Maybe We Should Step Aside for the Newer Folk

Time is another one of those periodicals that has shifted from a conservative curmudgeonly approach to public affairs to a far more progressive one. As such, it is welcome to see.

One of its semi-regular features--every couple of months or so--is to display people of the next generation who are already making a difference in our world, a hundred at a time, in different aspects of our culture. This past week's edition, for instance, gives brief bios of:

• Mykhailo Fedorov, 31, Ukraine's Minister of Digital Transformation, who is the front line of his country's battle against Russian disinformation, a.k.a. lies;
• Eugenia Kargbo, 35, the first ever Heat Officer of Freetown, Sierra Leone, who strategized the planting of a million trees to reduce the core temperature of that city;
• Leah Stokes, 34, political science professor from the U-Cal Santa Barbara, a major contributor to the Biden effort to significantly lower emissions;
• Jessica Nouhavandi, 37, co-founder and lead pharmacist of Honeybee Health, which became the first mail-order pharmacy in the U.S. to ship abortion pills;
• Cassidy Hutchinson, 25, who bravely testified to ex-'s horrible behavior and the threats to democracy caused by insurrectionists to the January 6 committee;
• Lawrence Wong, 49, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister;
• Wally Adeyemo, 41, the first black U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury;
• Kaja Kallas, 45, the Prime Minister of Estonia;
• Chris Murphy, 49, Senator from Connecticut, a Senate leader in gun control;
• Annalena Baerbock, 41, German Foreign Minister;
• Dr. Caitlin Bernard, 38, an ob-gyn in Indiana, who has put herself in the forefront of the twisted, ridiculous ban on abortion in that and many other states.

That's out of a hundred that Time has noted. Note the ages. There are extremely competent people coming up now, and it indicates that they want to take on the world that our--my--generation has largely screwed up: climate, authoritarianism, backwards thinking, abuse of religion, resistance to change, endless bickering, etc., etc., etc.

The time is coming when we'll have no choice but to get the hell out of their ways. The elder statesmen are running out of energy, and running out of ideas to motivate people. The political ads we are being pummeled with during this dismal election season is but one example.

The sooner, the better. Our selfishness, which some theorists have tried to justify as leading to a better way (Ayn Rand, for instance), has led to rabbit holes all over the place. Nobody wants to rely on anyone else anymore. Nobody thinks they can.

This invading world of just me, only me, nobody else matters, is cascading humanity right off a cliff. The insistence of some people to base their decisions on outright lies is frightening, and will lead to conflicts entirely avoidable.

Somebody has to clean up this mess. Not my generation. We've created it.

Some of us have been waiting for the next bunch of burgeoning adults to grab the reins and guide us in a new direction. The above people are examples of those who could. My only piece of advice to them: Hurry the hell up!

H.G. Wells said that humanity is in a race between education and catastrophe (and that quote is over a century old). The above people are examples of those who have watched things start to crumble. I hope they have learned well. They have a big job ahead of them.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark