Different Minds, Thinking Alike

The Journey Ahead of Us

The Pursuit of Happiness

Have you ever realized how different we are from one another? Each individual has a different imagination and perception of how the future world is going to be. If you had the option to form the ministries of the future, would you consider a department of miracles as an option? One such thought provoking experiment was recently conducted at UTS, along with a few others from S P Jain School of Global Management, we got the opportunity to be a part of a discussion which looked at the aspects of forming a new imaginative world order and how it would look.

Your future Government: a thought experiment, an initiative to bring out the imagination of people across different backgrounds of culture, age, ethnicity, and nationality together to discuss about a possible new world. A question at that stage on one’s mind would be, can a group of such diverse people really come up with a collective agreement about what is it that humanity really needs?

The experiment was designed in such a way that all of us were divided into a groups of six for micro-level discussions within the group and also amongst a few groups later on. As the discussions began in each individual groups, our group was debating on choosing one department from the multiple ministries we were provided with. Some of the ministries we were deciding on included, department of innovation, discovery, newness, tinkering, caring etc. One of the group members came up with a phenomenal idea for a Ministry of Having Fun. This seemed like a great idea to all of us until we realized in unison that the world still lacks the basic needs each human is entitled to. Thus, we decided on the Department of Planet Sanctuary.

The Department of Planet Sanctuary was to ensure that all humans and (after-much debate to go vegan or not) animals receive the basic needs of food, water, shelter, clothing and acceptance. Since, the experiment did not look at the limitations of each of the departments in terms of funding, drawbacks etc. Each of the ideas had abundance of possibilities and infinite goodness coupled with them. Adding acceptance to the basic needs was crucial since we all understood that what each of us individuals need is being accepted. It does not just mean being accepted by others but self-acceptance was deemed essential to the growth of a better world.

In the bigger picture we were all searching for the same thing out there and within? And it turned out to be a simple answer, happiness. So, the simplest thing to measure if Department of Planet Sanctuary is functioning well or not is using a happiness index. Discussions regarding trade-off between short-term and long-term goals, mortality, euthanasia, were all conferred upon. In conclusion, the six of us has a united decision on the Department we would have in the future. It was then time to witness what a couple of other groups had come up with at the macro level. What happened next blew my mind.

Each group presented their idea and each one of us had the same revelation, all of us at the end wanted the same thing. We all wanted acceptance from each other and from ourselves. The fact that 150 minds from different backdrops had come to a joint understanding of what they would like to see as a part of the future world was astonishing. Acceptance is the way to happiness and in our daily lives we were all looking for that through different channels. A couple of groups came up with extreme thoughts as to how to achieve the desired objective which included, Department of Miracles, another department which ensures craziness and fun, crowd sourcing of policies based on the similar lines of Tinder, Trip-advisor based rating for humans and other such wild concepts came to the fore.

This thought provoking experiment led each one of us to believe in the good fate of humanity and how we, as individuals could bring about a change in the world. Despite being so different from each other, we are all much the same ultimately.

The pursuit of happiness was undeniable and felt closer than it was ever before.

-Vikash Kumar, S P Jain School of Global Management