Preparing the Next Generation to Shape What’s Next

Severin Sorensen
Sep 24
8 min read

Across boardrooms, classrooms, and dinner tables, a single narrative about the future is quietly shaping how an entire generation thinks about what’s possible. It is a narrative of collapse, scarcity, and inevitability; one that suggests the challenges ahead are too vast, the systems too broken, and the technologies too powerful for human agency to matter.

This “doom loop” narrative is easy to find. Headlines warn that artificial intelligence (AI) will take all the jobs. Climate change is portrayed as an irreversible march toward catastrophe. Social trust is eroding, and young people are told they will be the first generation to fare worse than their parents. The implicit message has been: the future is something to endure, not something to design.

But this story is incomplete, and dangerously so. History shows that societies rarely advance by fear alone. Progress has always depended on vision—the capacity to imagine futures worth building and the belief that human ingenuity can bring them into being.

Today, leaders in business, education, and policy must recognize that the most pressing task is not simply to prepare young people for an unpredictable future but to empower them to shape it. Doing so requires dismantling the doom loop and replacing it with what might be called a builder’s vision, one that reframes disruption as opportunity and positions the next generation as the architects of solutions, not the victims of circumstances.

The Perils of the Doom Loop

The concept of a “doom loop” originates in organizational psychology and economics, where it describes a self-reinforcing cycle of decline (Collins, 2001). Applied to societal narratives, it captures how pessimism becomes self-fulfilling: negative forecasts about automation, climate, or social cohesion dampen investment in solutions, which in turn makes those forecasts more likely to come true.

The doom loop thrives because fear spreads faster than nuance. It simplifies complexity into headlines and soundbites. It feels rational, even responsible, to assume the worst. Yet this framing is deeply flawed. It obscures evidence of resilience and innovation, underestimates human adaptability, and narrows our collective imagination about what is possible.

Consider three examples:

Automation Anxiety: The belief that AI will render human work obsolete is widespread. In our recent article, Leading Employees Past AI Fear, we uncovered that despite measurable productivity gains, employee sentiment about AI remains conflicted, with most workers worrying about the impact of AI on their careers.
Climate Collapse: Catastrophic climate narratives dominate media coverage. While the risks are real, fatalistic framings often ignore accelerating innovation in renewable energy, carbon capture, and adaptive infrastructure.
Social Decline: Reports of declining trust, civic participation, and intergenerational wealth fuel a sense of inevitable deterioration, overshadowing emerging experiments in democratic engagement and social innovation.

Fear-based narratives have consequences. They shape public policy, influence investment decisions, and, most critically, mold the aspirations of young people. If they are told the future is already written, they are less likely to see themselves as authors of change.

A Case Study in Misperception

Few topics illustrate the doom loop’s distortions more clearly than the future of work. Predictions that AI and automation will “take all the jobs” are now commonplace. Yet the best available data suggests a more complex (and hopeful) story.

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report (2025) projects that while automation could displace 92 million jobs globally by 2030, it will create 170 million new ones—a net gain of 78 million. Most disappearing roles are routine and repetitive; most new roles are in sectors like green energy, AI ethics, health innovation, and frontier sciences (World Economic Forum, 2025).
The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that by 2030, activities representing up to 30% of the hours currently worked across the U.S. economy could be automated, but emphasizes that entirely new categories of work will emerge as productivity gains from AI could reach $4.4 trillion annually (Ellingrud et al., 2023; Mayer et al., 2025).
Forbes projects strong job growth in frontline, healthcare, education, and sustainability sectors, alongside expanding demand for expertise in AI, robotics, and big data — even as automation reduces routine roles and generative AI reshapes creative work (Kelly, 2025).
Research from AIMultiple notes that up to 50% of entry-level white-collar tasks may be automated, but this marks the beginning of hybrid human-AI roles, not the end of employment (Ermut, 2025).

Even forecasting models rooted in machine learning support this perspective. Grok, an AI model recognized for outperforming prediction markets in accuracy, estimates a 95% probability that humans will still be working in 2040. This aligns with historical precedent: every major technological shift, from steam engines to electricity to the internet, has created more jobs than it destroyed.

The doom narrative collapses under scrutiny because it misunderstands the nature of human work. Humans are not only “doers.” They are designers, problem-solvers, and dreamers. And dreams cannot be automated.

The Great Reimagining

We stand at the threshold of what might be called The Great Reimagining, a period of civilizational transition in which work, purpose, and human potential will be redefined. The question is not whether change is coming; it is what form that change will take and who will shape it.

Two competing narratives offer radically different futures:

The Doom Loop: A self-reinforcing cycle of despair; “There’s no future for our kids.”
The Builder’s Vision: A call to agency; “Here are humanity’s hardest problems. The next generation can solve them.”

The difference between these narratives is not merely psychological. It is existential. The doom loop diminishes human capacity by framing individuals as powerless recipients of change. The builder’s vision expands human capacity by positioning individuals, and particularly young people, as active participants in shaping the future.

The choice between these narratives will shape educational systems, workforce strategies, innovation ecosystems, governance models, and societal cohesion. A society that believes in its capacity to build adapts faster, invests deeper, and collaborates more effectively than one resigned to decline.

From Anxiety to Agency

Empowering young people to become builders requires more than inspirational rhetoric. It demands a framework that transforms fear into forward motion, a structured pathway from curiosity to contribution. One such framework is the Builder’s Ladder, a six-stage developmental model.

The Builder’s Ladder

Wonder: Spark curiosity through bold, open-ended questions that challenge assumptions.
Orientation: Equip learners with context, vocabulary, and foundational knowledge about complex challenges.
Collaboration: Foster partnerships among students, educators, peers, and AI systems to explore solutions.
Creation: Guide learners to design and prototype solutions, from conceptual models to functional innovations.
Contribution: Enable them to deploy solutions in real-world contexts, generating tangible value for communities.
Vision: Cultivate an enduring sense of identity as builders, individuals capable of shaping the future.

This framework mirrors the progression from novice to expert seen in other domains of human mastery (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1980). This mirrors Albert Bandura’s seminal work on self-efficacy, which finds that agency grows not from words of encouragement but from repeated experiences of mastery and meaningful contribution, and that individuals with strong self-efficacy beliefs are consistently more resilient, effective, and successful (Bandura, 1997).

The Builder’s Ladder reframes education and workforce preparation. Instead of training young people for specific jobs that may vanish, it prepares them for enduring quests, complex, evolving challenges that will define the decades ahead.

A New Social Contract for Growth

No individual ascends the Builder’s Ladder alone. They require what might be called a Builder’s Lattice: a triangular support system that links parents, educators, and youth in a reciprocal learning ecosystem.

The Builder’s Lattice

Parents provide vision and ethical grounding. They serve as mentors and role models, and, through “switch mentoring,” they also learn from their children, gaining digital fluency and new perspectives.
Educators supply scaffolding, connecting classroom learning to real-world challenges and global contexts. They shift from content delivery to capability cultivation.
Youth contribute curiosity, creativity, and energy, driving the system forward through exploration and experimentation.

When these three groups reinforce one another, they create a lattice of resilience and growth. Communities evolve from fragmented silos into collaborative ecosystems, capable of nurturing the builders society needs.

The Quests That Will Define a Generation

What will tomorrow’s builders tackle? The list is long and urgent. The following domains illustrate the kinds of “quests” that will demand sustained, creative effort from the next generation:

Climate Solutions: Designing sustainable energy systems, regenerative agriculture, and resilient infrastructures.
AI Ethics and Cybersecurity: Embedding human values into digital systems and defending information integrity.
Healthcare and Neuroscience: Advancing cures, accessibility, and understanding of the human brain.
Democracy and Truth: Strengthening institutions and safeguarding against disinformation.
Ocean and Space Exploration: Expanding human knowledge and unlocking new frontiers of cooperation.

These are not distant science-fiction challenges; they are present-tense imperatives. Solving them will require decades of sustained work, and a generation equipped with both the technical skills and moral imagination to do so.

From “What Job?” to “What Problem?

The shift from doom to builder mindsets demands a parallel shift in the questions parents, educators, and policymakers ask. The dominant question today (“What job will my child get?”) is rooted in an industrial-age paradigm that equates success with employment stability. But in a world where industries, roles, and skill requirements evolve rapidly, that question is increasingly obsolete. A better question is: “What challenge is worthy of my child’s gifts?”

This reframing changes everything. It focuses attention on meaning, contribution, and impact—qualities that endure even as specific jobs change.

The implications for policy and practice are significant. Education systems must shift from content transmission to capability development. Workforce strategies must emphasize adaptability, collaboration, and lifelong learning. And leadership—in business, government, and civil society—must model the builder mindset by framing change as an invitation to design rather than a threat to endure.

The Future Is Built, Not Predicted

The future is not a fixed destination waiting to be discovered. It is a landscape under construction—one that will be shaped by the choices, mindsets, and actions of today’s young people.

The doom loop is powerful, but it is not destiny. By replacing fear with vision, anxiety with agency, and passivity with purpose, we can equip the next generation to become not just survivors of change but authors of it.

The task before us is clear:

Parents must cultivate vision and values.
Educators must design experiences that turn curiosity into capability.
Leaders must model the builder’s mindset in their organizations and policies.

If we succeed, we will raise a generation not defined by the crises they inherit but by the solutions they create.

The future does not simply happen. It is built. And the builders are already among us.

References

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. APA PsycNET. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1997-08589-000

Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great. Random House.

Dreyfus, S.E. & Dreyfus, Hubert. (1980). A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition. Distribution. 22.

Ellingrud, K., Sanghvi, S., Singh Dandona, G., Madgavkar, A., Chui, M., White, O., & Hasebe, P. (2023, July 26). Generative AI and the Future of Work in America. Www.mckinsey.com; McKinsey Global Institute. https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/generative-ai-and-the-future-of-work-in-america

Ermut, S. (2025). Top 15 Predictions from Experts on AI Job Loss in 2025. AIMultiple. https://research.aimultiple.com/ai-job-loss/

Kelly, J. (2025, January 8). The Future Of Jobs, According To The World Economic Forum. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2025/01/08/the-future-of-jobs-according-to-the-world-economic-forum/

Mayer, H., Yee, L., Chui, M., & Roberts, R. (2025, January 28). Superagency in the workplace: Empowering People to Unlock AI’s Full Potential. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/superagency-in-the-workplace-empowering-people-to-unlock-ais-full-potential-at-work

World Economic Forum. (2025, January 7). The Future of Jobs Report 2025. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/