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Conclusions: Optimism justified; potential unbound

While historically it is the nature of youth to be more optimistic than the aging generation that produced it, Generation Peace is uniquely justified in its optimism and prepared to fulfill its potential. Four primary assets emerged from the Generation Peace survey and Forum that suggest this:

  1. Generation Peace has unprecedented access to an unprecedented volume of information, ideas, tools, relationships and opportunities that can be used to actualize personal potential and to effect large-scale change through small and individual steps.
  2. Generation Peace is unusually intertwined with the generation that produced it. It is the offspring of the original “peace movement” generation — the boomers — and stands to benefit from their vision, mentoring and encouragement. At the same time, boomers are inclined to look upon Generation Peace with pride and appreciation as it continues in new ways the work the boomers themselves began.
  3. The growing shift from single-career lifetimes to multi-career lifetimes creates an opportunity for members of Generation Peace to shift their sense of identity from external occupations to internal aspirations, perhaps pre-empting the optimism-dampening effects of boredom and burnout.
  4. Generation Peace is fundamentally the most globally-oriented generation in history. If indeed harmony in the world is predicated in part on deeper appreciation of how people across cultures are more alike than unalike, the potential of this generation to bring individuals and groups together is exponentially multiplied by its innate disregard for physical definitions of community.

There is a caution, however.

The degree to which Generation Peace is able to translate its aspirations into achievements is dependent upon the degree to which it is able to establish a bridge between its incredible bounty of virtual resources and experiences and authentic and meaningful face-to-face encounters. Generation Peace has better tools and better chances to do great things when compared with other generations. But what hasn’t changed is the need to start the journey to peace by looking first inward, and then into the eyes and hearts of fellow human beings.