Generation Less

I talk a lot about leadership. I feel this generation of leaders will need to be the change because we don’t have time to wait for the next generation. I believe our best bet for making true progress is finding people who can inspire a vision of a net zero future that people are willing to sprint towards.

I call that the ‘man on the moon’ vision. I feel the US was never as unified and excited and proud to be alive as when the US planted a man on the moon. Us humble humans are not motivated by ‘safeguarding’ the status quo. We only often only realise what we’ve got till it’s gone. No amount of bad news, climate facts or doom scenarios can mobilise the majority of us human Humans.

We are however mobilised by the vision of something else, something better. Most if not All of what we do and why we do it on a daily basis are inspired by a vision of a better tomorrow.

A podcast host asked me to describe my man on the moon vision for the world. Whereas this is a super fair question I was utterly unprepared for it. I am in search of an answer but have not found it. And yet I took a stab at it. Here is one hypothesis.

I am an eighties baby. I grew up in the generation of upward momentum. Our parents had more than their parents. War was over. The world was becoming more progressive. We had horrible fashion and haircuts but even those were improving.

So I am part of the Generation More. Social media and particularly Instagram were truly a very phenomenon of this generation More. (Kevin Systrom, the founder of Instagram, was in fact born in 1983).

Instagram inspired a mouth watering vision of More, a constant source of inspiration or rather FOMO, that was just within your reach. Friends on tropical holidays, parties you were apparently missing out on, influencers who seemed to have it all.

But this life of More is destroying our planet faster than anything. If people lived my personal lifestyle (which involves no meat, max 17 degree room temperature at home, no car, but 40 hours of flights a year because of my international family) we would need 3.2 planets.

JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images

So the vision I want to inspire, or perhaps one of my hypotheses for a better future is for a generation Less. I can hear you wonder how on earth this could be better than the generation more. Hold on… there might be something to explore here.

A lot of my friends have babies. As an outsider my impression is that a baby ruins your life. I mean ‘All of You’ goes out the window to make room for this ‘thing’. And yet parents claim it is the best thing that ever happened to them. My friend Anne explained to me that a baby helps you to embrace the micro moments. They force you to live in the moment. Sure, that is all you have left, I thought .. “hold on tight to those micro moments 😂”

The wonder in a brief smile, the miracle of that fragile life, something so precious that nothing else matters. Everything else becomes relative she said.

… Could there be something there. In working with a lot of people with a lot of money at Carbon equity I am crystal clear that wealth has no bearing on happiness itself. The cashier at the Albert Heijn might be happier than the ceo, living in the moment rather than surviving in their heads.

Not saying they are, but they could well be. Our happiest moments are not those when we win the lottery but in those moments in which we are truly present with our friends or family.

Could we then envision an age of Less? An age of Less work, where AI does most of our work for us and rather than concentrating the proceeds of this wealth in the hands of the very few, to redistribute proceeds from AI in the form of basic income . Could we imagine living closer to our work, our friends? Spanning smaller distances rather than longer distances? Can we imagine living primarily off local produce not Kiwis in Amsterdam? Can we imagine consuming less but better? Travelling closer to home but with more time and attention to spend? Could there be more beauty and wealth in being more present within our lives? Could we derive happiness not from travelling towards but being present in the moment?

Can we find happiness in a greater level of satisfaction with what we have vs an insatiable longing for what we don’t have?

Remember COVID? Remember that brief respite from FOMO? Where everyone was grounded all at once? Remember the wonderful sense of peace that brought a lot of happiness and social cohesion in a time of disaster?

What do you think? Can I you get excited for a Generation Less? Would you prefer a generation less over a generation more?