Designing the future of humanity

Being a father of two children is a role I take with great consideration. I choose to look at it as 'designing the future of humanity'.

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Overview

As a parent, I do not look at myself as a father.

I prefer to look at myself as a 'designer of the future of humanity'.

This way I think of holistic ways in which I can help my children achieve their human potential.

Classic parenting

Most parents of today follow the 'classic' rules of parenting.

This is why most hospitals will encourage parents to read books on parenting and attend 'training' workshops before birth.

Most parents find it hard enough to achieve just the basics of parenting.

They struggle to handle the basics of looking after children and regular parenting 'duties'.

They can fall into a trap of perceived mundane and repetitive nature of parenting.

This happens because they see parenting as a 'duty'.

They can also see parenting as a form of a trap in life.

It can prevent them from having the same pre-parenting freedom they used to enjoy before.

When parenting fails

Parents tend to be unmotivated to get involved with their children over a long period of time.

Things can become tiring and seem like a real struggle after a while.

Children often do not behave the way parents expect them to behave.

They often do not behave in way that seems 'rational'.

They have their own characteristics, feelings, preferences and their own unique mind.

These are hard things to prepare oneself for before becoming a parent proper.

It is our expectations that lead towards us being suboptimal parents.

In turn that creates children who find it hard to achieve their ultimate human potential.

This creates a society which breeds generations that are less capable than generations from the times past.

Design the future of humanity

I do not consider myself to be 'a parent'.

I consider myself to be a designer of human beings.

I reframed parenting into this paradigm on purpose to push myself to think ahead at all times.

It also makes the role of a parent much more interesting.

Just like I design many other things in my professional career, I also design people at home.

My children.

Since most design tasks are not done alone by myself, I have to work as a team with my wife and family.

I also have to understand and remember that the nature of the situation I'm looking at is always changing.

The best decision for everyone is often unlikely to be an obvious one.

I need to tune into every aspect of my children's lives and keep a constant eye on it, ready to adapt my approach.

Ethnographic observation, in essence.

I have to be able to listen and understand what is going on in their minds.

I need to expose them to experiences that can shape their better and more holistic understanding of the world.

I also need to always remember that they already know better than I do and have the capacity to know better than me.

I can give them shortcuts into understanding matters now which took me decades to work out and learn.

Parenting has taught me more about life than anything else.

It's the most complex design task I'm undertaking, day to day for many more years to come.

It's very challenging, but also very cool to be designing the future of humanity.

Published on: 14 Jan 2016