in developmental change.
Change upon this planet will come through us, the people; and the attitudes, awareness, compassion, sincerity, etc, which we embody and manifest. The Bridge Generation needs to maintain a focus on the great opportunities emerging now and not become disheartened. Already there are countless examples of how this wave of change is occurring across the planet. Such examples include how people interact with new technologies; the impacts of social media; new emerging youth groups; and the rise of a global empathic mindset. The power of energetically-connected individuals is fuelling the ‘We’ feeling and bringing the disenchanted together to develop their networks. These developments exist in parallel to the increasing rise of the maverick tinkerers, innovators, and creative minds. These emerging new models are pushing against the old self-centered, hierarchical, control systems. Such new systems are showing that a new type of consciousness is arising, which will mark the generations to come.
The Phoenix Generation
The generation now being born into the world is what I refer to as the Phoenix Generation: those children being born now who will be young adults around 2030. I suggest that it will be this generation in particular that will assist in the transition toward forming a planetary society – a transition more radical than the shift from agrarian to urban life during the 1st Industrial Revolution. This is a revolutionary transition from national-cultural consciousness to planetary awareness and consciousness. What this entails is not only a structural shift but also a qualitative one; that is, a shift in our values, psychology, and consciousness. It is my view that those of the Phoenix Generation will be born with increased instinctive intelligence and with a greater degree of inherited wisdom.
Those of the Phoenix Generation will usher in a period where the feminine and masculine energies of the world will be re-balanced. Human values of love, compassion, understanding, patience, tolerance, and empathy will be more openly expressed and part of an active world – and not seen as predominantly ‘female’ values. The division that separates the masculine and feminine energies will gradually be replaced by a newer energy of unity – of coming together. Similarly, the artificial stigma around ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles in the world will be changed through the younger ‘phoenix’ men and women re-modelling role expectations. Women’s participation will be more keenly appreciated, sought, and brought into collaboration in such major areas as global politics, economy, and business. An all-round intuitive energy will be the marker for the upcoming decades, and will find expression through young women of the Phoenix Generation holding key positions as change agents. What is set to occur is a long overdue re-balance of the male and female energies.
A generation of young people is arriving into a world that is more technologically assisted than in our entire history as a species. And they will be arriving with minds that see things differently than we currently do. That is, their thinking patterns will not automatically accept many of our beliefs, ideologies, or our socio-cultural systems. As the Phoenix Generation grow up and integrate and participate into their respective societies there will naturally be changes in many diverse areas of social life; such as education, health, politics, media, economics, technology use, innovation, and spiritual practice. First, let us look at a new phase in education.
A New Phase in Education & Learning
The structure, content, and connectivity for this new educational platform is already emerging – and it will be a new phase in collaborative learning. In other words, the classroom is becoming global.
Our antiquated educational systems will have to adapt and go through a radical re-thinking and revision as a response to student’s growing needs and attitudes. Here is what I envision:
1) Classrooms will no longer be contained within 4-walled rooms: learning spaces will be more interactive, incorporating many features of online interaction and group participation. Some of these will include interacting and working online alongside students from around the world; learning from virtual game-puzzles and online multi-media presentations; and connecting with learning environments that make use of various platforms. The student learning environment will become an open collaborative space that connects to other learning spaces across the planet – both physical and virtual. That is, MOOC – massive online open courses. This will expand the range of peer-teaching and peer-learning.
2) Not only will students have access to a varied range of teachers but they will also learn from peers around the world. That is, teaching will not be limited to the ‘one person at the head of the class’ model; rather, older people, retired persons, volunteers around the world, etc, will make themselves available in specially designated online platforms to offer their services for questions and learning forums. Guests from varied occupations – business leaders, scientists, creative artists, consultants, etc – will regularly join online learning forums to gladly interact with students and to pass on their own learning and knowledge.
3) Online ‘3-D world’ platforms will also be developed as immersive learning experiences. Some teaching institutes will develop fully working virtual campuses (an extension from the online campus) where students can enroll as avatars and attend virtual classes populated by students from around the world. The learning process will shift from being a linear two-way model (teacher-student) to a multi-phase process incorporating a variety of learning possibilities with mixed-level collaborators. These mixed learning environments – no longer called classrooms – will also place students of varying ages and abilities together. In this way older, more learned students, can also assist in the learning process of lower-level students. That is, learning environments will no longer depend upon location since many learning-teaching platforms will utilize an array of online and virtual collaborative spaces.
4) The learning process will be made more fun. It will allow for a broad range of creativity and ‘free time’ for brainstorming (heart-storming) ideas. The interaction between students and their varied teachers will be mutual and not one-way. Students will use an array of virtual games and online puzzle solving activities to exercise creativity. Multiple player platforms will also allow many students to work together and collaborate to solve riddles and quests – similar to video gaming yet with constructive goals and outcomes.
5) Learning modules will become more individually customized. Students will have more influence in directing their learning process according to their needs, wishes, and motivations. The old-model curriculum of preparing students for an industrial workforce will no longer apply. The world will have changed in a way that will have made many older needs obsolete. Also, the students of the Phoenix Generation will have a greater instinctual understanding of what they feel is necessary to learn for each individual. The ‘one-model-fits-all’ rule will no longer apply and will have been phased out. Importantly, the ‘stick-carrot’ reward system will also go the way of the dinosaurs. The older examination system will be replaced by a variety of comprehension/capacity feedback from both teachers and fellow peers. Understanding will be measured by one’s comprehension and individualized capability – not by standardized grades. Stress and self-doubt will be replaced by enjoyment and self-confidence.
To summarize, the educational system required for the Phoenix Generation will celebrate knowledge rather than box it or narrowly categorize it. Traditional ‘knowledge’ subjects – mathematics, science, history, etc – will still be offered; however, they will be accompanied by a variety of modules more suited to the practical and creative needs of the new era. It will seem as if there is an endless diversity of topics for the student to connect with. The variety of creative subjects, combined with an array of collaborative online environments, will take education to a new level. Now let us turn to examine, briefly, what may happen when those of the Phoenix Generation no longer accept to be a receptacle for outworn medical dogmas.
Health in the Era of the Phoenix Generation
The young people will know more on an instinctive level what will and what won’t work. I foresee the following changes in the area of health during the early years of the Phoenix Generation:
1) There will be a dramatic turn away from the belief, confidence, and trust in the current health industry. The present health industry is a global trade that has commoditized human well-being into the industrialization of illness. The rise of ‘big pharma’, as it has been termed, constitutes a pharmaceutical conglomerate of global players that wield immense political influence. Theirs is an agenda that seeks to support a sickness-for-profit model at the expense of natural, organic knowledge and well-being practices. The basic premise of the old paradigm ‘illness industry’ is that profits come before patients. Profits also come before transparent and objective research trials and results, according to many researchers. The pharmaceutical lobby (also known as the drug lobby) exhibits its own unhealthy influence over politics and media representation. The result of this has already seen a loss of trust in the pharmaceutical industry, especially in the arena of vaccinations.
2) The young people of the Phoenix Generation will listen more to their bodies; they will be more careful over what they ingest (food and medicine); and they will instinctively feel what their bodies need. They will recognize the innate intelligence of their bodies. As a consequence our health diagnosis will have less dependency on clinical diagnostics and more trust in one’s instinct. Increased intuition over one’s own health will guide people in choosing what changes they need to bring about for themselves. It will become more common for people to express the feeling, and intention, that they are in communication with their body and its needs. This will occur parallel to a loss of ‘public face’ and reputation of big pharma as emerging revelations make public the dishonesty of our incumbent industrialization of illness. The global corporate health industry will be one of the major old paradigm systems to suffer at the hands of (r)evolutionary change.
3) There will be increased confidence and support of what are now considered ‘alternative’ health practices. This will emerge as our sciences continue to validate the principles and properties of quantum energy fields. The concept of energy exchange, and vibrational medicine, in healing will become more commonplace, and increasingly sought after. This includes the use of human consciousness in non-local healing. According to medical doctor Larry Dossey, distance-healing and similar attributes of the nonlocal mind have often been referred to as ‘distant intentionality.’A major shift during the years of the Phoenix Generation will be the recognition that illness is not solely an individual matter, but is something which affects others around us. The rise and recognition of non-local healing will be central to how health is viewed and understood in the post-big pharma years. In the beginning the older doctors will have a hard time accepting this transition. However, as those of the Phoenix Generation assume the positions of doctors themselves they will usher in this new period for human health.
4) Health and illness will be viewed as transitional states – even death will be recognized as a transitional moment – and thus empathy, compassion, and love will play greater roles in the process of healing. Already we have the early signs of this change emerging in open-minded doctors and patients around the world, and in many other incidents rarely publicized. Human well-being is becoming recognized as being related to the transpersonal and nonlocal. The years ahead will usher in more education and new understanding about health, biology, and the nature of illness and disease.
5) The emergence of new scientific knowledge will help humans to live longer. Extended life will go hand in hand with surprising research findings about the nature of human DNA. We will come to realize that DNA acts to activate specific energies within us when our state/frequency is ready for this. That is, human DNA activates specific dormant functions within the human being according to evolutionary necessity. DNA will finally be accepted as an unfolding process, rather than as a static 3% protein building set of chemical reactions. This unfolding process occurs in a quantum, nonlinear way; and will be grasped in an intuitive way, helping people to have more natural insight over their well-being. The development of personal well-being and health, with extended lives, will lead not to an increasing population but rather to a decrease. This will be because there will be a decline in the need for larger ‘survival families’, as is often the case in current developing nations. The instinct will shift more toward smaller families that can provide close care and nurture. Modern couples of the Phoenix Generation that live in high-population regions may even opt out themselves of raising children. Modern states are likely to begin experiencing a decline in population around 2030 rather than an increase.
In the years of the Phoenix Generation the new young minds will simply choose to do things differently – old patterns will shift. Finally, our planetary society will stabilize its population growth in line with sustainable limits. Living within sustainable limits will form part of the new understanding governing human health and well-being. As the younger generation come of age over the next couple of decades they will also show a marked difference in their consumption – and production – of media. They will be active prosumers of media content, not only consumers. They will actively engage with information, and seek to produce content if they feel that the media they are exposed to is not representing the truth for them. Such creative engagement will also impact their lifestyle choices.
Media & Lifestyle
The following are a number of key aspects that I foresee will mark the changes in media and lifestyle choices for those of the Phoenix Generation:
- Young minds will have had enough of a fear mongering, fear-sponsoring media. As instinctual intelligence is more evident, the false facades will drop and people will be less difficult to be side-lined into controlled distraction through entertainment trivia. The old programming that dominated the mainstream media in past decades offered only a crude and brutal programming that delighted in high-tension and stressful drama: in conflicts, murder, and sexual espionage. Such programming will cease to inspire a new younger generation.
- There will be a shift in media programming toward what elevates a person rather than what closes them down. This shift will be brought about by the increasing demand from people for more informative programming. The young minds and hearts of the Phoenix Generation will increasingly reject negative news and influences, and naturally shift away from such energies. The mainstream media will be forced – through viewing figures and thus advertizing revenue – to broadcast more inspiring and uplifting programs.
- The mainstream media will be impacted greatly by the rapid rise of more community media. The larger corporations will continue to merge and consolidate as they find it difficult to exist in a consumer environment that increasingly is people-centered, and whom rejects their style of broadcast. What is now termed the ‘alternative media’ will become more popular as people seek local stories that inspire and interest them. So not only will community media see a revival – thanks in large part to appropriate technology – but also self-produced content will become more the norm. Those of the Phoenix Generation will themselves be content producers – producing, creating, and distributing their own inspired content-driven media. The age of top-down corporate-controlled media will no longer be the dominant force.
- Young people will become their own journalists – creating, producing, and out-sourcing their services. Individuals will not only contribute stories and news items to the mainstream media, but will also create their own media platforms. Many new voices will become recognized and verified as credible sources of information. Young media activists from around the world will be able to supply information faster than mainstream journalists. Also, they will report from areas that mainstream media either cannot, or will not, go to – such as local violent conflict zones or selective communities. Peer-to-peer programming will become more popular as people prefer to produce and share their own news, stories, and events.
- Transparency will become the new watchword as mainstream media and governments make closer ties. As online content becomes increasingly monitored by governments, and doctored by media conglomerates, transparency and integrity will become a central issue. Younger generations of people will turn their back on attempts to control and manage the flow of information. The media landscape will never be the same again as the power of the image is taken from the hands of the few into the digital fingertips of the many.
- Changes in media attitudes will also reflect changes in lifestyle choices. People will seek out those experiences and impacts that are positive, and which bring harmony to life rather than disorder. Desirable lifestyle traits sought within these years will include reconciliation, harmony, coherence, non-judgment, forgiveness, conscious communication, love, understanding, transparency, honesty, integrity, and of course humor. There will be a greater general appreciation of the role and place of meditation within peoples’ lives. During these years more and more people will be shifting their priorities in life, seeking out meaning and well-being in place of career status and money. This will manifest over the years in many people leaving their traditional employment and seeking out new and alternative ways to support themselves that are more conducive to inner development and well-being.
- There will be a shift in habitation choices as young people seek for more nourishing environments to live in. This may result in many young people leaving crowded urban areas or joyless suburban neighborhoods. Alternatively, they will wish to rejuvenate their neighbourhoods into vibrant districts. This is likely to result in a revitalization of local communities, with an emphasis upon sustainability. The creative minds of the Phoenix Generation will strive to construct new models and ways of doing things that are more harmonious with environmental and ecological systems. New sustainable lifestyles will emerge rapidly as people seek well-being and personal meaning that is in balance with physical limits and resources. New communities, towns, villages, and regions will adjust to do things differently in alignment with the growing inner authority of the younger generations.
The Phoenix Generation will actualize upon this planet in accordance with generational trends and the need for a new form of consciousness. This new wave of consciousness will then gradually seep into the core of all our future societies. Our responsibility now is to fully engage and be a part of the human becoming that we truly wish to see in the world. This requires that we spearhead the transition at hand and that we show, through our behaviour, the new models for change. We have the opportunity, and capacity, to do this for ourselves and, more importantly, for those to come – and this shall be our true legacy.
Image by downing.amanda, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
