Many authors, such as David Brooks and Thomas Friedman, have teased out this topic extensively. Their basic message is that in an era of unprecedented individualism and economic dynamism, my generation will need a specialized, creative and industrious attitude to control our professional destiny.

Part of owning this new world order is to attain robust educational experience, such as a liberal arts education. In theory, this education model gives students strong hard skills and stronger soft skills. The former includes mastery of advanced math and science concepts while the latter refers to a critical thinking and problem solving mindset.

Ezra Klein recently published an article arguing that many liberal arts programs leave students without hard skills, particularly at Ivy League institutions. He cites the fact many Harvard graduates major in art literature and history but oddly go to work at investment banks, management consulting firms and Teach for America.

He concludes that students do this in part because they haven’t learned the hard skills necessary to connect the specialized needs of the marketplace. This leaves them with a lack of direction in their career search, so they go largely where the money is.

Although all this analysis has been focused on economics, I believe much of this applies to social movements. In particular, I believe the opportunities and barriers to a modern Sikh renaissance can be explained by some of the same elements of a changing world and the skills needed to excel in it.

The first point is obvious: Sikhs have a unique opportunity to engage in discourse with the tools of this flatter, rapidly changing world. The methods by which we communicate are not limited to scholarly journals and newspapers as past religious and political movements were. There are various websites and social media outlets we have already started using to discuss issues important to our community.

But as was the case with Ivy League students in Ezra’s article, I believe the Sikh community currently lacks the hard skills, and therefore the direction, to navigate this new setting. When thinking about reforming social and religious institutions, hard skills equate to being knowledgeable about the nature and development of organizations over time.

Unfortunately, my community is largely uneducated in the study of history and political science, especially with relation to the West. Most Sikhs don’t know what liberal democracy means, how the Renaissance in Europe shaped Christianity, or why AK Party’s wins in recent Turkish elections carry profound lessons for anyone interested in religion and politics.

Accordingly, we need to take the initiative to first learn these hard skills before moving forward.

Also, we’ll have to develop soft skills. When thinking about reforming religious or political arrangements, soft skills are methods used to converse with one another effectively. This takes the form of learning how compromise and governing social interactions constructively.

America’s founding fathers crafted the Senate as a deliberative body in part because of their knowledge of the governing failures of the Roman Empire. We should be similarly prudent in reforming Sikh institutions.

I reject the notion that because Sikhism’s experience is unique, because the experience of others is irrelevant in crafting our own reforms.

It would be a sign of incredible arrogance to say that we can learn nothing from more than 2,000 years of experiences from other societies and faiths. Not only have the works of the greatest thinkers in these fields been documented, but so have the thoughtful critiques and debates of their ideas. It would be a shame to pass up this unprecedented learning opportunity.

Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from other people’s experiences is a respect for the constraints of reality. Just as all of us are governed by the laws of physics, there is a finite human capacity to change. Existing social, religious and political institutions are as finite in their power and imperfect in their administration as the individuals that rule over them.

All together, my generation of Sikhs has an incredible story to tell, as well as the unfinished business of organizing ourselves more constructively. We have tools like no other religious movement in history to achieve those ends. But we will have to learn the basic hard and soft skills in order to intelligently contribute.

Only then will history books remember our experience as a modern Sikh renaissance.

Ameek Singh is a State News guest columnist and international relations and political theory and constitutional democracy senior. Reach him at sodhiame@msu.edu.