I believe
By: Karena De Souza
Tags: Manifesto, Gen Z, Acumen, Future Of Work, Climate Action

My Manifesto for a Moral Revolution — Part 2

This is part II of my manifesto written in response to the question posed by Jacqueline Novogratz and her Acumen team in the class Path of Moral Leadership.

What is the “impossible” you dare to imagine as “possible”?

What is the story about the future or an alternate reality your manifesto will tell?

What will help you sustain and thrive throughout this work?

These questions are based on her book ‘ Manifesto for a Moral Revolution ‘.

The manifesto was the last deliverable in 10 weeks of work in the company of so many others. I had opted in to the program searching for the language that would help me make a more effective case.

My mission: Offer hope to Generation Z. Make a difference in the climate crisis.

I am a dot turned out to be Part I of this conversation.

Here is Part II:

This is what I believe

- that we are capable of amazing possibility.

The world — in all its glory, dirt and grime — has been handed down to my generation by all the hundreds of previous generations who battled through despair, disease, war, and so much more.

What do we do with it? How do we accept this gift?

Do we tie a ribbon on it, and hand it forward to the generation after us?

Or do we open it, take a hammer to it and offer up the shards?

I believe

I believe we are capable of generosity and possibility.

I believe that the generations coming after us are filled with imagination, moral courage and a passion for righting wrongs and that we are here to empower and encourage them.

I believe that we will create a new tomorrow that protects our environment.

As a society before us challenged the morality of keeping slaves though that had been a tradition for centuries across multiple cultures, we will not accept an economic structure that demands that we pillage the earth’s most precious resources purely to sustain our national economies.

Instead, we will protect all the resources, particularly the water and clean air.

I believe we can invent the technologies that allow us to indulge in the advances of modern science and technology, but make the move to a greener use of energy.

We can feed the Earth’s growing population.

We can find meaningful engagement for each human so they contribute to society as a whole, embracing robotics and AI as our ancestors embraced the plough, made bigger, not less, by technology.

I believe in nurturing the generation that follows us with compassion, but also charging them with the responsibility to care for Mother Earth, not to squander its resources.

I trust and I know

I trust in the power of connection — families, communities, classes like Acumen & Akimbo that connect like-minded souls to each other so that we are able to foster a mindset of abundance and possibility. I am sustained by my connection to humanity and to nature: to the sunrise, the melting snow, the enduring cycle of tides and daffodils that bloom in the spring. Nature teaches us the resilience of rebirth.

I know that this world will survive past my race. So I believe in the Earth and place my trust in my generation and the generations after me to respect the Earth as a living being that pushes back when hurt but embraces when whole.

I will do what is within my power — stretching that capability to all its might — to make a green and wonderful world available to the next 7 generations, to gift to them as was gifted to me: the wonder, awe and amazement at what Nature can give us.

And in doing so, I honour the memories and sacrifices of the generations before, as well as the powers that created this beautiful Earth and bequeath to the generations that will follow.

This also exists as podcast episode 49 on my podcast Tilt the Future:

What do you believe?

What would you write in your manifesto?

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