What Should We Teach Our Kids?

I ran across a post on X the other day where prominent author and thinker Yuval Noah Harari was talking about how this might be the first time in history where we don’t actually know how to answer the question: “what should we teach our kids?”

I’ve been worrying about this a lot myself.As I think about my two boys and the future they are growing into, I have serious questions and concerns.The politics are one thing.I absolutely do not want my boys to come of age in an era of division, conflict and war and it feels like that’s exactly where we are headed.The economic picture looks just as uncertain and scary.Just what are these kids going to do for work?AI technologies pose an existential threat to the parenting / education playbook of the last several decades.In the good old days—i.e. last year!—it was all about STEAM education and raising morally, socially, and emotionally competent individuals.No easy task, to be sure, but at least there was a framework.Now what?

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I really feel for the youth today.Being a parent tends to bring that sentiment out in an individual—well, it should, at least!And it’s not just the little kids I’ve been hanging around; it’s also those who are coming of age today.My own early adulthood, even with all the stress of 9/11 and the war on terror, seems so much easier than things are today.

Anyway, with the aim of helping both parents and the youth, I decided I would try this week to come up with 5 good answers to the question “what should we teach our kids?”While I was surprised by what I came up with—it’s much more philosophical than I thought it would be—ultimately I think it’s a good list!

1. Think for Yourself

2. Learn How to Be Resilient

3. Be a Professional

4. With Money, Trust Nothing

5. Be a Civil Citizen

Let’s go through them in a little more detail.

Think for Yourself

This one may be obvious but is no trivial matter.The single greatest threat to your freedom is the potential for advanced technology to turn you into a mental slave.Thinking for yourself has always been hard—remember how much Socrates’ contemporaries struggled with the task—and today, it is exceedingly so and about to get worse.

If you don’t make a fully conscious and disciplined effort to maintain an independent mind, you will get mentally coopted by one false narrative after another, make a bunch of bad decisions, and never become the person you were meant to become.

Thinking for yourself—in many ways the ultimate challenge of life itself—is all about awareness.A quick trick you can use to see if you are operating with a free mind is to stop and ask yourself simple questions like:

Wait, is this something I’ve actually thought about?

Do I even know what I believe here?

Do I have any good reason or basis to believe what I’m saying or doing?

If the answer to these questions isn’t a definitive “yes,” you are almost certainly operating from coopted narratives.

For those who really want to get serious about independent thinking, study Socrates.After a few years with him, you can turn to contemporary thinkers like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and Shane Parrish.

Learn How to Be Resilient

Resiliency has always been a key to success but, in the coming age, it will be a basic requirement for survival.Things are evolving so rapidly on the technological front that we are in a near-constant state of creative economic destruction.That means, in your career there will be a lot of pivots and failures and stopping and starting.To survive, not only will you have to constantly learn and try new things, but also you will have to get used to the idea of bouncing back to your feet as you get knocked down over and over.

At the risk of being the out of touch middle aged Dad, I recommend you study ideas like the Mamba Mentality and look to the advice of people like David Goggins and Jocko Willink.I don’t believe at all that life is about feeling safe and keeping yourself comfortable, like so many of our contemporaries seem to believe.In fact, just the opposite is true!To live a good life and find success, you simply must learn how to challenge and push yourself and develop the psychological strength to risk failure over and over and over again.Without resiliency, you will become a shadow of your true self and the world will eat you up.

Be a Professional

There is a huge market opportunity right now for people who are willing to be professionals.Things have gotten so bad when it comes to workplace culture, that the basics have become a competitive advantage.For motivated individuals who are willing to be exceedingly thorough in their work and mindful of the details, see things through to a successful conclusion or decision and work really hard, the sky is the limit.

So, be that breath of fresh air that everyone needs.Show up to work every day.Don’t make excuses.Don’t complain.Don’t get rattled when things don’t go your way or when your colleagues get mad at you for working too hard.Reject the Siren’s calls for mediocrity and the bare minimum all around you.Instead, do what needs to be done to the absolute best of your ability every single day.Period.

With Money, Trust Nothing

When it comes to money and finance, be very careful about who you trust and whose advice you choose to follow.The finance world is always pretty suspect.Whether it’s thefraudsters or the chronic grossly misaligned incentives, hardly a soul is actually watching out for your best interests.And these days, things are even worse, for we are entering a period where you won’t be able to rely on the financial promises at the core of the system.

First of all, when it comes to retirement, no one, not even the mighty US government is coming to save you!Most people don’t understand or, perhaps, don’t want to admit it, but barring some miracle (like a sustained population surge from strategically intelligent immigration), the failure of Social Security is a foregone conclusion.The young would be very foolish to think this money is going to be around for them!The same is true of private pensions, which are already actuarially insolvent.

Secondly, the stock market might not be the tailwind it has been for the Boomer generation.It might not be as simple as buying index ETF’s and watching your net worth grow.With both bad demographics and too much debt, stock market volatility might become the norm rather than the exception.

Finally, as we’ve seen in the last few years with this inflation scare, the value of money itself is at risk.You have to understand the core truth of political economic history—that governments always choose inflation over austerity—and protect yourself accordingly.

So, get your mind right.Resolve to study and master things like money, economics, and investing.Don’t get lulled into financial complacency or, worse, tricked by global Wall Street into products and decisions that aren’t good for you.Take command of your financial life.

Be a Civil Citizen

The attempted assassination of former President Trump this past weekend should serve as a warning to us all of the disastrous consequences of extreme incivility in political discourse.You cannot fall for the false allure of us-versus-them thinking.You must rise above the temptation to engage in existential debate.Not everything is do or die in politics.In fact, hardly anything is.

People who learn the art of rational and civil discourse will not only have a whole lot more friends but also will be much more effective in their efforts to make their communities better.

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