ADDRESSING ENVIRONMENTAL INSTABILITY - SOCIAL OPTIONS.

When an individual’s voice is discounted, when they are deprived of access to a functional education, or when they are left without a challenge, then the outcome for their community is going to be sub-optimal. The holy grail for humanity is to coordinate the potential of every individual to be productive and creative, requiring effective communication, universal access to education, and a population size that matches the demands of evolution.
Coordinating the capabilities of individuals is an expression of sapient behaviour. A community in balance will feature knowledge sharing, teamwork and equity. Our brain is a model for achieving social equity. If that model works for mother Nature it should work for her children. Its adoption would see large cities dismantled to create village scale cells (neurons) interconnected by infrastructure (axons and synapses) that enable efficient communication. Data generated by each community might then be transmitted to a regional centre (cerebrum) where artificial intelligence would collate, analyse and interpret the information.
From diversity comes resilience. Take a community of fifty to a few thousand people occupying an area of land of sufficient size to support them indefinitely. Each community enjoying local autonomy while seeking to achieve self-sufficiency. Every member thereof able to contribute their knowledge to a communal data management facility or node. Fifty to a few thousand communal nodes connected to a regional data management facility. Fifty regional intelligence nodes connected to a central node, and so on, eventually to create a global data intelligence repository that is directly responsive to ‘grass root’ stimuli. Conversely, every village node would have direct access to a global perspective of health, telecommunication services, education, product interface standards, and the full range of innovative possibilities.
Technology is changing the way we do things. Instead of mega-industries, new micro-industrial technologies that meet the needs of a small community should become the norm. Distributed energy systems, small scale recycling systems, textile manufacturing, basic pharmaceutical capabilities that access local medicinal resources, etc., technologies that help the community to become self sufficient. In total, they could provide opportunities for the population to contribute to social advancement based on their specific circumstances. Industrial monopolies would become less relevant, reducing the costs associated with resourcing and then distributing centralised production.
Urbanisation of the workforce is turning out to be an expensive anachronism. Congested transport systems that consume time, unhealthy environments, social aggressiveness, all complicating life. There are many negatives associated with that lifestyle. One could well ask why we persist when artificial intelligence, coupled to advanced communication technologies, offers options that feature collaboration in lieu of competition. Options that are capable of balancing quality of life outcomes with the need to accumulate material wealth.
That degree of change will not happen overnight, but it is what our species needs to be aiming for should it wish to progress much further.

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