Look forward, openly

It can be difficult to accept that someone else’s ideas might be valid if they directly conflict with your own experience. That’s where much of our public discussion on very important topics often falters.

Going into a new year is a good time to re-assess our own assumptions, especially this year.

Too often, certainty stands in the way of understanding. Very smart people, exceptional leaders, the brilliant among us can be certain they’re on the right track. We demand it of them, and sometimes that demand keeps them from serving us well. The followers need to know how to be flexible, too, and accept that certainty is almost always an illusion.

We have major, multiple existential problems in our broader society at this point in history. The answers are unlikely to come about in exactly the way anyone foresees.

An example: The best minds at some of the largest, oldest, most experienced companies could not have predicted the amount of demand for climate-friendly products right now.

Ford has committed to offering consumers all-electric vehicles but undershot on their planning for that part of their business. The company has announced it stopped taking orders for its new all-electric Lightning F-150 pickup at 200,000. The factory will only produce 80,000 a year.

The people in charge apparently could not see what was obvious to many others.

That happens at every level of society. Small-town governments and volunteer organizations also deal with such challenges.

Surviving and thriving in the near future will require a much more finely tuned ability to listen to others, to accept that we as individuals cannot always know what they can. Open minds willing to find solutions, not shut them down, are essential from here forward.

Scott Hunter

editor and publisher