By Zakia Carpenter | Unending Conversations of Hope blog
This article appeared in the April 20-26, 2008 issue of the Michigan Citizen and is reproduced here with the author’s permission. Please post your comments here.
I have noticed a breakdown in youth-adult functionality that I’m just beginning to articulate. From what I have read about the Millennial Generation (youth, like me, born between 1977 and 1998), experts predict it will be more separate from previous generations due to
Barack Obama’s speech to the United States and the world last week moved me more than any political oratory I can recall. It wasn’t just the content of the speech I found moving but the quality of human being that he showed us—a man willing to take a stand for his convictions and tell the truth about a subject that has been an ‘elephant head on the table’ for decades. He will have my vote and whatever the maximum financial contribution allowed is to support his campaign.
I was also impressed
By Shae Hadden | Bio
The premise being that we CAN talk it through…This is the question that epitomizes the possibility that the World Café represents. It is the question that informs Anne Dosher, the 80-something ‘Elder’ of the World Café and Board member of the World Café Community Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to developing and disseminating this and other innovative dialogue approaches. I recently had the privilege of interviewing this gracious, generous and engaging lady—the human embodiment of what I imagined the World
By Shae Hadden | Bio
Conversations can change the world. When we speak openly about what matters most to us, we can build authentic relationships. We can tap into the wisdom and collective intelligence we need to address our problems. We can create the future together.
I’ve been excited in the last few weeks to learn about The World Café through conversations with Juanita Brown, co-founder of the World Café and Anne Dosher, who at
Most of us are fans of the idea of ‘dialogue’. Dialogue is generally touted as the answer for resolving conflicts, building trust and crossing cultural divides of all kinds—be they national, organizational, ethnic, racial, gender-based or generational. I was having a conversation recently with a very bright young woman in the same business as me and we were swapping stories and ideas and experiences.
Although we are both professional communicators and teach others how to communicate more
If we had the means to promote an intergenerational dialogue, what would we talk about?
I think we’d first have to acknowledge that:
• Neither generation has a lock on truth AND
• Neither of us knows more than the other.
While we may have a bit more experience in some areas, younger people know a lot more in others. I learned from my son that he knows a lot more than I do about modern philosophy, about dealing with uncertainty and about participating in
We speak of ‘generations’ as if they are homogenous groupings of like-minded people who see the world in more or less the same way. I don’t know about this. I think there are as many intra-generational differences as there are inter-generational differences. I think that what may be distinct is how the young and the old differ in respect to time. The young have a lot more of it to look forward to than we do. The patterns of youthful enthusiasm, idealism and energy seem
I had a great meeting with David Korten yesterday. He is the very
inspiring thought-leader I mentioned in a past blog and the author of The Great Turning.
His vision of some of the underlying issues that perpetuate the
persistence of many of the world’s nastiest problems is brilliant and
offers a framework for creating a ‘new story’ of who we are and what’s
possible.
Part
of his vision and mine is for our whole generation to declare our
responsibility for the world and become