Ten years ago, I made a set of resolutions that have had an enormous impact on my life. I resolved that:
- I would act always with integrity, doing the right thing regardless of consequence;
- I would be courageous, never letting fear keep me from doing what I believed to be the right thing;
- I would embrace compassion, making every effort to walk in the shoes of others;
- I would seek wisdom, doing everything in my power to understand not only what is happening but why, and to apply that insight to my actions;
- I would treat others with the respect deserved by all persons as fundamentally equal in worth; and
- I would work ceaselessly on self-improvement, to become more closely the person I aspire to be.
It's been a heck of a decade for me, some of which you all have followed. I am certainly a different person than I was ten years ago, and the transitions were sometimes painful. But I am also more truly who I am, and it has been worth it.
Looking forward to the next ten years, however, I suspect my new resolutions (supplementing the old) will have to be far more explicitly outward-facing. We have much work to do.
We are in the middle of a worldwide transformation of human societies that is at least as profound as the industrial revolution - and perhaps ultimately more so. Rapidly advancing increases in connectedness and computing power are changing pretty much everything: the nature of industries and jobs, family relationships, the relationship of people to governments... Society is built on top of the fabric of human interaction. When you change the fundamental nature of human interaction, you change society.
But it is not yet determined what the end state of those changes will be.
There are a bunch of different frames that have been proffered to describe the fundamental conflict: "corporatists vs. populists," "tremendous concentration of wealth and power vs. broad distribution of wealth and power," and "the Empire vs. the Rebel Alliance," to name a few. Me, I've been feeling pretty scrappy for awhile. But our endearing scrappiness alone won't save us.
So, my resolutions for the next decade:
- Fight tooth and nail, relentlessly, regardless of impediments, for the idea that all human lives have fundamentally equal value, and that societies should be constructed around that basic truth.
- Clearly articulate a vision of the world as it should be, and help strengthen the progressive movement that can make that real.
- Do everything I can to empower women as fully equal participants and stakeholders in the world.
- Do everything in my power to raise my son, Henry, to be the best person he can be.
That ought to keep me busy for the next decade, I think.
What are your resolutions for the next decade?