Couple Lectures Worth A Watch

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Here’s a couple of powerful lectures. Combine the two theories in these videos and start to imagine how our current societies dynamics are going to impact our future societies. By impact our future, I’m meaning both positive and negative.  From experts that claim that kids today will never drive a car, to the prevalence of online dating societies are changing right before our eyes….as they always have.

Why did the founders of Jamestown brave the ocean and unknown for a new world? What did Protestant work ethic  mean in the 1600’s and what does work ethic mean today? Did the founders of the US learn from the rise and fall of other governments and societies and build in circuit breakers into the new American experiment? How did the excesses of the roaring 20’s and then impacts of the Great Depression impact American in the 1900’s.  How did the greatest generation of post WWII nuclear families lead to the hippy generation that is leading the world today?  The millennial generation that grew up in structured sports, everyone gets a trophy and helicopter parents is struggling to adapt in the work force, how does the workforce adapt to these new challenges?  What does Generation Z, who was raised on social media and a device within arms reach at all time, put their stamp on the world over the next 30 years?

I’ve spent a lot of my career figuring out the nuances of American business. I’ve opened and closed or sold over a dozen ventures. Each got successively more complex.

For close to a decade, I’ve been fully immersed in American politics. I started with running for office, and then on to a 7 year run on a morning drive political talk show. I can’t say that what I’ve seen has in the political arena has been encouraging. I can say that a deeper understanding of how politics influence my businesses, my family and my community has been a powerful planning tool.

Recently, I’ve been digging deep into the history of Western Civilization. With helping develop curriculum for a classical charter school I’ve dug into the rise and fall of great societies. I’ve learned about their forms of government. The study of religions,  arts, music, technological advancements and science discoveries help lay the foundations for the events of today.

All these disciplines have now lead me to the study of societies and the study of human psychology.  These two disciplines wrap up all these disciplines and helps paint a picture of the future.

Wisdom and reason naturally seem to come with age. There’s a couple great lectures that explore the development of the brain and how we evolve and learn. First,  psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist explains how our ‘divided brain‘ has profoundly altered human behavior, culture and society. I often wonder what society will look like with all the immediate responses brought on by smart phones, social media and instant condition and response.

 

Second lecture that I keep going back to a lecture I heard originally on the London School of Economics podcast series and a lecture by Joseph Henrich. Henrich is professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University. He follows the rise of societies and essentially how we as humans learn. What struck me is how we learn from watching others. From your parents, to fellow students, to teachers, co-workers and reading books or watching TV, each generation learns and builds upon the next.