This post is pretty special for two reasons:
1. It marks the beginning of June - the month dedicated to inclusion (also pride month)
2. And it marks the beginning of the last month for this year of the Future Blog - indeed, only two more posts are coming for this year.
This post also comes on June 9th, right after World Oceans Day - which is celebrated on June 8th. The reason for this is that this post celebrates a young woman, but also a sailor: Jessica Watson. She is the youngest sailor to circumnavigate the world at the age of 16 - she is also the protagonist of the film "True Spirit" which was released earlier this year.
Apparently, there isn't a clear rationale behind devoting the first post of inclusion month to a sailor - but actually, the reasons are many: Jessica in order to reach her goal had to overcome several adversities, as well as the stigma that society put on her based on her gender, age and neurodiversity. By being 16, female, and dyslexic, Jessica challenged people's beliefs of what a sailor should look like.
The point of sharing my thoughts on this blog, since the very beginning, was to communicate to others ideas, rather than images. Otherwise, I would have chosen to work only on a social media platform - without developing unique written content. Unfortunately, nowadays, the social media part - which should be just for advertising - has become the predominant part of the internet, while content stays in the background, if there is any.
The risk with building a society that is image-based, rather than content-based, is that we might end up becoming the victims of prejudice. For example, though we see a multitude of initiatives to empower queer people - pride month is one of these and is a very wonderful initiative in my opinion - we are then overwhelmed by a multitude of images related to such initiatives, rather than real content. Pride month is important when it comes to social media and parades, but then, at the end of the month, how has the life of queer people truly changed?
My point is not to criticize marketing initiatives, which are important, but to say that they should go hand in hand with content, which should be the focus and not the background. By not backing marketing with content proposals, we might end up living in a superficial world. In a world where we believe that a sailor is only middle-aged eating tuna fish on his boat or worse, that a genius has to be a white guy with a funny moustache - like the incredible artist Salvador Dalì or physic Albert Einstein.
Even worse, the opposite of what is indicated above sometimes happens: instead of overexposure to images, we have a cancellation of our own history (see "Cancel Culture"). Yes, one can argue that the cancellation of certain parts of society has happened before - including for women - and so is right to do it now. The problem is that cancelling what was passed down to us, with the good and the bad parts, is not going to change anything - rather it will make us probably make the same mistakes as we are going to forget what happened. The removal of statues is a perfect example of how simplistic the society we live in has become: either one is bombarded by images or either something is hidden, without a middle ground or room for reflection.
I decided to call this piece "The future is at sea" not just for Jessica Waston, but also because Einstein famously sailed to think better, and that helped him to explain the universe. The sea is the ideal metaphor for the human mind, as it is both deep and vast: to take our boat and go sailing, hence to leave what we think is right and what we are told by social media or the news, and to start thinking is what is going to save us from becoming a terribly homologated society.
Only by looking at ideas and concepts, rather than at appearances, we can really build a future that is inclusive and also meritocratic: a future where people can live freely because they are judged not by their cover but by who they truly are. Too is often the fear of looking bad, of looking different, that holds us back from achieving our greatest potential - too often we prefer to stay all in the gutter than to look up at the stars.
Love,
Elena
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