Spiritual Youth

Surveys: Young adults searching spiritually

They are often tarnished with labels like "self-absorbed" and "materialistic." But young adults are actively engaged with spiritual questions, two new surveys suggest, even if they are not necessarily exploring them through traditional religious practice.

One of the lessons in A Whole New Mind (which I have finished and highly recommend, btw) is that material abundance in Western cultures is leading to a sort of spiritual awakening. Since the average suburbanites no longer needs to focus all of their energy on feeding the family, they have more time and money to devote to philosophical introspection and therefore are on the lookout for people/things/services aimed at their spiritual side.

While these surveys seem to confirm that notion, I don't really see anything surprising here. You're supposed to explore the ether when you go to college. It goes hand in hand with leaving the nest. There's nothing new about college freshmen experiencing (or striving for) an "awakening" when they first start reading Kerouac, Nietzsche, Castaneda, or whatever.

It's the way things always worked, I thought.

My Millionaire Wife

Hezzy and I often joke that she owes it to me to become rich and famous. It would only be fair payback of the time I supported her while she went to grad school, etc., right? Well, if you believe WIRED, she may be poised to become the next breadwinner in our household after all: Revenge of the Right Brain

To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

The article is adapted from A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age by Daniel Pink.

Sounds interesting to me. Now if only I could get back in touch with my artistic/poetic self, I might actually be in good shape... ;)