Title page
Summary of
The Perennials
A
Summary of Mauro F. Guillén’s book
The Megatrends Creating a
Postgenerational Society
GP SUMMARY
Summary of Zero Days by Mauro F. Guillén: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society
By GP SUMMARY© 2023, GP SUMMARY.
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This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Mauro F. Guillén’s “The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society” designed to enrich your reading experience.
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INTRODUCTION
BMW, a recognizable brand, is pioneering a multigenerational workplace where up to five generations of people collaborate and bring their unique skills and perspectives to the table. The company has redesigned factories and sections within them to make several generations feel comfortable toiling together, leading to productivity increases and higher job satisfaction. BMW's parent plant in Munich, located north of Munich, employs around 8,000 employees from over 50 countries.
The multigenerational workplace may seem like a recipe for cultural misunderstanding and conflict, as many people believe that generations are motivated by different aspects of the job, such as satisfaction, money, or employee benefits. However, there are distinct advantages to having several generations collaborate with one another. Researchers at the Ohio State University discovered that creativity peaks when people are in their twenties and again in their fifties, as cognitive ability alone is not enough to compensate for the decline.
The growing potential of the multigenerational workplace challenges the traditional way we think about people of different ages and what we can do and accomplish at various points in life. The sequential model of life, which has been organized into a rigid series of distinct stages, is becoming obsolete due to long-standing demographic transformations. As a result, we now live much longer lives than ever before, with Americans living an average of another twenty-three years, Western Europeans of 25 years, Asians of 20 additional years, and Africans of 16 years. This means that a seventy-year-old today can pursue the active lifestyle of a sixty-year-old from two generations ago.
The definitions of old and young have shifted over time due to the lengthening of both life spans and health spans. The Friendly Societies Act of the United Kingdom defined "old age" as above fifty years, while the World Health Organization moves between sixty and sixty-five. The World Economic Forum defines old as the "prospective age" at which life expectancy is fifteen years, or when the average person has a decade and a half of life left. However, not everything in this trend looks rosy. Frictions are proliferating between younger, taxpaying generations and those in retirement enjoying healthcare and pension benefits.
Many people struggle with transitioning from one stage to another, such as adolescence, midlife crisis, loneliness during retirement, or getting derailed due to a teenage pregnancy, dropping out of school, a family tragedy, a divorce, or substance abuse. Many mothers find it difficult to balance family and work, and most are far from being treated equitably in terms of career advancement and pay.
The postgenerational revolution is a social and political construction built on conceptions of patriarchy and bureaucracy that classify people into age groups and roles. The confluence of rising life expectancy, enhanced physical and mental fitness, and technology-driven knowledge obsolescence fundamentally alters the dynamics over the entire life course, redefining what we can do at different ages and how generations live, learn, work, and consume together. As longevity continues to soar, nine or ten generations may end up living together before midcentury.
Greater longevity has positive implications not just for retirees but for everyone at every stage of life. A longer life span creates more opportunities and wiggle room for their grandchildren to change course, take gap years, and reinvent themselves, no matter their age. However, this is only possible if governments, companies, and other organizations move away from the sequential model of life. If people could liberate themselves from the tyranny of "age-appropriate" activities, they might be able to pursue multiple careers, occupations, or professions, finding different kinds of personal fulfillment in each.
The author argues that the more decades of life people have ahead of them, the more important it is to keep their options open and the less useful making "big decisions" becomes. In a truly postgenerational society driven by the perennial mindset, teenagers will no longer have to agonize over the best path for them to pursue in terms of their studies or future jobs, knowing that a longer life span will afford plenty of opportunities for course correcting, learning new skills, and switching careers, depending on how the circumstances evolve. This could lead to a world where we can engage in more multigenerational activities and experience a more diverse array of opportunities over time. Technology may render our knowledge and experience outdated, but it also enables more flexible and iterative modes of learning and working.
In a truly postgenerational society, we will live several different lives in one, always in interaction with people of different generations in a society that will no longer be constrained by age or by distance, given the widespread use of digital platforms for remote work and learning. Individuals, companies, and governments that understand this potential will enter a new era of unrestricted living, learning, working, and consuming, thus unleashing a new universe of opportunities for people at all stages of life.
The author's book, 2030: How Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything, was written during the coronavirus pandemic. He shares his evolving thoughts and analysis with business executives, financial analysts, headhunters, government officials, school principals, independent bookstore owners, reading club members, high school students, newspaper founders, retirees, and medical personnel.
The author encourages people and organizations to see learning, working, and consuming in a different light, one that makes it possible for people and organizations to explore new horizons and push the limits of what they can do and accomplish throughout their lives. The author believes that the perennial mindset is a method rather than a solution to tackle the problems associated with the sequential model of life. It aims to challenge antiquated assumptions and persuade governments, companies, educational institutions, and other organizations to experiment with new models of living, learning, working, and consuming that take advantage of an increasingly postgenerational society.
THE FOUR STATIONS IN LIFE
In 1881, Otto von Bismarck, the "Iron Chancellor," aimed to transform Germany into an economic and geopolitical powerhouse. With vast deposits of coal and iron ore, a swelling population, financial capital, and a vibrant university system, Bismarck devised the idea of offering a guaranteed retirement income beyond the age of seventy. This led to the world's first state pension scheme in 1889, which was a preemptive strike against the growing socialist worker movement. The idea of a national pension system for all laborers spread around the world, with countries like the United Kingdom, France, and South Africa adopting such arrangements. The American national pension system, which covers industrial workers, was introduced in 1935.
Governments also saw the need to provide basic instruction in reading, writing, history, and arithmetic. This was partly motivated by nationalism and the labor requirements of the second Industrial Revolution, which ushered in science-based industries like chemicals, pharmaceuticals, electrical machinery, and automobiles. Employers realized that an educated workforce could be more productive, especially as industry became more capital-intensive. Schooling became an essential element in the rise of the wage-based employment system, as it provided a pool of standardized labor needed for continuous, predictable production of goods and services on an ever-larger scale.
Schooling became the cornerstone of the sequential model of life, sorting people into different social roles, careers, and jobs. Functionalist sociologist Talcott Parsons sought to answer the dual questions of how the school class functions to internalize in its pupils both the commitments and capacities for successful performance of their future adult roles and how it functions to allocate these human resources within the role-structure of the adult society. The elementary school class became an agency of socialization, reflecting the prevailing social structure and creating change and mobility.
In the decades since Parsons' famous essay, we have come to see schooling as both a haven of opportunity and a harbinger of inequality. The school system, presumably based on meritocratic principles, became a gigantic machine both for sorting children into adult roles and for reproducing the prevailing social hierarchy.
The idea of compulsory primary education dates back to Martin Luther's teachings, which emphasized literacy and promoting education as a Christian duty. The Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony mandated schooling in 1690, leading to the adoption of state-sponsored mass schooling in Prussia in 1763. In 1774, Austrian Emperor Joseph II sanctioned a universal compulsory education law, and the French Constitution of 1791 promulgated a system of public instruction common to all citizens.
Mass schooling was not embraced more broadly around the world until the late nineteenth century. In Britain, the Forster Elementary Education Act of 1870 created the foundations of a state educational system, with schooling made compulsory to age ten in 1876 and expanded to age twelve in 1899. In France, primary education was made free in 1881 and compulsory to age thirteen in 1882. By World War II, a unified curriculum for boys and girls had become the norm.
The sequential model of life, which combines compulsory schooling, wage-based employment, and pension schemes, has become the foundation for the sequential model of life. By the turn of the twenty-first century, virtually every country had embraced the idea that life proceeds in four separate and sequential stages: play, study, work, and retirement. This model has its advantages, such as predictability and classification of people into different age groups.
The sequential model of life continues to influence our culture, with books on self-esteem, teenage and young adulthood, and retirement.
The sequential model of life is deeply ingrained in culture and law, with national constitutions enshrining separate rights and obligations for underage children, students, workers, and retirees. The United Nations has created separate organizations to promote these stages, such as UNICEF for children, UNESCO for education, and the International Labour Organization for both workers and retirees. The compartmentalization of life has led to experts and scholars discussing the meaning of each stage, with each stage
Impressum
Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 31.08.2023
ISBN: 978-3-7554-5160-0
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Widmung:
Mauro Guillén's book, The Perennials, explores the societal shift caused by demographic and technological changes, proposing a postgenerational workforce called "perennials" who are not categorized by age or experience, and identifies cultural, organizational, and policy changes needed.