I wanted to establish a theme to adhere to over 2016.
As I’ve learned over the past year, not adhering to a lens through which I address what’s going on in the world can be as alienating as it can be liberating. Sure, it’s nice not to have parameters. It’s nice to take on whatever issues present themselves as deadlines approach. But this also leaves a lot of room for response and reaction instead of substantial exploration over time. In theory, my offering is one from a “millennial” perspective. But considering the size and breadth of the generation, that perspective requires some refinement for it to remain relevant.
The same day I asked my wife to help me figure out what theme would best suit my personal, professional and creative interests, I watched the newest title in the “Terminator” franchise, “Terminator Genisys.” I am embarrassed to admit this: It was as bad as you would imagine it to be, but it helped me refine my search for the right lens. In “Genisys,” machines become self-aware and the fabled judgment day ensues. Humans live under decades of war against the machines.
The Terminator apocalypse metaphor is often interpreted as a crass suggestion of the inevitability of our demise at the hands of our own invention. Maybe this is what they’re going for.
But ultimately, in viewing the latest in the series, I had thought that maybe it’s more specifically about our anxieties — about how we will co-exist with our inventions — than it is about our inevitable demise. Our projected future survival is never in question; we’re adaptable. So much so, in fact, that we use the technology that turns against us in the war it wages against us.
I am fascinated by this concept — how we survive and how we adapt in order to do so. After all, what is adaptation but the primary mechanism by which survival becomes possible? I explained this interest to my wife, and she found the unifying theme in my work. How will we adapt to the epidemics that face us today and that we inflict upon ourselves? How will we respond to violence, institutional racism and other related ills, and how have we adapted and survived in the face of these things to this point?
Depending on the day or even the moment, I convince myself it is over for us. This is particularly the case when I see anything by way of widespread support for Donald Trump, but — and this isn’t necessarily justification — we can understand his support in the context of a great deal of unhelpful and hateful feelings and perspectives rooted in anxiety about instability and what’s next. We used to have some sense of what the next decade would look like. Now, it’s hard to imagine what a year to two down the road will look like. What skills will be required then? Will we remain relevant or become obsolete? Everything’s going to hell! If we don’t change things now and drastically, we’re bound for disaster.
But survival is in our very being — it is who, what and why we are. We can adapt, or we can die by inviting upon ourselves what comes with the refusal to adapt.
At my company, we are perpetually adapting our offerings, services and expertise to accommodate a market that changes as much in a year as it once did in a decade. Adaptation is mandatory, and the circumstances that require it are more unpredictable, demanding and frequent than they have ever been before.
In 2016, in a way that is more intentional than serendipitous, I look forward to concentrating on how we are adapting, how we will survive — or, perhaps, won’t — when confronted with revolutions and renaissance, large and small, as they present themselves.
How will we reconcile life as it changes before our eyes? How will we adapt to a future that presents itself in present tense? How will we survive?
Stay tuned.
Alex Steed has written about and engaged in politics since he was a teenager. He’s an owner-partner of a Portland-based content production company and lives with his family, dogs and garden in Cornish.
