First and foremost, I have not killed off as many brain cells as I feared with all the frequent trips to Flanagan's and Friday nights on Front Street. If anything, most of them are still there, and my inability to remember certain mundane things (like cleaning the eyewash station at work when it's my turn and where I managed to find a parking spot for my bike at work that day) is not actually due to a depopulation of brain cells. It is most likely that they are just all metaphorically resting in little brain cell hammocks staring at all the beautiful Bermuda beaches in my head. I can live with that as long as they step up when required for the more important stuff, like figuring out a brief understanding of international tax laws on an afternoon in the not so distant future.
What is truly amazing is that is I google "brain in a hammock" a picture pops up that I can use in the blog, making life easier, being kind of amazing, and a little disappointing that perhaps I am lacking in original thoughts if everything I come up with can be found in technicolor by Google in seconds.
There are a few things I want to share about my courses though. I finished the first one, and I really enjoyed it. It was online, and FREE. You can pay for a certificate, or if you just want to shake the rust off of the old brain, you can register with no charge. I recommend you look at www.courses.edex.org if you are interested. I took Bioethics from GeorgetownX and US Health Policy from HarvardX. I am not sure, but the X just denotes online, because the lectures are from the actual classes from programs from Harvard School of Medicine and Georgetown University. So the content is good. The grading was simple quizzes, and one can most certainly take home some new and interesting knowledge from the many courses available.
The first real insight I had was how different education is now than when I was enrolled in school many years ago. To start with, last night at Harbour Nights the children of my visiting friends, aged 7 and 11, were able to sit down at the open chess table and play a game to completion. Their mom explained that they teach them chess in Kindergarten now to develop strategic thinking. Having never been shown how to play chess or hunted down the basic rules to learn myself, I thought that was pretty impressive.
The second insight I had was how different the content of information is that society provides to its youth vs its adults. The education we get, unless we are enrolling in courses and programs, is primarily TV, news, and magazines. Even the continuing education offered for my profession is insular. These courses provided me with a number of very important facts and concepts which we are not talking to adults about although we should be. I am happy our academic institutes are talking to the younger generation about it, but I don't think it's enough.
Here's what I mean. See which of the following questions you can discuss.
1. Who is Donald Spurling?
2. Where do you think MH370 is?
3. Which country evoked Martial Law earlier this week?
4. What animal recently saved intervened when a dog went after a child?
5. In which country were students arrested for dancing to a video of "Happy?"
6. Roughly what is the global population?
7. What is the estimated global population estimated to be in 2050?
8. Which ethnic group will be the most prevalent in the US in 2050?
9. What commodities can you think of that will be threatened in 2050?
10. What is so important about 2050?
If you can answer 1,2,3, and 5 I am reasonably certain that you watch CNN or a standard news program regularly. If you can answer those but not 6-10, you are living in the now. If you can only answer question 4, I am reasonably certain that you only get information from social media and you would be very comfortable taking these online courses and learning about more than just cats on the Internet. If you got them all right, you are more informed than I was a few weeks ago. If you don't know the answers, I will enlighten you.
1. This isn't really important and none of us should know. Those of us who do should try to forget.
2. I have my own conspiracy theory that is too long to talk about.
3. Thailand.
4. A cat, of course.
5. Iran.
6. We hit the 7 Billion (yes, 7,000,000,000) a year or so back, you Nat Geo fans will know that.
7. 9 Billion (yes 9,000,000,000)
8. Latin Americans. Why us this important? Due to socioeconomic differences that affect wealth, health, education, and scores of other things. The US knows it needs to correct those differences in a big hurry.
9. Food and Water. Yes Water. Climate change is going to seriously affect precipitation levels, agriculture, and availability of clean water to 1.9 Billion people by 2050. The demand for food to supply for an extra 1.9 Billion people as many nations are shifting from underdeveloped to developed is predicted to increase by 70-100% by 2050. At the same time, global fish stocks are expected to decline by 30%.
10. What is so important about 2050. Well, it's only 36 years away. Chances are most of us are going to experience some dramatic shifts in how our own little worlds function, and how the entire world functions as its people struggle for decreasing resources.
This is not a theory. This is the future, this is what we are teaching the next generation to expect. They are being trained to think ahead with this mindset of global justice, resource sharing, and economics. It's fascinating and terrifying all at the same time. But why does our generation, the ones who grew up hearing about greenhouse gasses and climate change, still hide our head in the sand on this topic? Well, the psychological principle at play there is an old but tested one. We are programmed to reject evidence of our actions that cause harm to others...we don't want to believe it. This situation is not the fault of our generation, but perhaps all the talk about it in the 80's actually made us feel guilty and more adverse to the information about what was happening. 30 years later we still don't accept it fully. The other psychological factor at play is the idea that there is nothing one person can do against such a staggering reality.
There is a bright side to this though. There are 7 Billion of us. It might not seem like a lot for you to turn the light off when you leave a room, or not use the TV as background noise, to ensure the lights are off in your office building at night, to unplug the electronics that you don't use daily like that toaster in my case, or to consider what you are buying when you do your shopping -- ie, pick a cause and say no to Palm Oil, choose fish over beef once in a while to lower that carbon footprint, things like that. Those little things mean almost nothing to your daily routine and lifestyle. But the effect when multiplied by billions of other people doing multiple effects as well, could quite literally make a world of difference.
So that's what happens when I am not at the pub or the beach. I hope you will give those ideas a few minutes of your time. Goodnight for now, I promise pretty pictures next time.
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