Online searches for a list of life lessons yield a rich variety of people who seem eager to share what they have learned from experience. Many of the lessons are from people who have enjoyed success of some sort. Others may be amusing, helpful or insightful. Most often they fall into a field known as 'Life Skills'.
Life skills and 'positive psychology' seem to be two related areas of study that are popular in the twenty-first century. The received wisdom of the contemporary age seem to be that it pays to be positive as one approaches life. To an extent such advice disseminated largely through the modern means of mass communication seems to replace the messages that were spread by religion and elders in previous eras of human evolution.
Most people who are now beyond fifty experienced their most important lessons in times when the forces now driving development were completely unknown, Feminism, the dropping of the Atomic Bomb and the Cold War formed the context of their early learning. Now such issues are only as relevant as other historical events. Yet no person can easily forget the lessons that he learned before the age of six.
The Post Modern era was famously negative. The horrors of war caused misery and loss of faith in humanity. It is interesting that many contemporary academics have abandoned negativity for positivity. Some psychologists seems to redefine scientific method by selecting only that which proves their premise in the interests of being positive. When questioned on TV about why his team has lost a match a losing captain will invariably comment that the intention is to 'build on the positives'.
People born during the baby boom imbibed from their parents many war soaked experiences even though the Second World War had been replaced by lesser wars or threats of war. The looming threat of an atomic holocaust never came to anything. Instead new clouds of over population, globalization and climate change built up on the horizon.
In 2012 a grandparent might find himself in a relationship with a toddler born in 2008. In the four intervening years the economic face of the world has become quite wrinkled and people access the Internet from their smart phones. The parents of the child may have been denied any learning on parenting at the education factories that they attended but they may readily obtain the latest expert advice from their phones. Consequently a grandparent might find that many of his life lessons have become irrelevant or even illicit.
The wisdom of age was once revered because it was unique and hard earned. This is no longer the case in the Information Age. Vast treasures of information are available much of it not only earned from experience but also scientifically verified. This is beneficial. For centuries human beings have passed on to succeeding generations their erroneous beliefs, foolish customs and damaging prejudices. The process has now been streamlined with false knowledge being filtered by the Internet. Those that do not pass scrutiny because they are negative can be eliminated.
It could be that environmental and demographic issues will in the future be even more testing challenges than those that were posed in the past by demented dictators or insane monarchs. Environmental problems and over population may be even more intractable. It is fortunate that the present toddler population, unlike their grandparents are being furnished early with information, skills and attitudes that comprise an effective list of life lessons.
Life skills and 'positive psychology' seem to be two related areas of study that are popular in the twenty-first century. The received wisdom of the contemporary age seem to be that it pays to be positive as one approaches life. To an extent such advice disseminated largely through the modern means of mass communication seems to replace the messages that were spread by religion and elders in previous eras of human evolution.
Most people who are now beyond fifty experienced their most important lessons in times when the forces now driving development were completely unknown, Feminism, the dropping of the Atomic Bomb and the Cold War formed the context of their early learning. Now such issues are only as relevant as other historical events. Yet no person can easily forget the lessons that he learned before the age of six.
The Post Modern era was famously negative. The horrors of war caused misery and loss of faith in humanity. It is interesting that many contemporary academics have abandoned negativity for positivity. Some psychologists seems to redefine scientific method by selecting only that which proves their premise in the interests of being positive. When questioned on TV about why his team has lost a match a losing captain will invariably comment that the intention is to 'build on the positives'.
People born during the baby boom imbibed from their parents many war soaked experiences even though the Second World War had been replaced by lesser wars or threats of war. The looming threat of an atomic holocaust never came to anything. Instead new clouds of over population, globalization and climate change built up on the horizon.
In 2012 a grandparent might find himself in a relationship with a toddler born in 2008. In the four intervening years the economic face of the world has become quite wrinkled and people access the Internet from their smart phones. The parents of the child may have been denied any learning on parenting at the education factories that they attended but they may readily obtain the latest expert advice from their phones. Consequently a grandparent might find that many of his life lessons have become irrelevant or even illicit.
The wisdom of age was once revered because it was unique and hard earned. This is no longer the case in the Information Age. Vast treasures of information are available much of it not only earned from experience but also scientifically verified. This is beneficial. For centuries human beings have passed on to succeeding generations their erroneous beliefs, foolish customs and damaging prejudices. The process has now been streamlined with false knowledge being filtered by the Internet. Those that do not pass scrutiny because they are negative can be eliminated.
It could be that environmental and demographic issues will in the future be even more testing challenges than those that were posed in the past by demented dictators or insane monarchs. Environmental problems and over population may be even more intractable. It is fortunate that the present toddler population, unlike their grandparents are being furnished early with information, skills and attitudes that comprise an effective list of life lessons.
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