What can I do to positively influence the next 10 generations? What is in my 300 year plan? My legacy is most likely through developing people and creating through communication rather than inventing something.
Therefore, I begin by clarifying the characteristics of the people, and then asking what I can do to foster those characteristics. Wise people have observed that history is biography. So, too, is the future.
Given the scenarios of the next 300 years, what are the people characteristics we should encourage, foster, and reinforce? In no particular order, maybe some overlap and redundancy:
- Strong sense of identity
- Pragmatic problem-solvers
- Change-shapers
- Rule themselves before they rule others
- Know, fear, honor, and worship the Lord
- Attentive to the Holy Spirit / Muse
- Lifelong learners, creators, lovers
- Optimistic and realistic
- Not easily fooled or tempted to evil
- Clear understanding of their gifting and calling
- Easily pleased and difficult to satisfy
- Generous hearts
- Understand the truth of “There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.”
- Abiding sense of personal and collective responsibility
- Ability to learn from history and biographies
- Skilled communicators and persuaders. Excellent listeners. Skilled at coaching, and mentoring.
- Tech-savvy and know how to keep technology in its proper place as a tool
- High level of self-respect
- Able to lead themselves before they lead others
- Teachable, and able to teach
- Seek forgiveness, and willing to forgive others
- Good citizens, participating in civic and political spheres
- Know the Bible. Prayerful and worshipful. Strong intercessors.
- Effective parents and grandparents
- Good neighbors
- Hospitable
- Courageous
- Mentally and physically tough
- Active, not passive, but knowing that genuine rest has ROI.
- Live fearlessly out of their calling. Not victims.
- Use money well
- Crush lies with truth, knowing that the truth is good enough.
- Know peace, what it costs, and willing to fight for it.
- “Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.”
- Entrepreneurial — able to create value from what others see as nothing
- Effective managers in organizations
- Chain-breakers, freedom-lovers, justice-seekers
- Able to laugh at themselves
- Readers
- Thoughtful decision-makers
- Persistent, faithful, persevering
- Full of hope and confidence in God
- Conveyers of joy
- Mindful of evil and the ways of evil
- Dreamers and doers, adapters and overcomers
- Able and willing to stand up to bullies, thugs, and tyrants
- Protectors of the weak and defenders of the defenseless
- Know how to talk to themselves and feed their minds with what’s needed
- Future-focused without severing themselves from the best foundations of the past
- Resilient and antifragile — get stronger with stress
(What have I missed, or surprised you? Let me know in the comments.)
These characteristics must be taught and modeled, recognized and acquired. They don’t “just happen.” They are “the better angels of our nature” to borrow a line from Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address.
Every individual in every generation needs to strive for these characteristics. Indeed, fight for them. They’ll only succeed with the help of parents and family, neighbors, teachers, mentors, pastors, employers, and philosophers – the people who create the space which fosters these characteristics, and specifically teach them. (Government powers always seek to press into this space, but the consequences speak for themselves.)
I heard recently that basketball is the most over-coached and under-taught sport. In my lifetime I have witnessed a growing passivity to character-building. We are drawn to the coaching part, and fear the teaching part – or perhaps, we don’t know how to teach for character. So, what can I do to foster and develop people like this, over the next 10 generations? I don’t expect to be alive on the planet in the year 2321, but I could be influential even then.
