Wishes for the 2012 World

2011 is draggin' its tired old butt toward its death at midnight. A brand new baby year will be born, and like all babies, it carries our hopes and dreams of health and happiness. But as with human babies, years have a tendency to weave their way through ups and downs, the good and the bad.

Still, I offer up three wishes for the world and the new baby 2012. While, of course, I hope for world peace and the end of hunger and human suffering, I'm pragmatic enough to know that all of those things may not happen within the next 12 months, so I'll scale back on the grandiose and wish for the possibles.

• Common courtesy, civility, better listening and understanding among folks. People are angry, I get that. People - well, mainly politicians - think compromise is weak and winning the day is the central goal (even if it means losing the future). Appalling things are said. Publicly. And spun throughout the media and on social networks, where they reverberate in dangerous, immoral ways. My wish for 2012 is that everyone would think before they speak or bang out something to the internet. Be nice It won't compromise your ideals, it will enhance them.
• An end to intergenerational squabbling. We're all in this together, people, from the newly-born to the nearly-dead. Each generation is complex; each has its inventors, dictators, artists, and baby-killers. Each has unique struggles and problems to face. (Example, "the Greatest Generation," is a term coined by Tom Brokaw in 1998, not a moniker pre-ordained by God. I seem to recall they were seen as the bad guys, creators of the soul-sucking military-industrial complex, for a few decades. See how fortunes change?) I guess in some sense, every generation "steals" from the next, but it also provides new ways of coping and changing the world for good. Attacking the problems of unemployment, lousy health care and education, and diminishing quality of life benefits should be what we're all working for, across generations. Be nice (see wish #1).
• An end to anything relating to the Kardashians. Please. I know this can happen because I wished for the same thing to happen to Paris Hilton a few years back. Go. Away. And y'all stop watching and feeding this disgusting display of silliness.

In short, let's be nicer and encourage everyone else (folks on the street, TSA, politicians, CEOs, and our children) to be nicer. If we manage that then the intergenerational pissing and moaning will go away, as will anyone's need to feed the Kardashian machine.

Who knows? Maybe world peace will follow.