Looking forward

Living in a better world means considering our planet as a global community. We are becoming increasingly dependent on people on the other side of the planet. Concurrently, our ability to communicate world-wide has reached a degree unprecedented in history. We can video chat with our friends around the globe in real time. Email is received instantly. And in small villages, where there may not be running water, there are cell phones.

Human knowledge has allowed us to invade most of the world in search of resources. While we have not yet exploited all of the worlds natural resources, we are coming to a point where we no longer need to focus on expansion in terms of the geographical area that we, as people, occupy, but on expanding the ingenuity which will allow us to make better use of the resources we are aware of, and find more resources beneath our feet. As a global community, and with this in mind, we must look at population growth, which is no longer a tool to allow us to invade regions rich with fresh resources, but as a burden. "More with less" should be the motto, instead of "more with more."

To develop a population of sustainable size, we must look to education. Educating the masses will allow people to make smart decisions about raising families. It will increase ingenuity in developing countries, allowing them to responsibly develop their natural resources.

Educating women may be one of the most effective means of population control. First, educating women about their bodies will help prevent unwanted pregnancy. This issue gets bigger when we thing about many religious values (particularly the Catholic Church doctrine of "wasted seed.") Most importantly, educating women will allow them to pursue careers of their own, lending invaluably to increased economic ingenuity, but also to the desire for a more manageable family size.

HS education

Looking back on my high school education, I remember that it was mandatory to take a government class your senior year. That class taught me about the structure of the government, mostly the basics, and some of the fundamental laws of the country. That was it.

Were were the classes that teach you how to get involved in the political process? Where are the classes that teach you what the laws are in your town/state/country so you know how to stay out of trouble? I would rather sacrifice some of the other courses we have in school and teach our future minds some of the basics on how to get along. We do this with sex/drug education, but not with a lot of the other basics.

We train our young people in math and science, literature and art, but not in the basics of starting a business, how to do your taxes, managing personal finance, how to invest money in the stock market or your own business. If we want to unleash the growth of our economy, we need to empower each person to develop their ideas. If people feel overwhelmed by the basics of the system, because nobody taught them, then they will have to spend their time figuring out those things instead of developing their ideas.

Knowledge has been and will only more so continue to be the determinant in economic prosperity.

But it has to be the right knowledge. A college graduate with a fine education in science and literature may not be as economically profitable as a post high school grad with a few years of real-world experience, simply because he does not have the context, the knowledge of the system, in which to apply his knowledge and come up with ideas. I am not saying that everybody needs to be an entrepreneur, only that every individual is a more effective part of the machine if they understand their place in that machine.

If every individual has a better understanding of how the system works, because many aspects of it are becoming more and more standardized, than they can make the personal decision about where they fit in that  system. As the last mandated education, high school students should be exposed to a barrage of real world information AND they should have access to that information for reference after they graduate.

Intro

I am a first year medical student who needs to be focusing more on my studies, but can't help but have his mind invaded by thoughts on how we might improve things, solve problems, and create a better world. I am looking forward to having a forum to post some of my ideas so I can get them out of my head, making room for the all the science I should be packing in.

I think the best ideas are those that have been criticized, scrutinized, and tried. We all have great ideas every day, but usually don't know enough information or have the perspective to make them practical. I will try and be selective and thoughtful with all my posts, but I have never made or read a blog, so this is truly a rough draft. Cheers!