From: jimruttshow8596
Civilization design examines the toolkits communities use to live together and communicate, and how they maintain and develop social relations [00:02:40]. It considers both the “embodied” elements of a good city (like infrastructure) and “virtual” elements of a good society, culture, or communication process [00:02:56]. The ultimate goal is to design for long-term endurance, potentially for the next thousand years [00:03:20].
The Imperative for Design
The current era necessitates engaging in civilization design because existing tools and methodologies are insufficient for emerging global challenges [00:05:21]. While past tools successfully raised living standards and addressed issues like starvation [00:05:37], they cannot cope with problems such as global warming, pollution, or global inequality [0006:22].
Technology acts as a powerful accelerant, increasing the rate of change and the stakes of our choices [00:06:54]. The impact of these changes is becoming more widespread and permanent [00:10:25]. Modern institutions often operate with short planning horizons, akin to “hill climbers” reacting only to immediate gradients [00:08:28]. This short-term thinking, which was adequate when the world changed slowly, is now insufficient given the rapid pace of technological evolution [00:09:01]. The challenge lies in moving from a “hill climber” world to a “network world” where influences are complex and non-linear [00:09:13]. This demands higher-quality choices, informed by wisdom, to ensure sustainability over hundreds to thousands of years [00:10:33].
Human Nature and Its Challenges
Human nature presents fundamental challenges to civilization design. If humans are viewed as fundamentally “predatory” with technology being “toxic” [00:38:41], the task seems insurmountable [00:39:17]. Key “generator functions” of human behavior include:
- Mimetic Status Signaling: Humans engage in mimetic desire, constantly comparing themselves to others and seeking to emulate those perceived as “better” [00:36:07]. This can lead to runaway competition and unsustainable consumption [00:36:26].
- Fundamental Instincts: Human choices are driven by three fundamental instincts: survival, sexuality, and sociality [00:42:25]. The pursuit of power and prestige, for example, is rooted in the sexual process for attracting mates [00:41:32].
These forces are real and must be accounted for in any design [00:40:24]. Ignoring the underlying drivers of behavior will lead to ineffective solutions [00:48:27].
The Role of Values and Ethics
Addressing these challenges requires a shift in focus to ethics and values.
- Wisdom and Epistemic Commons: The current decline in collective wisdom and the “decay of our epistemic Commons” [00:13:33] makes it harder to make wise, long-term decisions. Developing new tools and capacities is necessary to build a healthy epistemic Commons within communities [00:14:26].
- Value Ethics: Forest Landry advocates for “value ethics” over traditional virtue ethics, focusing on the nature of the relationship between value, meaning, and purpose [00:18:55]. Goodness is grounded in the integrity of the relationship between the subjective and the objective [00:25:25]. This means making choices that increase health, vitality, and thriving for individuals, families, communities, and the environment, ensuring good outcomes and fostering positive future potentialities [00:25:49].
- Beyond Transaction and Power: Current societal tools are largely associated with power and transactional dynamics [00:51:45]. However, a true community is defined by relationships of “care” [00:52:17]. If choices are not grounded in what is truly cared about, the world will lack what is valued [00:53:22]. This requires moving beyond a purely commercial perspective where everything can be purchased, and recognizing that some problems require new orders of sense-making and community relationships [00:15:57].
Cultural Practices and Congruence
Cultural dynamics play a critical role in shaping future generations [00:46:53]. What a culture values is taught to its children [00:47:00]. This includes how individuals relate to each other, with a potential loss of appreciation for face-to-face interaction due to technological intermediation [00:46:44].
The concept of “congruence,” the distance between one’s desired good life and the life actually lived, is crucial [01:16:31]. Low congruence, exacerbated by the disjunction between the virtual world (e.g., social media portrayals) and the embodied world, can lead to decreased well-being and a sense of emptiness [01:19:01]. Re-establishing congruence involves a “de-virtualization” or “re-humanization” to bring the virtual and embodied worlds back into alignment [01:20:31].
The Path Forward: Principles and Practices
To navigate these complexities, society needs to:
- Understand Underlying Principles: Recognize the fundamental drivers and forces of human behavior and the conditions under which they operate [01:01:33].
- Balance Competition and Cooperation: While competition is evident, cooperation is equally vital for societal cohesion and development [01:00:44]. Understanding this balance is key to avoiding societal breakdown and ensuring the continuation of generations [01:00:52].
- Apply “Transcendental Design”: This approach, based on principles rather than trial and error, enables communities to consciously design their future [01:27:17]. It involves:
- Good Communication Practices: Upholding the rights to speak, be understood, and know one has been understood [01:26:08].
- Understanding Distinctions: Clarifying the differences between thought, feeling, emotion, instinct, change, choice, and causation [01:26:22].
- Ephemeral Group Process: A distributed, uncorruptible technique for collective inquiry, value discovery, and visioning to determine what “thriving” and “success” look like [01:27:09].
- Collective Strategy Generation: Designing actions that embody the shared vision and fulfill collective values, ensuring health for the community, land, and people [01:27:48].
This comprehensive approach to civilization design requires a broad understanding of psychology, sociology, economics, physics, chemistry, mathematics, history, and political and legal frameworks [01:31:4]. It calls for a culture that is conscious of these principles and can translate them into practical, distributed decision-making processes for a resilient future [01:28:57].