J.Z. Colby's Blog: NEBADOR News, Youth Futures, and Deep Learning Notes - Posts Tagged "young-adult"

I'll begin this blog with an overview of problems lurking around in the world that could cause trouble for young people as they attempt to sink their teeth into life. Some of these are interconnected, usually in complex ways that no one can fully understand, and some are not ... at least, I think ...

From Mother Nature we get all the usual floods, droughts, forest fires, tornados, hurricanes, freezes, and earthquakes. These affect small or (at worst) regional areas. We have never had a global natural disaster. If global warming continues, it will probably show up in lots of different way in different places, and will be our first global natural disaster. Did we cause it? Maybe. Can we stop it? We don't know.

Another trick from Mother Nature is diseases. If the climate changes, diseases will move into new areas, and maybe retreat from others. People spread diseased very quickly because we travel so much. Can our medical system keep up? We don't know.

The "economy" is all the complex human systems that involve money. In late 2007 we entered a "recession," a mild down-turn in the economy, felt to different degrees in different places, but generally global in nature. Will it recover, or get worse? People look at the evidence and argue both ways, but no one knows for sure.

"Politics" is the entire complex system of power-struggles among people. It goes on at all levels, from a brother and sister quarreling over toys, to global empires quarreling over resources (land, water, energy, minerals, etc.) At best, huge amounts of our tax money is spent in the process, and at worse, we are called to fight a war (or it comes to us).

Other problems are harder to classify. Obesity (over-weight), for example, seems to spring from human nature when most people are rich enough to have plenty of food.

Today I'll look at a questions that made me decide to start writing this blog. One of the honorary Nebador citizens, mid-teens, recently asked me "What are we going to do about jobs?" This is right where many of you are going to be hit first, long before global warming and other (hopefully) slow-moving problems.

A little history. During most of the past, good-paying jobs have been rare. In the middle ages, most people worked all day in fields in exchange for part of the food from those fields, enough to keep them alive. The "middle class" (people with good-paying jobs) was very tiny. You had to be born into the rich "upper class." In the early 20th century, that began to change a little. The middle class began to grow, and during the "Roaring Twenties," more people had money to spend than ever before. It fell apart in 1929 (the "Great Depression") and didn't really recover until World War 2 (1939-1945). Since then, jobs have been pretty easy to find for most people, so you, and even your parents, got very used to that situation. Times have been good for so long that it almost seems like a job and spending money are "rights" we'll always have.

Now jobs are hard to find, but about 80% of the people who want a job (in the USA) have one, although many people are working far below their skill level, and the situation is worse for young adults. Will it get better or worse from here? No one knows, but the Muse is whispering to the author that he needs to help young people whenever he can with this problem.

If it gets better, no problem, end of topic. If it gets worse, it might be time for an attitude-check. It has usually been worse, much worse, and young people found ways to survive and be happy. Even if "jobs" in which you get regular hours and a set wage become rare again, there are many ways to earn money. Little odd jobs doing yard work, errands, repairs, maintenance, childcare. Increase the value of stuff by fixing it, painting it, whatever, and re-selling it. NEED less money by sharing space and cars, cooking your own food, reading books to each other instead of downloading iTunes, you know. Imagine what young adults at just about any time in history (before 1945) would have done to live and be happy. You can too.

I was recently asked "What will we run out of first?" The answer, it may surprise you, is that we will never run out of anything. But keep reading, because that doesn't mean we are in good shape about resources.

First, let's be clear about what a "resource" is. There are two kinds: renewable and non-renewable.

"Renewable resources" are the ones that make themselves, and we just tap into the continuous flow. These include sunshine, plants of all kinds (food, lumber, paper, some medicines), and fresh water. These will, as far as we know, always be available as long as we don't harm the environments they need, or use them faster than they can replace themselves.

"Non-renewable resources" are the ones that have just a certain amount in the Earth, and when we use it up, it's gone (except for recycling what might be left in our trash). These include coal, crude oil (gasoline, kerosene, asphalt, plastic, etc.), metals, and other minerals.

We will never run completely out of resources because, as they become scarce, the prices will go up. Higher prices will force us to use less. If water is $1 a gallon, we'll take very short showers. If gasoline is $100 a gallon, we won't drive much.

But we have discovered that our civilization is "shocked" and forced to change when a resource reaches its "peak" of production, the point when production can no longer keep up with demand because the resource is getting harder and more expensive to find. For example, crude oil appears to have reached its peak of production in 2005. The price started rising, flew up to $147 a barrel in 2008 (it's usually $30 - $50), our civilization was "shocked," and oil use quickly dropped.

Some resources that are at or near their "peaks" include: crude oil (for gasoline, plastic, etc.), rock phosphate (for fertilizers), and rare earth metals (for electronics). Over-use and environmental damage, in many places, threatens fresh water, timber, and seafood. The prices of both crude oil and rock phosphate will directly effect the price of food everywhere.

Although they are not talked about until chapter 35, the map uses very common symbols. Can you see where the first chapter takes place? Hint: the small lake where Ilika rinsed his boots is almost exactly in the center of the map.

There are many hints in the first chapter that Ilika is from somewhere far away, and has never been in this place before. How many can you find?

Ilika's way of dealing with the angry stallion is unusual. How would most people react? How would YOU react? What does Ilika's response tell us about him?

What is Ilika's "state of mind" soon after the stallion leaves? How long would it take most people to get to that state of mind?

What assumptions does Ilika NOT make when talking to the rabbit, assumptions that most people would make?

This chapter clearly shows that the story is going outside the usual boundaries of human behavior. A "normal" person, in the medieval culture portrayed, or ours, would experience great fear in Ilika's situation with the stallion, flight or aggression to solve the problem, and then face-saving behaviors. Later, with the rabbit, most people would display some form of disrespect, perhaps capturing or killing the rabbit, or at least talking down to it. Ilika's non-typical reactions set the stage for his unusual origin.

Until about 300 years ago, people had only the same sources of energy they had always had: sunshine to grow food, human and animal muscle, and firewood. Suddenly, coal appeared, and about 150 years ago, oil. All other sources (hydro-electric, nuclear, etc.) are vary small in comparison.

With this new wealth of cheap, plentiful energy, we made things. Most things we use today require large amounts of energy to make, or are literally made from oil (all plastics). Also, we made people. Three centuries ago, the human population was about 1 billion. Now it is more than 6 billion. We made 5 billion extra people because our energy wealth allowed us to grow more food and move it around. A typical meal in the USA takes 10 calories of energy (mostly from oil) to grow and transport, for every 1 calorie in the food, and it traveled 1200 miles to get to your house.

Unfortunately, both coal and oil are non-renewable resources. There's a certain amount in the Earth, and when it's gone, it's gone. Oil production peaked in the USA in 1970. In other words, even though the price went way up, the amount we could find and pump out of the ground went down. Oil production in the UK peaked in 1999. Both those countries, and most other countries, have been importing more and more every year from Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, and a few other countries.

It is too soon to know for sure, but world oil production has been flat since 2005. It may have peaked. It will take a while to be sure because some countries keep their production records secret.

For about the last 200 years, people who study the economy have mostly ignored the influence of our almost-free sources of energy. They saw the economy growing (most of the time), saw that people were getting richer and richer, and assumed that growth was a good thing that could go on forever. They didn't bother to stop and realize where that growth was coming from.

Now some economists are starting to realize that the "great recession" that started in late 2007 was not caused by a few poor people defaulting on their home mortgages. That was just a side-effect. It was caused by oil prices. They had been rising for years, peaked at $147 per barrel in 2008, dropped low for a few months as demand dropped, and were quickly back up to $70 or $80 a barrel.

What will the future bring? Except for a few people who will always fight (or try to cover up) change of any kind, most geologists and economists are trying to figure out if coal and oil production will decline slowly, over the next 100 years, or more quickly. Every time there is a jump in price, or a fall in supply, our civilization will be "shocked" and have to make adjustments.

Young adults can begin thinking about a world with less (and more expensive) energy, and how that will effect them. Some philosophers anticipate that we will travel less, make things (including food) closer to home so it doesn't have to be shipped so far, and live closer to the land. (Before energy became cheap and plentiful, about 90% of the people were farmers, fishermen, and others who produced food. Now, in the USA, about 5% are.)

This is a paraphrase of a question from William, 17, a Nebador citizen. Here are my thoughts, without claiming to really know the answer(s) to this question.

We are creatures of habit, and don't like change. We usually hope the future will be like the past, especially if the past has been pretty good (and for the last 2/3 of a century, it has been very good). Most people have learned how to prosper and be happy in the "status quo," the conditions that have been around recently, and the future always threatens to change those conditions, and so upset our prosperity and happiness.

Also, I'm sorry to have to say, there is money to be made, and power to be wielded, by NOT solving our problems. Some people take great pains to position themselves to profit by bad times, and those people often have great influence in our world. That is just one aspect of living in a relatively free society.

But a large part of the reason we aren't very good at solving big problems is just our human limitations. The world is very big and hard to understand. We have been managing cities and little countries for a long time, with fair success. Large countries, with political and economic influence all over the world (called "empires") are harder to manage, and our only long-term success story so far has been the Roman Empire at about 500 years. Persia, England, the USA, and Russia have also tried it, with less success. China avoided many of the problems of empire by sticking close to home.

Now some of the problems on our horizon are global in nature. We have NEVER done anything on a global scale, and have no idea if we even can. The United Nations, the Olympics, worlds fairs, and many other events, are all venues where we can talk and exchange culture, but have no real problem-solving power at this time.

The biblical story of the Tower of Babel seems to be a good example of human limitations. Someone tried to build a tower to Heaven, and the project failed largely because of communication problems. Today, when dealing with global challenges, we still have about a dozen major world languages to deal with. Meaning is easily lost in translation.

Please let me know if you think of any answers to this question that I have missed.

Most people try to protect children from "bad" things, "bad" people, and even most knowledge of those. Luckily, most people are wise enough to bend this rule in order to help children recognize harmful or evil forces, and call for help.

There isn't much disagreement about this, but there is great disagreement about who is a "child" and who is not. Many powerful and vocal people in our world push for young adults to be considered fully "children" and kept from all knowledge of "adult" topics. For example, certain religions would prefer that young people not receive any sex education until age 18. Luckily for young people, most teachers and counselors in the real world know that such a policy would be tragic and bring nothing but pain and confusion.

But there's an even bigger problem. Powerful people in the world (often the same as the people mentioned above) have decided that there is no point in even letting ADULTS know about certain things going on. These people have their fingers deep into government, banking and finance, newspapers and television, and public education. In some countries, they have almost complete control over the flow of information. In the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and many other countries, there is still a push-pull contest going on between the forces of freedom and the forces of secrecy. But in recent years, especially since 2001, the secrecy people have been winning.

This is nothing new. It has been generally true for all of human history. People in power have always tried to keep information to themselves because that increases their power. One negative result of this is that very few people are working on solving the problems that lurk in and near every society. And, to be honest, the problems of the past were fairly small, limited to a tribal area, a kingdom, or a small empire, so keeping most of the people from helping was not a big deal.

The difference today is that the problems we face, and need to solve, are bigger than ever before. They might even be big enough to decide the fate of life on Earth. And yet there are powerful forces putting everything they have into convincing people that nothing is wrong, we can burn and pollute forever and nothing will happen.

Also, forward-looking economists have realized that we are not going to come out of this "recession" (high unemployment, little or no economic growth) because energy will never again be cheap. Yet our leaders have nothing to say other than "increase government spending," "cut taxes," or a few other unhelpful things.

The moral of the story is that only the individual person, whether adult OR young adult, can make sure they are prepared to walk into the future with eyes open. The important information is there, you just have to sniff it out, and use your intuition to recognize when someone is trying to hide it. The future, after all, belongs to young adults even more than it does to adults.

American MENSA has confirmed that they want me to speak at their Annual Gathering this summer in Portland, Oregon:

The Future of Young-Adulthood -- Childhood's End?

An extended childhood was one of the perks of a century of wealth from cheap energy and the technology to use it. That era may well be winding down. If so, today's young adults -- roughly, those between the ages of 10 and 20 -- will be facing a tough transition just as their parents are struggling in other areas. The NEBADOR series of young-adult science fiction novels was inspired by a Muse who obviously believes that young people need to begin sharpening their wits and honing their skills now, before the future forces them to do so.

J.Z. Colby's first non-fiction book, "Standing on Your Own Two Feet: Young Adults Surviving 2012 and Beyond," is available without charge to (or for) any young adult at http://www.nebador.com/TwoFeet.html

Much of it was drafted in blog posts on GoodReads during 2010 and 2011, and in conversations in the Dumbledore's Army group during 2011. Cover art and illustrations by professional artist Rachael Hedges (who also did the Nebador book covers) bring the book to life, and short 2-page chapters make it easy to read for nearly anyone.