6 Words for the Next Decade

That might make our suffering slightly more bearable .

On the last day of this decade, I couldn’t help but to be lamely sentimental. The following six words are very trite but alas this is who I am. After all, I am the kind who believes in the force and adores Bambi.

Confusion, Conflicts, and Condemnation.

History confirmed that we will always be struggling with these three things. In the next decade, the kind of inequality that we will be grappling with, is the varying level of confusion we will be in, thanks to the over-abundance of information. The rich are those who can discern, distill and dispense information; the poor will be those who can’t contain the onslaught of information.

Confusion manifests into conflicts, and then condemnations exaggerate the conflicts. “It’s their fault!” “You are wrong!” “Fake news!”

History also repeatedly showed us that as a species we will have to endure extraordinary suffering and chaos before we make meaningful progress. As we slowly slide into a likely brutal decade, for my own sanity, here are three words from history that seem to be the most effective antidotes to issues we will inevitably face, or the most useful things we should strive for, as a member of our species:

Communication, Community, and Compassion

So there you go, a hellstew of cheesy clichés:

Communication reduces confusion; Communities buffer conflicts; Compassion trumps condemnation.

Lastly, there was one more “C” word that kept coming back to me, but didn’t fit nicely into the list. I will share it anyway:

Complicity.

Trite? Sure, but I couldn’t find more inspirational ways to remind myself of these critical choices that we all will have to make as we tread forward into the next decade.

Happy 2020s.