Raphael Thys
As the world changes, as capitalism shows its true face, as the climate cycles falter and shift, we need to concentrate on two things.
First: Technology.
Second: Community.
As a writer and thinker, I’ve always been fascinated with the possibilities of the future — especially those which manage to undermine the expected norms of the world I currently live within. Whenever people tell me “that’s just the way things are,” I find myself bristling and shooting back a sharpened “why?”
Given the state of things in the world today, it seems clear that we need a dramatic paradigm shift; a move into a different sort of epoch, where the phrase “that’s just the way things are,” ceases to have meaning in the face of continual questioning and steadfast commitment to growth.
The two points I mention above, technology and community, are the vital pillars upon which this new epoch might stand.
In the United States, our society and civil structure is not optimized for community. There have been movements — largely prompted by idealism, religion, or a mixture of the two — since the sixties which have tried to envision a better way of living together. Most of these have remained at a hopelessly small scale, have become perverted, or have simply failed outright. The scale is too small, the practicality too narrow, most such projects acting as little more than concept pieces. What we need is a shift in the very model of life, and a shift that attempts to undertake the changes we need in our society through the most practical and efficient means at our disposal.
This is where technology comes into play. With the rise of new fabrication technologies and the proliferation of clever ideas for social construction and development, we are reaching the point where it is possible to create a community which is sustainable — and do so without committing so significant an amount of physical and mental effort that it becomes exhausting. The border between what is eco-friendly and what is efficient and practical for the comfort and sustainability of a community is becoming a narrower one than ever before in human history.
Human beings are, by nature, social creatures. It is the innate nature of our kind to aid in the construction of communities; we are builders of interconnections; caretakers of unity. It is through our connections with our fellow humans that we find solace from the night; it is within the bosom of our friendships that we gain a sense of deeper meaning from our own, solitary, lives.
In order to withstand the problems emerging in the world all around us, in order to grow into the best version of ourselves, as a species, we need to re-envision how we form communities. This isn’t just a hippie dream from another era, this is a vital step in the evolution of our kind.