Help your kids build the character to make the most of technology rather than becomes a slave of it.
We are in a civilization-warping crisis of institutional decline. The consequences are all around us.
Most jobs are going to be unbundled and rebundled. Emotional intelligence and character are going to matter more than they’ve mattered in the past, because the hardest things to automate are the things that depend on relationships.
… A technological revolution is driving an economic revolution in our time, and the changes in this economy are already having and will have more profound spiritual, cultural, educational and even political implications….
…We should all stand in awe of this. It is a breathtaking tribute to human imagination, ingenuity, innovation and entrepreneurial creation. As someone who’s being kept alive this very month by incredible advances in biotechnology, I am a zealous proponent for disruptive innovation.
The family is the source of the habits that we’re going to need to cultivate the next generation.
• Reading. Fewer than half of Americans read a book last year. That is a national crisis. Shorter attention spans are killing our imagination. …. We need to teach our kids to fall in love with reading and show them that the endless dialogue between ideas is more rewarding than the endless scrolling of social media.
Character, whether of an individual or of a nation, is molded by habits and by time. This republic requires men and women to do long-form deliberation, serious thinking, honest humility and daily striving. What good is it to gain the whole world if we forfeit the souls that we’re supposed to form? We can’t expect to remain free without being virtuous, we can’t be bold without being rooted, we can’t be great without aiming first to be good. To stave off Huxley’s dystopia, we must deliberately shape our children’s souls so that they can be creators, doers and thinkers embracing the next frontier.