| Mehmet Murat BEKDÝK | |
| Editor-in-Chief |
|
TOWARDS CREATING A BETTER WORLD |
In these first days of the new year, I want to share with you a part of the book named “Future Trends” of Patrick Gibson (“En Etkin 500 Trend, Neden Kitabevi, November 2007) meant to discuss how individuals and companies can survive and succeed by 3000.
In the third millennium, creating a better world will be the dominant theme of the future and corporate citizenship and the fact that workers feel that they do something worth to do will be very important. Many people will start to feel that life is more than selling. Life is more than managing. More than working too… In fact, life is more than the life itself. What will be left from us when we die? How our children will remember us? These questions will gain more importance in shaping our lives.
In a seminar organized by a big finance company in New York, a senior manager of a leading finance organization said to me during the break: “I feel very bad at the moment. I should be now at home with my son who is about to fail in mathematics.” And he related his discussion with his son:
“You can’t be something if you don’t know mathematics.”
“What for?”
“You can’t be successful.”
“I don’t care”
“You wouldn’t have a good job like me.”
“Forget the job daddy. Look at what you have done to mommy and me. I don’t want such a job, I would prefer to sweep the streets.”
The father was terrified. He was shocked not only from his son’s attitude towards his job, but also from seeing how his son was hurt from his absences due to job and how he accumulated this feeling. This was the voice of the generation of the post third millennium generation which reacts to the values of the third millennium, when “more” meant better”, progress meant “money” and money meant “happiness”.
Difficulties foster pain but sometimes wealth gives pain too. Living in safety and having something in the foundation of the existence that remains unchanged are essential requirements of the human being. Most of the people can’t cope with the big and permanent changes that happen in different domains of their lives and spend too many resources when dealing with their daily lives. Change, either you change home or job or having a baby, getting married or getting divorce, is a major cause of stress. In this context, in a fragmented world which moves very fast and becomes more and more irregular, long-term relationships will become more important and in developed countries, more people will volunteer for social services, as people discover new methods to create a difference and have goals for themselves. 61 % of US citizens are already working 200 hours in average a year as volunteers for a very small wage. If these hours were paid with the average wage, their donation would have been as big as 4,5 % of the GDP and 12% of the federal budget. Unofficial volunteer services like shopping for a sick patient would result in a higher percentage. Similar statistics can be found in most of the EU countries and many other countries in the world.
I wish you all a happy new year, health, success and happiness, hoping to see more people with the same spirit everywhere, from the poorest African village to the richest Swiss towns.
