the greatest challenge is in knowing the challenge..

I had a great dinner & conversation last night with a wonderful group of people, among them Dr. Laura Marsh. Laura is a fascinating woman - she's been a staff scientist at Los Alamos labs, written countless papers and a science textbook on primates, taught at university level, spent the past 25 years researching in Central and South America in the jungles, and currently lives and owns a comic book store in Santa Fe. All this and she's only 40.

We spoke about many problems, questions, and issues facing the world today, and debated dozens of theoretical solutions. Laura recalled a student who approached her once because he wanted to be an activist; he wanted to promote some type of social change, to make things better, but he didn't know what cause to support. Laura told the story with the same sense of original shock she experienced. She has never suffered for a lack of a cause to promote.

I can understand that kid's perspective. As someone who knows that things are messed up wanting to make a difference, it's tough to know which direction to go. I've heard people say, "just start somewhere!", but that's part of the problem that got us here in the first place.

Humanity doesn't have any more sense of direction than that kid. Collectively, we're running around in 6 billion directions, all working in our own lives. Together we make up this planet, but there's no one in the driver's seat. Sure, there's leaders, there's people in positions of power, but there's no master plan, no road map.

We face a tidal wave of seemingly organized powers - business, finance, politics are all very aligned, in many ways. There are small minor differences, but the end goal is the same - to make money. Money is so easy to quantify, to compare, and to keep score. You know when you're winning by looking at the bottom line.

The road map to making money is easy - it's a business plan. A good one includes stated goals, objectives, organizational structures, key roles, and benchmarks. Benchmarks are specific points where you know that you've reached the next step in the grander scheme. They tell you that you've gotten to the point in the path where it's time to take the next planned course of action.

What are the largest challenges that face our society? Is the lack of community responsible for our individualistic country that has spawned so much greed and corruption in this world? Where does the root of our myriad social woes lead, and how to treat it without pesticides?

There's no business plan for the planet just yet, and especially not one that fits us all into nice tidy slots to explain exactly what our role is to be in this world. There's no instruction manual on life - it's up to us to figure it out.