July 21, 2019 The Real Significance of the Moon Landing EntertainmentMeaningfulness Share this post: Even if you weren’t born 50 years ago, you can’t help but appreciate the profundity of Apollo 11’s achievement on July 20, 1969. It is one of those events that is meaningful for virtually everyone. I have three special reasons why I attach significance to that July 20 evening. 1/ The first is entirely personal. To set the stage, back in July 1969, I was closing in on five years old. That night, my parents hosted some friends to watch events unfold on the small black & white box like 600 million others around the world. I can say that night was remarkable for two small steps… Rather than write out the whole story, I submitted my souvenir of the night as an audio recording to the BBC Global News podcast. My story was aired at the end of the July 17 2019 episode… Here it is (time-stamped) via my favourite podcast service, Overcast. It lasts less than a minute. Click on the image above or on this link: overcast.fm/+Ip8WHWfQE/25:… As I have said, it was one small step for this boy… Meaningfulness that unites 2/ The second reason is that, whatever your souvenir, this remarkable feat touched and united people around the world (at least outside the USSR). At some level, there was/is a universal understanding about the magnitude of the achievement. We see in Apollo 11’s successful round trip an exploit that is supra-earthly. The realization today, however, is that we are missing any semblance of a unifying concept — at every level of society, to say nothing of globally. You might have thought, for example, that climate change was right up there as a possible unifier. But alas, we prefer to battle for our ever-shrinking sense of community. As a result, we can’t seem to get agreement on any substantive course of action, through which we might find we have more in common than not. Building a future 3/ The third key point is linked to the fact that today is my daughter Alexandra’s 20th birthday. She was born thirty years and a day after the moon landing. But, what future are we painting for this younger generation? I believe that my generation — and those with influence — need to participe in crafting a more robust and realistic vision of the future. We need to take responsibility for how we have gotten to where we are today and start to ask the harder questions and debate the more thorny issues… with an oft- forgotten civility. The other day I was struck by how, while taking a short train trip, I felt the need to talk lowly about important matters that will affect the future. The reason? Because of the fear of offending a stranger or having our conversation taken out of context. These important questions cut across party lines and even suggest a re-evaluation of our democratic process. We must look under the hood of the far right movements to gain due insights into what is going on. We need to be having conversations that are at times not politically correct. And I — as a stale, pale male — should not feel barred from openly discussing issues that media and universities are preferring to shut down. It’s not that I want to exert privilege. It’s that we need to find a way to have civil conversations that cover meaningful content. Self-awareness and common sense It behooves us all to take a strong look in the mirror and to consider that it doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. For the younger generations’ sake, we need to be prepared to find a terrain of entente and to stop thinking that “only I am right.” Many have sacrificed much to get us here. Short of another grand unifying theme, we will need to grind out our new path forward. And it will take a far greater step than Neil Armstrong’s effort. It will require greater self-awareness and a whole dose of humility and common sense. Your thoughts are welcome! NEWSletter Subscribe to Minter’s Bi-Weekly NEWSletter and receive a free copy of the exclusive and updated 8 Golden Rules of an eReputation Your Gift For Signing Up 8 Golden Rules of an eReputation SUBSCRIBE! You have Successfully Subscribed! anniversary, apollo11, BBC Global News, BBCWorld, humility, liberal, moon, moonlanding, self-awareness Minter Dial Minter Dial is an international professional speaker, author & consultant on Leadership, Branding and Digital Strategy. After a successful international career at L’Oréal, Minter Dial returned to his entrepreneurial roots and has spent the last ten years helping senior management teams and Boards to adapt to the new exigencies of the digitally enhanced marketplace. He has worked with world-class organisations to help activate their brand strategies, and figure out how best to integrate new technologies, digital tools, devices and platforms. Above all, Minter works to catalyse a change in mindset and dial up transformation. Minter received his BA in Trilingual Literature from Yale University (1987) and gained his MBA at INSEAD, Fontainebleau (1993). His newest book Heartificial Empathy, Putting Heart into Business and Artificial Intelligence, bowed in December 2018 and won the Book Excellence Award 2019 as well as being shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2019. It's available in Audiobook, Kindle and Paperback. He is also co-author of Futureproof (Pearson, Sep 2017) and sole author of The Last Ring Home (Myndset Press, Nov 2016), a book and documentary film, both of which have won awards and critical acclaim. Minter has a new book on leadership, You Lead, How being yourself makes you a better leader, published by Kogan Page, that released January 2021. It's easy to inquire about booking Minter Dial here. View all posts by Minter Dial Previous post Next post