From: jimruttshow8596
The concept of “Civium” proposes a shift from existing city structures to new forms of sustainable communities, addressing the inherent challenges of large-scale urbanism [00:10:41].
The Scaling Laws of Cities
Research into scaling laws highlights fundamental differences between biological systems and human social systems like cities [00:04:55].
- Biological Scaling Laws Organisms exhibit sublinear scaling, meaning that as their mass doubles, their metabolic rate increases by only 75% [00:03:20]. This law is fundamental to how biology works and shapes animal size and the food chain [00:03:48].
- City Scaling Laws In contrast, cities demonstrate superlinear scaling for many aspects [00:05:37]. As a city’s population doubles, its GDP per capita, innovation, and musical creations increase by approximately 15% (or a factor of 1.15) [00:05:53]. This superlinear growth results in a curve that becomes steeper and steeper over time [00:06:27]. This phenomenon is conjectured to be linked to increased connectivity, similar to Metcalfe’s Law, where the value of a network increases disproportionately with the number of connected users [00:07:07]. The ability to transfer and copy information cheaply, rather than energy, is seen as a central driver of this superlinear scaling [00:08:17].
The Negative Side of Superlinear Scaling
While superlinear scaling drives wealth and innovation, it also exacerbates negative societal issues. Problems that scale superlinearly include:
- Madness and Corruption [00:20:14]
- Crime [00:20:14]
- Sickness [00:20:18]
Historically, cities were “net killers of people” until the late 19th century due to their unhealthy conditions, requiring rural “hinterlands” to repopulate them every generation [00:20:21]. To address these issues, cities have required significant “institutional upgrades” [00:21:14]. For example, Victorian London saw the invention of urban policing and the construction of massive sewage infrastructure to combat crime and disease [00:22:23].
Current society is reaching the limits of existing institutional forms, facing problems like rising crime, corruption (degradation of institutional functionality), and widespread disease (as seen in 2020) [00:24:10]. This signals a need for a major regime change [00:24:41].
The Civium Concept: A Shift to Quality
The “Civium” is proposed as a new societal construct where the center of collaboration moves from embodied, physical locations to the virtual realm [00:25:29]. This shift is driven by the increasing capacity for minds to collaborate virtually, a capacity that far exceeds what any physical city can offer [00:25:35].
This migration of collaborative capacity will have a reciprocal effect, making cosmopolitan urban environments less attractive, as they will still retain the “bad stuff” from dense populations but lose the “good stuff” derived from dense collaboration [00:25:57].
The Civium concept aims to unlock the capacity to reestablish human elements that have been sacrificed for the sake of scaling civilization [00:26:08]. Cities have been detrimental to human well-being, contributing to “insanity, depression, etc.” in minds, and being unhealthy for bodies and cultures [00:26:21].
Returning to the Meso Scale
A key aspect of Civium is a return to the “meso scale” [00:29:59]. Historically, until around 1870 in the United States, the majority of humans lived in communities of 50 to 500 people where they knew each other well and relied on their face-to-face community for physical, social, and spiritual sustenance [00:28:51]. This is contrasted with modern society’s reliance on anonymous and sterile relationships with the market and government [00:29:37].
This shift represents a move from “quantity to quality,” or as tying corta put it, “from scaling heaps to Growing living things” [00:30:36]. It implies optimizing the curation of attention in digital networks for human well-being within planetary limits, rather than for short-term profit [00:34:15].
The Topology of Civium
The Civium structure has three main dimensions:
- Downward (Physical): Humans increasingly migrate to human-scale, humane, embodied communities. These are likely Dunbar-level groups (around 150 people) committed to long-term embodiment in specific locations, fostering a sense of care for the place and adaptation to the environment [00:34:45]. This involves a “recovery of migration” from cities, building new infrastructure, cultural artifacts, and relearning how to coexist as humans [00:35:31].
- Upward (Virtual): Real attention is directed towards the quality of virtual interactions. This involves changing algorithms in social media systems to prioritize “highest quality relationality,” generative dialogue, and the pursuit of truth [00:36:05]. The potential for quality in digital interactions far exceeds current actualization [00:33:06].
- Intermediary Layer (Relationship between Physical and Virtual): This layer focuses on “technology hygiene” and establishing cultural constructs that guide the appropriate use of technology [00:40:01]. When done correctly, the physical and virtual aspects are “highly compatible, mutually reinforcing, and produce a reciprocal opening that as far as we know has no obvious limit” [00:40:38]. Without this, technology can “consume the seed corn of humanity” [00:40:57].
Challenges in Building Sustainable Communities
The journey to Civium faces significant challenges:
- Simultaneous Change: Transition requires both personal change and institutional change at the same time [00:42:33]. For example, individuals may understand the importance of limiting smartphone use for children, but without institutional support (e.g., community covenants), it’s difficult to maintain new values [00:43:33].
- Hierarchy of Values: Cosmopolitan urbanism often fails to create aligned hierarchies of values, leading to a “lowest common denominator” approach where people are only incentivized to be functional elements of the market and state [00:47:11]. Building strong bonds and true communion requires a deeper shared orientation towards values [00:49:01].
- Fabricating Wholesome Environments: Creating a truly whole or wholesome social environment from scratch is incredibly difficult [00:50:19]. Unlike historical migrations that copied functional cultural toolkits, modern attempts at intentional communities try to innovate at the level of culture, which is challenging given dysfunctional cultural toolkits from “the far end of civilization” [00:51:26]. Instead of creating new seeds, the approach should be to “pour water on plants that are already Well Suited and aring in niches” [00:51:52].
- Institutional Corruption: There is a current crisis of institutional corruption, where institutions that once functioned at high levels can rapidly degrade [00:41:46].
Despite the metacrisis and these challenges, there is tremendous potential for positive transformation. The goal is to cultivate environments where humans are “vastly more capable of humaning,” engaging in dialogue, embodying wisdom, and experiencing a deeper sense of fulfillment and meaningfulness [00:35:42]. This requires a shift in the fundamental design constraints of our systems towards human well-being and a recognition that true change comes from both individual action and the support of strong communities and institutions [00:43:55].