The job crisis is a crisis of imagination
Sure, there are structural issues and governments have screwed up. No one wants to farm or do small scale stuff. Tech and AI are marching in. The economy just isn’t ‘growing’.
But the quest for making the world better and better is ongoing. And there are countless ways to do that — all of which, when they add value, can become “work”.
Our decisions about tech have drained out our attention…and related to that, our imagination. They glitter of social media shrinks our courage to try new things because we are all addicted to looking good.
Moreover, the “noise” made by large organisations and political parties in terms of marketing crowds out the voices of smaller enterprises (ask any entrepreneur how hard it is to be heard).
This is not a matter of skills. It is a deeper issue of learnt helplessness and looking at the world as this large immovable ‘given’ that you can’t do anything to.
How did we end up cultivating this on scale may be a great question to explore, but the deeper question to me is what do we do now? Where do we go from here?
There are three invitations that I’d like to make
One, for the elder generations to turn into cheer leaders of failure and rebellion. Back us up with your psychic support (aashirwaad), your funds and your connections unconditionally. Trust us with all of that because we’ll need it all if we are to thrive and respond to the world that’s ended up being created.
Two, for our generation to drop our ego. We’ve cultivated such a huge ego as a result of our parenting and our insta accounts that we hate to suck. So we don’t try new things, we don’t take the risks and become these timid young people. And that sucks. It’s great to look bad. It’s great to try things and end up looking silly. In failing you’ll do a service to the rest of your ilk permitting them to fail. And this includes taking help from our elders in whatever way we can.
And third is for our generation to give ourselves the permission to be bright, to commit, to shine and to rock. To follow a generation that did well for itself can be quite tough — how does one exceed them? How does one live upto the standards of sacrifice and levels of success? While the world’s expanded with so many opportunities it has also become a very confusing place. The threshold of success is just higher — it needs more.
Even 100,000 young people who unleash their wild dreams can solve a huge chunk of the employment issues of our country.
Let’s dream, let’s dare. Let’s stop depending on politicians. They won’t do it for us.