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Josh Allan Dykstra
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Josh Allan Dykstra

Josh Allan Dykstra is a futurist, keynote speaker, serial entrepreneur, former rockstar, and recovering tech founder whose driving mission is to help leaders fall in love with tomorrow again by mastering Future Design™: the art of transforming from tomorrow's passenger into its architect.

387 articles published
LegacySeptember 11, 2007

Never Forget (9/11/07)

May we never forget that violence always kills -- not only the person who is murdered, but also the killer. Violence is always anti-Human. And let us never lose the hope -- or the desire to create -- better futures.  
I always believed in futures I hope for better in November I try the same losing lucky numbers It could be a cold night for a lifetime Hey now, you can't keeping saying endlessly My darling, how long until this affects me? Say hello to good times Trade up for the fast ride We close our eyes while the nickel and dime take the streets completely I always could count on futures That things would look up, and they look up Why is it so hard to find balance Between living decent and the cold and real Hey now, what is it you think you see? My darling, now's the time to disgaree Say hello to good times Trade up for the fast ride We close our eyes while the nickel and dime take the streets completely Hey now, the past is told by those who win My darling, what matters is what hasn't been Hey now, we're wide awake and we're thinking My darling, believe your voice can mean something Say hello to good times Trade up for the fast ride We close our eyes while the nickel and dime take the streets completely We close our eyes while the nickel and dime take the streets completely "Futures," Jimmy Eat World
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LegacyAugust 20, 2007

The Educated & Scholarly

A few more words of wisdom from our friend, the "other" J.D.:
"Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them -- if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful, reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry. I'm not trying to tell you that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with -- which, unfortunately, is rarely the case -- tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And -- most important -- nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker. Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly." - J.D. Salinger, The Catcher In The Rye (p. 246-247)
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LifeAugust 17, 2007

Education: Time For Something New

On my vacation, my beautiful family-in-law and I visited the Mackinac Island area of Michigan (which I highly recommend if you haven't been). While traipsing around the commercial tourist trap that is Main Street Mackinaw City, we found a small ice cream shop, and, as it was vacation forgoodnesssake, we knew it was time to partake. While waiting for said processed dairy, I found a tattered TIME magazine from December 10, 2006 lying on the coffee table in the corner. The cover story was called "How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century." As I get older (I know that sounds lame, and I'm not that old yet, but it's true), I find myself knowing more people with kids, and thinking about having some myself someday (gasp!), and the issue of education is becoming more and more frontburner. I know I'm going to have a boatload of issues that get ferried to the surface when my as-yet unconceived child enters schoolworld, but for now I can remain idealistically detatched, and mostly livid. What's it going to take for us to get our schools out of their archaic modern mindset? //
LegacyAugust 15, 2007

Holden Caulfield On Jesus, Etc.

Thus spake Holden Caulfield:
"I felt like praying or something, when I was in bed, but I couldn't do it. I can't always pray when I feel like it. In the first place, I'm sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down. I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples. If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the Disciples, that poor bastard. I used to get in quite a few arguments about it, when I was at the Whooton School, with this boy that lived down the corridor, Arthur Childs. Old Childs was a Quaker and all, and he read the Bible all the time. He was a very nice kid, and I liked him, but I could never see eye to eye with him on a lot of stuff in the Bible, especially the Disciples. He kept telling me if I didn't like the Disciples, then I didn't like Jesus and all. He said that because Jesus picked the Disciples, you were supposed to like them. I said I knew He picked them, but that He picked them at random. I said He didn't have time to go around analyzing everybody. I said I wasn't blaming Jesus or anything. It wasn't His fault that He didn't have any time. I remember I asked old Childs if he thought Judas, the one that betrayed Jesus and all, went to Hell after he committed suicide. Childs said certainly. That's exactly where I disagreed with him. I said I'd bet a thousand bucks that Jesus never sent old Judas to Hell. I still would, too, if I had a thousand bucks. I think any one of the Disciples would've sent him to Hell and all -- and fast, too -- but I'll bet anything Jesus didn't do it. Old Childs said the trouble with me was that I didn't go to church or anything. He was right about that, in a way. I don't. In the first place, my parents are different religions, and all the children in our family are atheist. If you want to know the truth, I can't even stand ministers. The ones they've had at every school I've gone to, they have these Holy Joe voices when they start giving their sermons. God, I hate that. I don't see why the hell they can't talk in their natural voice. They sound so phony when they talk." - J.D. Salinger, The Catcher In The Rye (p. 130-131)
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LifeJuly 31, 2007

Full Of Myself

Over the past six weeks, I have being doing the Body For Life program, in a highly overdue project to regain my physical fitness. I was hungrily looking forward to gaining something that resembles pectoral muscles, and maybe develop "abs," instead of my former, singular "ab." But, man, this process takes way longer than I thought. Of course, the lack of seeing the results that I want to see doesn't diminish the glimpses of progress I occasionally do witness, usually the morning after I get back from working the upper body, when my muscles have a little more blood pumping through them. I hear we males have this "issue" anyway, where we look in the mirror and almost always think that we're pretty much the bomb-dot-com. I don't know why that is -- maybe it's physiological, or some kind of DSM-IV category -- but suffice to say that I rarely have a less-than-glowing review of my reflection ready to print. Kinda full of myself, I guess. I'd never really thought about that phrase before this morning: "full of myself". I mean, really thought about it. But this morning, for whatever reason, I was keenly aware that I was entirely full of myself, in the "no room for anything else" sense. And that bothered me. I don't want to be so crowded with myself that I cannot even find room for others in my margins. I don't want my world to be filled with clones of me. I don't want my bus to be standing room only. I don't want to be filled to the brim of nothing but me, me, me. I want to be able to give, generously and passionately. But who would even want what I have to give? Someone I consider to be very wise once said that we do and say is actually just a reflection, an extension, of what's going on inside us. So, if that's the case, who's going to want more of me: sick and ugly and only taken with, well, me? I'm fairly certain that swallowing too much narcissism will make us throw up; maybe a little regurgitation is exactly what I need. Maybe I can fill up on something else. //