This is not the 1950s, so can we move on already?

I wasn’t alive in the 1950s, but recent hot news items make a case that we’re either clinging to that decade or drowning in its detritus — no matter how many cute electronic gadgets lie within our reach.

I’m sure it was all fine and good then. Witness all the wholesome American goodness on display in Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, and Leave it to Beaver. But isn’t it time to move on at least to the next decade already? I’m still looking forward to all that peace and harmony my teenage babysitters crooned about in the 1960s; you know, when peeeeeace will gui-ide the-uh plannet and lo-ove will steer the stars.

Because peace and harmony was the message that seemed to permeate and form my impressionable years, I was pretty convinced...

it was not only possible but inevitable. I was prepared to be part of it. I wanted to be part of it; many an evening I pored over the family encyclopedias, paying particular attention to world cultures.
Of course, by late junior high and early high school when the Vietnam War ended, President Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal, headlines proclaimed that our generation would never see a dime of Social Security, and the oil crisis loomed, I felt like I’d been duped. And I was pretty darned upset about it too. In fact, it took another decade or so of reprogramming for me to get over it — well, most of it.

And whenever I’d run across some poor dreamy-eyed idealist with earnest talk of peace and harmony, I’d respond with an eye-roll and ask pointedly, “On what planet?” or “Get real. Do you live under a rock?”

As I sat pondering all the 1950s-esque bigoted issues in the news recently, an email came in from a friend in Boulder asking if I am going to attend the Unreasonable Institute Climax event late July of this year. I had no idea what she was talking about. But thankful for the distraction, I went to the Institute’s website and within 20 minutes, not only did I reserve a ticket for the event, but all those childhood promises of peace and harmony came flooding back to me.

Here is an organization committed to helping entrepreneurs of all ages from all over the world whose ideas are so big and unreasonable when it comes to addressing the promises we grew up with that they are often met with the same eye-rolls I’ve been giving idealists for decades. And yet, at the Unreasonable Institute, business mentors and angel investors are stepping up to help bring these ideals to reality. After I’d snagged my ticket, I wrote back to my friend, thanking her.

Then I went digging for more evidence of peace and harmony — and found all kinds of proactive efforts reminiscent of the promises of the 1960s, including Edward O. Wilson’s latest book, The Social Conquest of Earth. He is convinced that understanding biology is the key to resolving human conflict.

“We have created a Star Wars civilization but we have Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology,” Wilson wrote. But he is taking it a step further. His Biodiversity Foundation is working with 3D animators, educators, and multimedia artists trained in science to create an online beginners’ course in biology distributed free by Apple in 32 countries, including the U.S.

The more I dug, the more I found.

Maybe all that peace and harmony is back on the table after all. Or maybe not. I mean really, those 1960s babysitters were just silly teenagers. Could be the air of spring. Either way, it’s far more interesting than this week’s Atomic Café menu of political and economic bigotry. Eye-roll, anyone?

This post is excerpted from my weekly column as published in The Daily Sentinel Sunday, April 29, 2012.