Beyond the Great Paradigm
By Marshall WD Kilman

Our shining stars are the young people of the 21st century; they are the real Aquarians who need more than just practical advice and guidance to improve their lot in life. They all deserve the best chance in life we can possibly give them. Our World War II era parents gave us that chance, now it is our turn, The Boomers, who must spend some time this year and perhaps the next and the next, passing down our coherent knowledge and tell the youth of our life and times. A large majority of our youth today may be considered “at-risk” and that is why these “Shining Stars” deserve our attention and time. They all deserve the best chance to succeed in the new age to come, but they must recognize they must earn everything presented to them. The “Great Paradigm Shift” has already occurred, profoundly affecting how we perceive events; the great socio-cultural leap has already taken place, changing the very core of our American way of life and fundamentally altering the World of Work in the most intricate detail ever imagined.

Our youth face unprecedented challenges among troubled waters including a rapidly changing economy with increasing fierce global competition. The only growing sector in America is low-wage service employment which affects how three out of four youth live. The hard facts of this 21st century reality forces our gifted youth to be more creative, transforming them into adaptive and innovative business for self upstarts, bringing service to all of us with a smile. A cold hard fact may be having an advanced skill related education is crucial to having a happy life. This will most certainly be true, unless we alter our normally accepted view and make simpler, basic choices to achieve happiness. Despite the odds, America’s youth remain resolute and determined to succeed. Having a strong sense of motivation and determination will make them the over-comers they need to be. Their opinion of this stark reality is based upon those storied facts taught to them in schools across our great country, facts which will stand the test of time. The certain truths of humanity have taken hold and are well defined; it is just a matter of conceptualizing the new picture of reality.

We are experiencing a cosmological revolution coupled with a jarring technological explosion; both contribute to an understanding that our youth face “a discovering” that they live within a special place and a special time. Our youth of today need to acquire intuitively integrated new ideas and subsequently must learn to acquire a new scientific picture of the universe. We found out we are at the center of the universe after all, based upon our size of the human body. We happen to be living in the middle of all existing size scales. How fortunate for us! Our image of reality has fully been formed. We have learned to accept our humanity along with our innate imperfections. We humans control our destiny in many ways, yet we are aware of threats outside of our control. We truly live in a pivotal moment in time, a new epoch where we open upon a new vision unimagined by our ancestors of long ago.

We humans are significant and central to the universe, a fact which was hardly shared by mankind in days past, but now this profound fact is well established and accepted. Humanity will become meaningfully richer on a grand scale with fascinating adventures and unimaginable beauty waiting in the wings of the future. Open your eyes and you will see! Genetic engineering, unbelievable medical advances, nanotechnology, computer driven robots, virtual reality, high-tech innovations, cyber security, entrepreneurial adventures, and an endless stream of fascinating gadgets and gizmos will continue to alter our world, changing everything around us in a blink of an eye. Despite this, The Natural World matters to us.

We know where we come from, we know what we are made of and we know we are definitely