Stephen Denning, then in charge of Knowledge Management at the World Bank, wrote in my copy of his book The Springboard: "To Rob, my fellow fomenter of the 21st century".

This, as we shall see, is to me a great compliment indeed, especially coming from Steve. He also quotes in his book the Prayer of the Three Times, an old American Indian exhortation which asks that we take account, in all that we think, say and do, of the contribution and needs of our ancestors, our successors and those with whom we share the Earth now.

To me this answers the often-asked question: 'What does sustainability mean?' I believe we would almost certainly achieve sustainability if we consistently practised these three simple disciplines:

1. Make full use of the wisdom achieved through massive trial and error by our predecessors over the past seven generations.
2. Keep in mind the needs of our children and grandchildren, their children, and so on for the next seven generations
3. Be aware of the needs and often unsung contributions of all the other beings with whom we share the present.

On the third of the above points Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry in The Universe Story are more than merely eloquent, in a way that I think will resonate with those I call members of Generation Y:

"We need the expansive Earth, the distant sky, the flowering plants and trees and all the multitude of living forms about us; butterflies and bluebirds, Siberian tigers and tropical chimpanzees, dolphins and sea otters and the great blue whale. We know of no other place in the universe with such gorgeous self-expression as exists on Earth. This exuberance of life we see especially in the tropical rainforest with its unnumbered species of flowering plants and colourful insects and the full spectrum of living creatures of every kind. While everything exists for everything else we can only surmise the diminishment of the human mind and imagination if we did not have such magnificence in the natural phenomena about us."

And, of course, as research and the media keep showing us, there is an infinitude of extremely pragmatic and ever-more-pressing reasons to take better care of our home planet and fellow-dwellers.

To be a member of Generation Y you don't have to be of a certain age, you might be six or one-hundred-and-six. You might be American or Saudi, Arab or Jew, male or female, CEO of a multinational or unemployed poodle juggler. It's more of a tribal thing: you simply have to be one of those people who have these two qualities in common:

· You ask the question "why?" (and "why not?") a lot
· You're interested in generation, rather than D-generation

After years of work with numerous seers and shamans, medicine women and medicine men from several traditions, I have learned to sniff the air and listen. As I sniff the air and listen at the beginning of 2002 I sense the early rumblings of a major transformation. Some would say this transformation has been rumbling ever louder for a long while. I would agree. But most people have been deaf to it. Now, however, I believe we're out of the foothills and climbing the steeper slopes of the exponential of change. Things are going to start shifting pretty fast from here on.

I have also worked for a long time with corporate culture change gurus, public sector visionaries (local, national and intergovernmental), third sector leaders, consultants and academics. The distillation of their wisdom too, suggests that big changes are in the air.

Look at just a few of the signs: anti-globalisation demonstrations with major financial and legal backing; flooding records all over the world being broken repeatedly as our grimy tidemark climbs ever higher; the breathtaking speed of the dotcom boom and the even more sudden explosion that left bubble gum on investment faces everywhere; the spectacular $30 billion collapse of Enron and other expensive firework displays whose aftermath appears to many to be the beginning of a worldwide recession. Many commentators are saying that the danger of nuclear war between India and Pakistan could eclipse even the horrors of September 11th in New York last year.

Members of Generation Y are asking their favourite question:"why?":

Why do we accept that the relentless bombing of innocent men, women and children can be described by our media as an "Anti-Terror Campaign"? And why do we give the title "Defense" to the departments deploying the weapons?

Why do we believe that putting a cross in a box once every four or five years will make a difference when party politicians spend the first half of their terms reversing their predecessors' policies and the remainder trying to get re-elected?

Why do we allow a few twenty-seven-year-old fund managers to dictate the obsessively short-term policies of so many of our largest corporations so that, for instance, local communities are downsized into ghost-towns, causing not only unimaginable suffering but also colossal cost to the tax payer as we deal with the unemployment, alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence, depression and other D-generation consequences?

Why do we allow our corporations to deliver such low profits when a systems approach has been shown to enhance their economic performance immensely while also creating great numbers of new employment opportunities? Gunter Pauli has proven the concept on at least three continents and calls it 'Upsizing' (mail me for the reference: robert.weston@socialinnovation.com).

Why have so few of our captains of industry yet caught on to the fact that the budding environmental industry represents one of the greatest profit opportunities since warfare?

So, as the members of Generation Y are beginning to notice that's what they are, they are beginning also to 'come out' in greater and greater numbers. More and more people are responding to that inner itch, that yearning to be rid of the discomfort of barely-subliminal denial that gnaws at their souls, that inner voice that says: "this life I'm leading not only fails to serve the long-term greater good, it doesn't serve me, now. I need meaning, I need to value and feel valued by others, I need a reason to get out of bed in the morning and the pension plan doesn't do it for me."

Some say the only thing that has profound, long-term meaning is the safety and happiness of their children - and that most of their own thoughts, words and deeds are conspiring to destroy all hope for both.

Paul Ray (mail me for the reference: robert.weston@socialinnovation.com) has pointed out that radical paradigm shifts earlier in human history like the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution have only required the active participation of 1% to 2% of the relevant populations. Yet, by his reckoning, Cultural Creatives (those who proactively contribute to the creation of a just and sustainable future) now number an astonishing 20% of the Western population. Ten to twenty times the previously successful proportion and still no paradigm shift.

Why? I hear you multiplying tribespeople ask. Ray's research suggests a powerful image: we are all sat in a large auditorium, watching a superb play on the stage before us. It portrays a glorious future of the kind all Cultural Creatives wish to see. Yet very few of us, even at the interval, are turning to our neighbours and saying: "Right, what can we do about this together?"

So, the beauty of this moment, this primævally pregnant picosecond, is that we have the answer in our hands. All we have to do is to make those cross-linkages, join up the dots and reveal the Big Picture, complete those little circuits and throw the switch. In a wonderful irony, the very recognition of our own and each other's membership of Generation Y is all that is required to satisfy the yearning that makes us members!

We're at a fork in the road, the other 'Y' of Generation Y. Will you take the red pill or the blue pill? One path leads, at best, to a life of meaningless, soul-destroying, barely-denied self hatred; the other to something else. I don't know what, precisely, it might be. I'm not here to tell you how this will end, I'm here to tell you how it will begin…

"The rest, as Neo says in The Matrix, is up to you."

Or rather US.

If you wish to discuss these matters, please contact the author:

robert.weston@socialinnovation.com