🤞Hope: The Final Frontier

I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety about how to guide my 11-year-old daughter into an AI-driven future, so I wrote this to process it.

Modern Society was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Everyone was given the same expectations.
Work hard at school
Follow the rules.
Get a good degree.
And you, too, could win the golden ticket and live a good life.

That was the social contract.

It worked for the Boomers.
And for Gen X-ers.

For everyone else, it stopped working.

Millennials and Gen Z did exactly what was asked of them and still lost.
They lost because the social contract broke.

The golden ticket was an illusion.

And when the illusion fades, it’s replaced with ”Why bother?!”

The Happiness Gap

Imagine happiness is a simple equation.

Happiness = reality minus expectations.

The gap between reality and expectations is unhappiness.

You didn’t invent your expectations.
They were passed down to you by parents who believed the system worked because, for them, it did.

For Millennials, the promise was clear.
Work hard.
Get a degree.
Get a good job.
Live a good life.

Buy a house.
Buy a luxury German car.
A couple of holidays a year.
A family.

That was the social contract.

The reality?
Crippling student debt.
No housing ladder.
Two kids are a financial flex.

Millennial expectation minus the reality =
disillusionment.

Gen Z and the Collapse of Belief

Gen Z were told the same story.

Get good grades.
Get a good degree.
Get a job.

But there are more degrees than jobs.
Wages are stagnant.
Security is gone.

Gen Z already know they won’t own a home.
They won’t retire comfortably.
They may never catch up.

Nihilism is a now trending term for Gen Z

Gen Z expectation minus reality = existential nihilism.

When hard work no longer maps to outcome, belief dies.

In the UK, 700,000 university graduates are unemployed.
Average graduate student debt sits at £53k.
Most graduates are paying a 9% of their salary for thirty years.

Gen Z are a generation trapped in a student debt spiral for an education that only delivers broken promises.

The system is broken.

Gen Alpha and the Real Danger

This is my daughter’s generation.

How long will it take for Gen Alpha to realise the system is broken?

When they can see that degrees don’t provide jobs.
That university comes with decades of crippling debt.

Why study hard at school for a future that no longer exists?

This collapse started long before AI.
AI is just accelerating it.

The education system was designed for the industrial age.
To produce obedient workers for factories and then offices.

But the factories are filling with robots.
The offices with AI algorithms.

Corporations will still need humans

We are entering the corporate gig economy.

Just as Uber Eats and Deliveroo avoid pension contributions, sick pay and holidays by using contractors, corporations will do the same at scale.

In the near future, most so-called white-collar workers will be freelancers, coaches and consultants.

We’re clearly moving from a society that is mostly employed to mostly self-employment.

But we’re not preparing our kids for this.

The New World

The education system must change to reflect this new world.

Teachers aren’t failing.
Most schools care deeply.

My daughter is in one of the best state high schools in the UK. We got super lucky.
She’s getting a fantastic education.

But it’s only preparing her for a future of employment.

That’s the problem.

We need to start preparing kids for a freelance future, not to replace the current education system, but to augment it by teaching them practical entrepreneurial skills.

Otherwise, the alternative is this: When incentives disappear, behaviour changes.

If degrees don’t guarantee jobs,
if jobs don’t guarantee security,
if security doesn’t guarantee a good life,

Then Gen Alpha will, like Gen Z, lose hope and say, “Why bother?!”

Building the New Golden Ticket

What does this mean for Gen Alpha?

It means teaching our kids how to think creatively, not just what to memorise and repeat.
How to spot patterns.
How to solve real problems.

We need to teach kids how to become creative entrepreneurs.

We need to teach them how to manage personal finances.

How to vibe code websites with AI.
How to vibe code apps with AI.
How to launch E-comm stores.
How to leverage Facebook ads.
How to monetise faceless YouTube channels.
How to start and monetise podcasts.
How to become a freelancer, coach, or consultant.

Because in a world with no guaranteed path or job security,
entrepreneurial skills, agency, and adaptability become the new golden tickets.

Arthur Schopenhauer said:
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit.
Genius hits a target no one else can see.”

The Social Contract Reset

In the new world, seeing the target no one else can see matters more than following the rules of a broken path.

Because it’s judgment and taste. AI cannot replace taste.

Even before AI, it felt like society was resetting, just as it has repeatedly across history.

For non-conformist multipotentialites, it’s preparing ourselves and our kids for change.

It’s about adaptability.
It’s about innovation.

It’s about experimentation.

It’s about giving the next generation something the old social contract no longer can.

Hope.