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Alternative Path for Youth Movements
Youth movements must become the main driving force of changes towards a safe, satisfying and highly creative world, resolving the existential crisis.
Young people advocating for change, exploring new directions for youth movements. (Representative Image)
Key Takeaways
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There is an upsurge in youth movements in several countries. Here, an alternative path for youth movements is outlined which hopefully can result in more durable impacts in terms of ensuring a safer, better, happier and more creative future for youth and children.
Let us start by asking, for all those who are under the age of 30 today, what are the most important requirements of ensuring that the world in which they’ll be living the greater part of their lives in the decades to come will be a safe place, and for ensuring that they’ll be able to find a satisfying, creative, and happy life within it. Once this is clear, we can then further discuss what needs to be done to achieve this and what contribution youth and their movements can make.
Keeping in view the above framework, for the sake of simplicity we can now take a question and answer format.
Our first question is, what are the most important requirements for ensuring that youth and children can grow up in safe conditions in the coming decades? Most scientists and other experts agree that the basic life-nurturing conditions of the world are badly threatened by a dozen or so serious environmental problems, including climate change, by weapons of mass destruction, and by the indiscriminate use of some disruptive technologies. and by indiscriminate use of some disruptive technologies. These very serious threats need to be removed or at least significantly reduced to ensure that today’s youth and children can have a safe future in the coming decades.
All ongoing wars and civil wars must stop, while the possibility of these ever taking place in the future must be reduced very significantly. The high risks created by imperialismImperialismA policy of extending a country’s power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or other means. and the pursuit of hegemony must be significantly decreased. Very significant governance reforms at a world level are needed to improve the prospects of peace, disarmament, and protecting life-nurturing conditions. Changes in value systems are also needed. While all this may have been very relevant earlier, now we can say that this is a matter of existential importanceExistential ImportanceSignificance relating to the fundamental nature of existence, often implying a threat to the continued existence of life or humanity., essential for saving life on Earth, as weapons have become too destructive and environmental problems like climate change have already become too serious. As long as there are wars, the international cooperation needed for making the most essential reforms cannot be achieved. Hence, to provide basic safety for children and today’s youth in coming decades most essential reforms based on peace and environmental protection are needed.
The next question we need to ask is: in the safe world that needs to be created as the highest priority, how can we ensure that young people will be able to have satisfying, happy, and creative lives? I think the first requirement is justice, and on a large scale, resources must be moved away from wars, weapons, and the pursuit of excessive luxury by a few, towards meeting the basic needs of all people, with prioritization given to the needs of children and teenagers. A big emphasis must be placed on making available more resources for education, for schools, colleges and non-institutional educationNon-Institutional EducationLearning that occurs outside traditional formal educational settings like schools and universities, often through community programs, self-study, or informal groups., but in addition also for very important educational reforms which give adequate emphasis to peace and nonviolence, environmental protection and all forms of life, justice and equality, social responsibility, spirit of cooperation and working together for common good, improvement of enduring and loving social relationships and improvement of health in a holistic way to include physical, mental and spiritual health. A very important part of education is encouraging and facilitating students to understand their social and natural surroundings, and to think about how these can best be improved, as well as how they and their friends can contribute to this. The creativity and satisfaction of their lives then becomes linked to how they can advance along these lines, and how wider society and the economy can increasingly facilitate this, or provide conducive conditions for this.
The next questions relate to the contributions of youth and youth movements towards the most desirable and significant changes needed. The contribution of youth is of course very important. Once such a framework of the changes we need is accepted by youth and their groups, then of course they must sooner or later become the main driving force of these changes towards a safe, satisfying and highly creative world, increasingly filling the leadership roles (while also accepting with due respect the guidance which several elderly people can provide) to take the world towards a future based on peace, justice and environmental protection, as well as top prioritization to resolving the existential crisis.
In this context the role of youth movements with their undoubted energy and creativity can be the most important and youth with proper channelization of their creative energies can become the leading force of resolving the existential crisis and creating a safe world based on peace, justice and environmental protection.
Of course, many youths are already making important contributions to social movements for peace, justice and environmental protection. These should be taken forward for framing broader programs and demands in which these basic issues of justice, peace and environmental protection are brought together in mutually consistent ways in keeping with the needs of various countries. This cannot be achieved by sudden, sporadic upsurges. There should be continuity in the youth movement to pursue such issues on a durable basis, and an organizational base for this should be created. At the same time, more immediate issues troubling youth at any particular time should be understood and raised within this wider framework and understanding. It is important to raise immediate and short-term problems, but this should not come at the cost of ignoring or pushing aside the wider understanding needed for resolving the most basic problems over the longer term.
The commitment to basic issues and values should be so strong that even as youth move into middle age, they will continue to carry these basic commitments with them, contributing all their lives to creating a better and safer world.
While such youth movements are needed in all countries, they must also cooperate and share experiences to learn from each other. At the same time, such a broad-based youth movement should keep away from powerful, narrow interests, such as those linked to sectarianism or foreign regime change operations, whose only objective is to misuse youth for their narrow and harmful objectives. or to foreign regime change operations, whose only objective is to try to misuse youths for their narrow and harmful objectives.
Disclaimer:The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Rift.
