What Will It Take to Make This Generation Passionate About Change

While this request caught my attention, I was also somewhat confused about the question. According to Dictionary.com, passionate and change are defined as:

Passionate - having, compelled by, or ruled by intense emotion or strong feeling; fervid: a passionate advocate of socialism

Change - to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc., of (something) different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone: to change one's name; to change one's opinion; to change the course of history.

Since we live in an age where change is a fact of life, I am curious as to why we have to be concerned about whether or not our children will be passionate about the change. As I see it they have grown up with change and embrace it in their daily lives.

In my experience, people tend to use the word passion in two ways, the first being the definition above where the emotion of passion drives or compels a person to focus on one thing only to the exclusion of practically everything else. Examples of this, would be political and religious fanatics, artists or inventors whose sole focus in life is the perfection of their art or invention, and lovers in the initial throes of love. The lives of such people are driven by an emotional intensity that excludes practically everything except the one thing they are passionate about. While this type of passion has led to the production of some great art, literature, inventions and occasional advances in civilization it has also led to untold human suffering in the hands of certain types of people, especially political and religious fanatics. As to lovers, passionate romance or Eros (erotic) love is great for bringing people together romantically and periodic small doses of it spice up marriages, but the intense energy and focus it requires soon wanes and, in the absence of other, more stable, connections and emotions (caring and concern, common interests and dreams, etc.), erotic passion soon fizzles out and the love affair ends. With the exception of Eros or intense romantic love, which most of us experience one or more times in our lives and which, by its very nature, is short lived, this type of intense passion about things other than love, is not that common and those who have this type of passion are usually dull and boring people whom most of us try to avoid because they are so narrowly focused and not interested in anything beyond the object of their narrow passion.

The second common use of the word passion is to describe the things or activities which a person is most excited about. For almost all of us there are things that excite us and engage us far more than other things. Unlike the type of passion described above, this strong liking or enjoyment of something does not consume the person in the sense that it pushes everything else out of their lives. People with this type of passion or strong liking for what they do are enjoyable to be around as their conversation is not limited to one thing. However, when the topic or topics of conversation turn to what they really like, their eyes shine, there is a greater degree of feeling in their voices and their whole body becomes more animated as they discuss the thing or things that give their lives real meaning. However, lacking the extreme emotional intensity of the real passion described above, the emotional content of this this passion lite tends to be contagious causing other listeners to share in the speaker's emotion and passion if only momentarily.

As to change, which the dictionary defines above as making the form, nature, content, future course, etc., of (something) different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone we can see that all around us. While there are still areas on the fringes of the planet - the jungles of Asia, the frozen north, much of Africa, etc. where the tools, processes and societies in which people live have not changed for thousands of years - in much of the world today all except those who are still toddlers can list dozens of things that have changed in their lifetimes alone.

My children currently range in age from 18 to 24 and I taught each of them how to drive. As a part of driving they had to learn how to find their way around town using trial and error, a map or written or oral directions all of which, with the exception of trial and error and oral directions if they remembered them, required that they stop the car (at least I hope they did) to study the map or written directions. When my daughter moved to Redmond, Washington earlier this year she dispensed with all of these and purchased a GPS device that directs her as she drives. While GPS (Global Positioning System) devices have been around for a few years, affordable, mass marketed ones like the one she brought have only been on the market for the past couple of years - about as long as she has been driving.

My 24 year old son also has a GPS device along with a digital camera, video camera, email, games, movies, and Internet access - all on his cell phone. When he got his first cell phone about seven years ago it was basically a portable telephone on which he could make phone calls from most places within the metropolitan area. He is somewhat passionate about cell phones and shortly after a new cell phone model hits the market he goes about obtaining it and, in the process, he has gone through so many (with his money, not mine) cell phones that, at age 24,he has actually had more personal telephone numbers than I, who am more than twice his age, have had in my life.

As to other examples of our children's generation showing a passion or at least embracing change one only has to look around.

In addition to intense excitement over new gadgets and other commercial products, there are numerous other examples of our children's generation eagerly embracing change. Take a look at Google, a company that is awash in young talent who are not only developing new and innovative products but can also be found throughout the company as managers, marketers, trainers, etc. Young people, many of them college students, are also the backbone of the book and other massive scanning projects being undertaken by Google and other companies. While this is mostly low end drudge type work, its affect on the world will dwarf that of Johannes Gutenberg and his invention of the movable type printing press. Thanks to the amount of primary source content that has been scanned to the Internet, I was able to spend about 20 hours on my computer at home over a three day weekend researching and writing my Hub article on Matthew Juan. In the not so distant past, I would have had to, at considerable expense, spend weeks traveling to libraries, museums, archives and newspaper offices all over the country digging up information (it would have taken much longer if I had had to conduct the research by letter) that I am now able to find from the comfort of my home.

Thanks to research and publishing tools, many of which are the products of efforts by young, some still in their teens, entrepreneurs, anyone can try their hand at writing and publishing. Young people, along with others of us who have a few more years on them, are scrambling to take advantages of the new opportunities in the publishing area. Of course, much of what is being produced and published, by people of all ages, is junk. But, who cares? The content being produced is basically electrons that have been organized and stored on electronic and other small media, and no one is forced to read or view any of it.

Amazon, eBay and other online shopping sites have also drastically reduced the overhead costs of retail sales, thereby opening up participation in the retail sales industry to thousands who previously could not have afforded the costs associated with running a retail business. Again, many young people and others are finding profitable full or part-time careers in this area including many in smaller cities and towns where traditional manufacturing employment opportunities has disappeared. These opportunities not only enable people to remain in the town of their birth but are also providing a new economic base to ensure the survival of these communities. More important, these new sales distribution channels and business that have sprung up within them have driven prices down for consumers. So while elites in politics and the media fret over statistically slow growth in wages, the spending power of these wages is steadily increasing.

Take college textbooks which are second only to tuition in terms of the cost of a college education. A couple of years ago there were Congressional hearings on this "problem". But, while the Congressmen were seeking an issue to generate votes and the accommodating media looking for a new crisis with which to draw readership, entrepreneurs, many of them young college students themselves, were using Amazon, eBay, Half.com and hundreds of other sites to destroy the cozy monopoly relationship that existed between the college bookstores and textbook publishers, which was responsible for driving up the prices of textbooks, by converting the market from a college bookstore monopoly to a world wide competitive market. By my calculations, using Half.com, Amazon and other sites my cost for my daughter's textbooks for her college education was about 1/3 of what I would have paid by purchasing her textbooks used from the college bookstore (and, in many cases, used textbooks are often not available due professor initiated changes in editions or books from semester to semester). While many of the books that I purchased were used, a number were new and all were in excellent condition.

While my son has a certain passion for cell phones, the passion is of the second type rather than the first type described above. However, when it comes to new computer games and game players his passion takes on the intensity of the first type of passion described above. However, it more closely resembles the passion of a romantic lover than passion for a profession or cause - more of a love them and leave them passion where the focus is on the pursuit and conquest, a la a Don Juan or Casanova, rather than any intense, life long endeavor. As soon as a new game or console comes out the old one is discarded.

We see this with a lot of today's young (and some not so young) people. Watch the TV news the next time a heavily promoted new gadget, piece of clothing, concert or movie is first released we find people, mostly young, lining up outside the stores or theaters a day or more in advance in order to be the first to purchase the item.

Take the young lady in the video at the right. How many love songs have been composed about a telephone? Talk about passion! This young composer/singer first sings about awaking and eagerly anticipating the meeting with her love only to be spurned by the demands made by the object of her love. However, the object of her passion here is a cell phone and the dashing of her passion is an AT&T cell phone contract. How many products inspire such passion that a person, other than a paid performer, writes and sings a song about it? Not content with simply writing and singing her song, this talented young lady, using computer and video technology, produces and films her own performance and then markets herself to the world on YouTube. With the exception of her computer and internet connection, which have other uses as well, the total cost of this production in terms of dollars is probably zero. Don't be surprised if this young lady ultimately makes a name for herself in the entertainment or high tech industry or both.

Traditional high school and college education themselves are another area of change that is being embraced by and, to a large extent driven by young people. Online education is serving to drive down the costs of high school and college education (in terms of both student's monetary cost and time) while, at the same time making quality education more accessible to students. Online education is opening new job opportunities for both teachers and support personnel and many of those taking advantage of these opportunities are younger people. By reducing delivery costs and standardizing quality, it is also giving a boost to the growth of alternatives to traditional colleges and high schools such as home schooling and low cost private alternatives to large (and, in many cases, largely ineffective) public high schools as well as corporate training (such as the growth of universities within companies for training purposes, where at least one company has obtained formal degree granting college accreditation for its corporate university) as well as private for profit schools such as the University of Phoenix.

Then there is the whole area of work and employment. While politicians and media bemoan the decline of manufacturing, the American manufacturing sector remains as large and robust as ever. What is declining is not manufacturing output itself, but manufacturing jobs.

The story behind the decline of manufacturing jobs is all about major change and it is this generation, along with parents who sacrifice to provide an education for them and encourage them to be all they can be, who are largely responsible (dare I say "to blame"?) for this change.

Old line manufacturing and other unskilled or semi-skilled, labor intensive jobs, are declining because our children don't want them. Oh, many would take them, if the pay was right as hard work does not bother them. One only has to look at the high tech start ups where the young workers will spend days at a time hunched over a computer creating a new program and only taking occasional breaks for a cat nap on the cot in their office or a quick trip to the vending machine for some caffeine and sugar to keep themselves going, to see that they don't shy away from long hours and hard work, But why take a job at $10 to $15 per hour when they can make three or four or more times that by using their brains rather than their muscles? The Wall Street Journal ran an article a couple of years ago about General Motors closing a plant in some city in Ohio or Indiana and laying off a couple of thousand workers only to open a brand new plant in a city a few miles away that produced the identical product. The total payroll was about the same in both plants except in the old plant all of the work was manual while in the new plant it was intellectual with robots doing the heavy lifting and the workers managing the robots. Same labor costs but higher skills and fewer human workers. Some will argue that since there was no change in output that the old plant should have been kept open rather than release the workers. That would have been nice except that most of the labor force at the plant was getting older and it was becoming increasingly difficult to find replacements for workers who retired, died or left for other reasons.

The pool of unskilled workers is shrinking as most young people understand the need for intellectual skills in the workplace and eagerly embrace opportunities for learning and training. For them, college is but a start for their first career. Following college they continue their education with additional classes and degrees, training from employers, job hopping to obtain and develop new skills, informally experimenting, reading and talking to others. Unlike older generations, this generation does not take a job with the expectation of retiring from that employer. More than likely the industry, let alone the employer, won't exist four or five decades from now when they are ready to retire so they are ready to diversify their skills and change jobs and careers as needed and as new opportunities arise. Many from earlier generations don't think this way which is why the statist programs advanced by politicians on the left continue to retain their appeal.

This generation is doing just fine with regard to change. They live with it all around them, they actively embrace it and many embrace it with a passion that borders on erotic love in its intensity. The only thing they have failed to do is attract the attention of the mainstream media which is only interested in change when it is either advocated in a press conference by a big name politician or is the motivation for a demonstration or riot in the streets - provided in all cases that the performance takes place both in time for the evening news and before the media elites leave their offices for the weekend.