2020 - A Year of Vision
I learned in graduate school a little piece of information that I still carry as one of my key philosophies almost 20 years later. How many times in your life have you made a new years resolution or other one-year goal, only to find how quickly a year goes by and how little you accomplished? And how often, when walking the back roads of reminiscence, have you been amazed at how much you've changed and grown over 5 or 7 or 10 years? Good business leaders know this simple truth: we consistently greatly over estimate what we can accomplish in one year and grossly underestimate what we can accomplish in 3.Well, 2020 is two 3-year cycles away. I challenge everyone to see that year as a year of vision. What if we forgo the standard (and almost always un-met) new years resolutions and focus on a vision for ourselves and the world we live in for 2020? What can we accomplish in 6 years? Far more than we think, I wager.
The Morality of Imagination
Typically, when we think of vision in the context of goals and the future, we take the word to mean "looking forward" or imaging what the world should be. What we often fail to see is that this process doesn't just belong to the world of corporate goal setting or even personal growth. Imagining -- having a vision -- exists as one of the key elements of a post-Christian morality.Consider for a moment the whole universe of objects, spinning through space, following trajectories, colliding, blindly and stupidly reacting to other objects. Things in the physical universe change and grow and decay, but only in a series of unalterable causes and effects. Indeed, as Asimov suggested in the Foundation series, if a computer could truly know every single factor, every object, the quantification of every bit of mass and energy, and knew exactly what happened at the beginning of what we know of the universe, it could predict exactly the location of every object at any time. With our limited knowledge, we've been able to predict the exact location of the moon in relation to the Earth far, far into the future for thousands of years.
Now, of all of those objects in all of the universe, there exists only one set of objects (that we know of) that break that pattern. Humans (and to some extent we've not yet established, other animals) alone have the power to choose a trajectory. Let the miracle and awesomeness of this fact sink in for just a moment. Only we (that we know of) have introduced into the universe a true unpredictability. The mind and will are the only truly random forces in the cosmos.
Great power. Truly enormous responsibility.
What does all of this have to do with vision? Well, the only thing that keeps our impact on the world around us from being purely random is choice. We get to decide. Vision and imagination give us the power to choose intentionally. Once we've given up arbitrary lists of Shalts and Shalt Nots, our imagination provides the only guide to determining "right" and "wrong" actions. We must imagine the world as we want it to be, and behave in ways most likely to bring that world into existence.
It would be easy here to slip either into utilitarianism on the one hand or a form of Satanism or reckless selfishness on the other. Nietzsche rescued me from the dangers of utilitarianism. The problem with that system is that we can never see what the real "greater good" would be in the long run nor really understand the needs of the "greatest number of people". We have what we know and who we know, and we all exist within limited realms of influence.
There is a place for John Lennon's Imagine. At times it's helpful to fantasize about a "perfect" world. But this isn't the kind of vision and imagination that lies at the heart of our morality. 2020 won't bring an era of world peace and universal human good will. The imagining we're responsible for is grounded in the reality that exists in the present and a firm grasp on our real limits. In the next instant, what are all the possible realities I can imagine resulting from the various actions I truly have the power to make? Which of those realities would I prefer to live in? Which of those realities would I prefer my loved ones to live in?
In every moment, we have this power to imagine and to let our vision inform our chosen behaviors. At times like the changing of the year, we simply extend the imagination to include not only the next instant but the billions of instances that grow into the long term future. It's the morality of chess. The morality of corporate long-term planning. Of all the possible realities that could exist in 2020, which ones would I chose to live in, and how can I behave -- how can I act -- to help create one of those realities?
Eye Exercises
A few years ago I saw an add for a "system" I could purchase that would guide me through daily exercises to naturally improve my vision and eliminate corrective lenses. Maybe that guy is still out there, and maybe his system works. I'm way too skeptical to spend the money to find out, and way to lazy to follow through with it even if it works. But it stands in as a good metaphor for the other way I want us to consider 2020 as a year of vision.If vision-as-imagination drives the choices we make, it needs to be clear vision. As a first step towards a better reality in 2020, I suggest we each start working on how we see. I imagine a world in 2020 that has 2020 vision -- where we not only say everyone is equal under the law but we actually see each other as equals.
In my experience, it's the little hidden things that lie at the heart of prejudice. We practice subtle forms of oppression every day just because of our skewed perception.
Back when I lived in a small town in the Texas Panhandle, my peeps didn't have just Mexican neighbors. They had little Mexican neighbors. Most of us don't have friends. We have [no adjective required] friends, then we have black friends or white friends or asian friends. We know [normal] couples and we know gay couples. By 2020 I want to see people. I want them to all look different from me and each other, and I want to see those I know personally for who they are, not what they are. If you want a good exercise in optical muscle strengthening, watch the movie Crash. It sure opened my eyes.
It's bigger than that, too. How many of us look eastward and see Israel surrounded by a bunch of Islamic states or, conversely, an Islamic area of the world with Israel cut out of the middle of it? We don't see the reality of real people with legitimate beliefs (well, as legitimate as the average American's belief, or mine for that matter) just trying to survive and build the realities they want to live in. I consider Anthony Bourdain my personal eyeball trainer in international affairs. Catch CNN's Parts Unknown or reruns of it's Travel Channel precursors No Reservations and The Layover. You go in with the eyes of a chef/gastronome and really see people and the lives they lead.
The point is that the world can be different in 2020 only if it looks different in our eyes along the way. We change reality slowly, over time, redirecting the trajectory of objects in which we come in contact. Those changes are random if our actions are blind reactions. But if we can see those objects coming and imagine where we want them to go, our little changes are the only intentional actions in the universe. We gradually push the cosmos in the direction we want it to go. Where do you want it to go? How will you act to nudge reality into your vision of 2020?
Happy New Year, everyone.
