From: jimruttshow8596
Civilization Design is a concept that examines the toolkits communities use to live together and communicate, and how social relations are maintained and developed for the long term [02:40:01]. It involves addressing both embodied aspects, such as having a “good city,” and virtual elements, like fostering a “good society,” culture, or communication process, including conflict management [02:56:16]. The goal is to design for a future where civilization can endure for thousands of years, recognizing the inherent complexities and challenges involved [03:20:00].
Defining Civilization
Forest Landry breaks down the notion of civilization into two primary components:
- Civility The preference for communication over physical conflict [01:56:00].
- City The concept of people living in close proximity, benefiting from diverse interactions, exploration opportunities, and collaborative work, which are distinct advantages for a social species [02:12:00].
While the root word “civitas” originally referred to the body of people in and around a city, Civilization Design encompasses something larger than just a city [03:38:00]. It refers to the toolkits that enable solving large-scale social problems, such as food and water distribution, power, shelter, transportation, manufacturing, and food production [03:52:00]. Modern societies already utilize many features of this toolkit to manage problems at the scale of nation-states and cities [04:37:00].
Why Civilization Design Now?
Engaging in Civilization Design is critically important at present due to two main factors:
- Outdated Tools The existing tools and methodologies, while having achieved a higher standard of living for many globally, are insufficient for addressing new, emerging problems [05:21:00]. Current approaches struggle with issues like global warming, pollution, global equality, and ecological crises [06:16:00].
- Accelerating Technological Change Technology acts as a powerful accelerant, rapidly introducing changes into the environment and world [06:54:00]. This necessitates a deeper understanding of the relationship between technology, humanity, and nature to ensure long-term balance and prevent existential risks [07:22:24]. The planning horizons of current institutions are often too short (e.g., three years), inadequate for navigating the rapid pace of change, such as the evolution of AI like GPT-7 [08:28:00]. This challenge involves transitioning from a “hill climber” world, which only reacts to local gradients, to a “network world” that can manage truly complex, non-linear, and multi-dimensional influences [09:11:00].
The stakes are higher now due to increased population and complexity, leading to more wide-sweeping and permanent impacts from changes [10:18:00]. This demands higher quality choices and greater wisdom to ensure long-term satisfaction beyond short-term gains [10:31:00]. Despite challenges like the decay of the epistemic commons and a perceived downtrend in collective wisdom [12:33:00], increased resources like collective intelligence capacities enabled by technology, and advancements in psychology, sociology, and anthropology, provide new ways to think about health in individuals, communities, and civilizations [11:48:00].
Ethics and Values in Civilization Design
Central to Civilization Design is understanding ethics and values, particularly the principles of “good choices” [19:43:00]. Traditional ethical theories (deontological, utilitarian, virtue ethics) often fall short [16:54:00]. Forest Landry’s non-relativistic ethics suggests that rules and metrics, when pushed to their extremes, reduce to a form of value ethics [18:22:00]. This “value ethics” extends beyond monetary value to embodied notions like health, well-being, ecological thriving, and community thriving [19:09:00].
Good governance, for example, aims to protect and foster the thriving of the land and people [19:33:00]. The study of ethics, in this context, is the study of how good choices are made, whether by individuals, communities, nation-states, or cities [21:07:00]. Design itself is a series of choices, constrained by natural and social circumstances, as well as aesthetic preferences [21:22:00].
The notion of “good” is grounded in the integrity of the relationship between the subjective and the objective [25:25:00]. Choices that increase health and vitality in living organic systems (personal, interpersonal, transpersonal) are considered categorically good [25:49:00]. Good choices not only produce positive immediate outcomes but also enable beneficial future choices, avoiding situations that lead to increasingly worse compromises [26:29:00].
Sustaining Cities: Three Balances
For a city to achieve sustainability and evolve with consciousness, three conditions are necessary and sufficient [29:31:00]:
- Social balance [29:57:00].
- Energy balance (sufficient energy input to keep the city functioning) [30:05:00].
- Ecological balance (sustainable use of surrounding resources like farmlands) [30:24:00].
Currently, at city, planetary, or nation-state levels, these balances are largely absent [32:04:00]. Cities are inherently enduring due to their fixed position and relationship to waterways and land [33:10:00]. However, maintaining civilization requires focusing on “civility” (how people communicate) and cultural dynamics that uphold ecological and energy balance collectively [33:40:00].
Human Nature and Its Challenges
Understanding human nature is crucial for Civilization Design [37:03:00]. Humans are a predatory species, adept at exploration and exploitation [37:52:00]. With finite resources, a new approach beyond mere exploration and exploitation is needed [38:14:00]. The fundamental nature of technology is also a given [37:25:00].
Forces like memetic status signaling, “keeping up with the Joneses,” and the pursuit of power or prestige (often linked to reproductive success) are real and must be accounted for [40:11:00]. These deep-seated drives (survival, sexuality, and sociality) influence choices and can lead to arms races or instabilities if unconscious [42:25:00].
A solution to these challenges lies in developing a culture with the skill of discerning the basis of choices, moving from choices driven by “want” (external) or “need” (internal) to choices driven by “desire” [43:31:00]. Desire, in this context, can be a shared or “mutual” desire, extending to the desires of the ecosystem itself [43:13:00]. This implies a “re-humanization” where the virtual world aligns with the embodied world, fostering well-being [01:20:35].
Subsidiarity, Pluralism, and Coherence
Civilization Design must consider concepts like subsidiarity and pluralism [01:07:33]. Subsidiarity dictates that decisions should be made at the lowest appropriate level, matching the distribution of effects to the choice-making body [01:09:34]. For example, a local issue like street drinking can be decided by a neighborhood, while global CO2 emissions require global-level decisions [01:07:48]. This also extends to considering the effects of choices across time (future generations) [01:10:46].
Coherent pluralism acknowledges that humans desire different things and cultures vary, yet seeks an underlying coherence [01:11:39]. While cultures may have different toolkits (e.g., for Alaskan wilderness vs. desert), the underlying human desires and physics remain common [01:13:41]. By being conscious of these deeper principles, cultures can connect at the level of desire, fostering cooperation on shared problems like global warming [01:14:09]. This means upholding culture as an embodiment of life, rather than at the cost of supporting life itself [01:14:54].
The concept of congruence, the distance between one’s desired good life and the life actually lived, is also relevant [01:16:33]. Current generations often experience low congruence due to the disconnect between the idealized virtual world (e.g., social media) and the embodied reality, leading to negative well-being outcomes [01:18:10].
Practical Steps Towards Civilization Design
From an engineering perspective, practical steps for Civilization Design involve:
- Good Governance: Developing and implementing good governance practices for communities, enabling them to manage resources without predatory interference [01:26:06].
- Communication Practices: Ensuring good individual and collective communication, upholding the right to speak, be understood, and know that one has been understood [01:26:08].
- Understanding Human Drivers: Recognizing the distinctions between thought, feeling, and emotion, as well as the instincts that drive behavior [01:26:22]. Clarifying the difference between change, choice, and causation is crucial for skillful choice-making [01:26:30].
- Ephemeral Group Process: Utilizing collective inquiry techniques to facilitate collective values discovery and visioning for a thriving, wise way of living [01:26:50]. This process aims to be distributed and resist corruption [01:27:13].
- Collective Strategy Generation: Translating collective vision and values into concrete actions and strategies [01:27:40]. This involves ensuring that proposed strategies will genuinely uphold the vision and values, leading to a healthy future for the community and its environment [01:27:50].
The path forward requires a culture that is conscious of these principles and can translate them into practices through an “embodied collective intelligence” [01:28:54]. While the subject is complex, requiring understanding of psychology, sociology, economics, physics, chemistry, mathematics, history, politics, and law [01:31:00], awareness of underlying drivers allows for more mindful choices that maintain balances like cooperation and competition, ensuring social process remains stable [01:39:50].