Beyond survival, the purpose of humanity is the sum of the purpose of each human – therefore it is the same as a human. It is self discovery. At this point in time in history humans are very advanced compared to cavemen. However, we are cavemen compared to the humans of the future. We know this because, although we know a lot about ourselves, this knowledge tells us that there is an enormous amount of important things that we don’t know. In turn, this tells us that humanity is at a very early stage of our self discovery journey.
The impact that you can have on the world today is different from the impact you could have had ten years ago and, conversely, it will be different from the impact you will be able to have in ten years from now. The combination of globalization and technological advances that have occurred up to this point in time give you more influence and allow you to have a significantly bigger impact. Therefore, I believe that your increased influence makes you more important and you are getting more important every day. What are you going to do with this influence?
The purpose of this chapter is to try to understand where humanity is and where it’s going. It’s about helping you to acknowledge and understand the extent to which we are in a very fluid time in our history and you have to do much more than simply understand the implications of the current transition from the industrial age to the knowledge age. The pace of change is accelerating, therefore, if you are middle aged or younger, the knowledge age will not be the final change you have to deal with. It is much more important understand change itself.
Next article in this series: “The 100 Year Test”