The next installment of The Story of Us by the blogger and illustrator Tim Urban of Wait But Why!

In the late 1700s, the forefathers of what became the United States were Enlightenment Kids. During the Enlightenment, Higher Minds in parts of Europe started cautiously talking about a new story. The new story talked about ideas like human rights and equality and tolerance and freedom. According to this new story, humans had made incredible advancements in knowledge, wisdom, and technology—but they were still doing government like it was 7,000 BC. The Power Games, the story went, were unpleasant, unfair, unproductive, and unnecessary—and they were fundamentally immoral, violating the most sacred elements of being a human.

The story was a mind virus, just like other stories—and it started to spread.

Before long, it had crossed the Atlantic and taken hold in minds throughout the American colonies, turning well-behaved English subjects—good cells in the global English giant—into Enlightenment kids. Enlightenment kids were the entitled Millennials of their time, and pretty soon people across the colonies had decided that wait, they had rights—and those rights weren’t being respected.

The American forefathers were coming of age right in the middle of all of this, and they decided to take action. They had bigger ambitions than overthrowing their king—they wanted to overthrow the concept of a king. So they wrote a letter to King George III explaining the new situation.

This talk

After the talk, we’ll have a group discussion to explore the ideas presented, and to share related thoughts, resources, and personal experiences.

This is an online event hosted on Zoom. You can register for it here:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89721068083?pwd=8JXiwFuOazbLWh5lHZ3xK3WC20Ciab.1