Dr. Harold Goldmeier manages an investment
company and writes for financial companies about business, social, and
political issues. He is a free public speaker for community groups and consults
on matters of commerce and industry. He can be reached a harold.goldmeier@gmail.com
Israel and America appear haunted by a sense of
despair. The nation is locked in domestic and international political battles
exacerbated by tensions between the ultra-religious and open-society
proponents. As Rabbi Jonathan Sachs put it, “We live in an era of intense
social discord and distrust… cancellation or ostracism.” The Rabbi asks the
quintessential question, “How do we heal our fractured world?”
First, learn to think differently. Business
schools and executive development programs incorporate psychology courses to
stimulate contagious positive energy. Harvard University had us examine
challenges with a positive mental attitude to welcome the fast pace of change.
Israel’s business and military complexes focus
on the positive, on the miracles in our midst. Author and social anthropologist
Avi Jorisch discerns from his studies that Jewish
prophetic tradition creates a remarkable culture of innovation. Its sobriquet
as The Start-Up Nation is called an economic miracle by those who coined the
term. Solve the world’s most formidable problems by innovating “on agriculture,
medicine, water, and defense…making life better for billions of people around
the world.”
Second,
ignore the bearer of bad news. Sages consider that person a fool. Negativity
feeds into the stewpot of emotions fomenting hate and vengeance. The third
change you can make if you want to have hope for our children and the future of
the Earth is to read works by Avi Jorisch. His writing is smart, factual,
refreshing, and uplifting.
Jorisch
studies current trends and accomplishments. He talks of solutions being
explored now how “human beings can exert (and are exerting) significant control
over what happens to our species and our planet, and that our future is better
than most of us think.”
His
new book, NEXT: A Brief History of the Future, reports on “thirteen
game-changing innovations that are poised to transform our species from a
society of takers to a society of givers.” Innovators are finding solutions to
hunger, pollution, and global warming by mobilizing our remarkable abundance
and wealth, greater and more democratic, in this writer’s opinion,
at
any other time in human history.
For
context, first read about the storied life of Hans Rosling in Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the
World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. Rosling explains how our
worldview has been distorted. He identifies ten human instincts that cause
erroneous thinking. Rosling and Jorisch make the case that we can learn to
separate fact from fiction when forming our opinions.
The vast
majority of people around the world are living middle-class life. Jorisch’s
March 2023 Jerusalem Post article contains ten graphs and charts demonstrating
human progress in living standards, health status, social services, and
technology. According to Rosling, it means our lives improve regularly from
generation to generation:
• They are not impoverished and suffering.
•
Their boys and girls go to school.
• Their children get vaccinated.
• They live in two-child families, and
•
They want to go abroad on holiday, not as refugees.
• Step-by-step, year-by-year, the world is
improving.
We might add
that opportunities for success are greater for people of most races, religions,
genders, and childhood class stations in life. In Next, Jorisch does a cursory
review of the writings of futurists. He focuses on the moon-shot landing as the
“greatest mobilization of resources and manpower in human history,” which ought
to be a lesson for us. We need “moon shot thinking” to overcome our current
challenges.
I sent off a
note to my cyber-infatuated grandson about investigating Singularity
University Jorisch discusses at length.
What this writer finds remarkable about the case reports Jorisch describes is
the innovators are all self-made people; they are unique and outstanding only
in that they recognize a problem a spend their waking moments—and in their
dreams—finding solutions.
There is the
space program yielding untold advances for human existence. Russia and America
launched the space race and now multitudes of countries and private companies
are engaged. “Today, there are more than 50.1 billion devices online worldwide,
used by half of the world’s population… The new space economy is the catalyst
that will fundamentally transform life on Earth.”
Other case
reports cover The Internet Academy and new means of learning, improving
shelter, water resources, and health through advances in blood and genetic editing.
Prosperity is in the offing for food security, electricity engineering, and
more.
One more thought
about the author. Jorisch brings a spirit and sense of spirituality to his
work. I described his fifth book, Thou Shalt Innovate, as a “bouquet of life
enhancing and life-saving innovations flowing from Israel.” Many already knew
the stories of the start-up nation. “But Jorisch finds spiritual meaning or
‘higher purpose,’ as a secular man prefers, in them.” Jorisch finds an eternal
message in the innovations that benefit humankind. No story is more impactful
and inspiring than the 24 pages about the man who empowers girls and women
through sanitary blood maintenance. He is changing the life and spirit of a
generation.
Jorisch is a
Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and a prolific lecturer
and writer whose books and articles have appeared in a plethora of languages.
Everything he writes is documented and presented with extraordinary clarity and
simplicity. NEXT flows easily because the stories are about the people he
features “working to make the world a better place …and dreaming big enough” to
make it happen.” NEXT includes 34 pages of endnotes to each chapter and a
37-page Bibliography.
I tell the story
in my review of Rosling’s book about one of my children. He is a graduate of a
prestigious university who told me, “My head can’t handle all the facts
and commentaries from pundits, and they don’t seem to care when their facts are
wrong. It’s all mind-numbing and paralytic.” I gave him Thou Shalt Innovate to
read. Now I will encourage him and others to buy NEXT: A Brief History of the
Future.
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