A sketch of a theoretical basis of the new world
Over the past few days, we have looked at the nature of man, of society, of property, and took hold of a new way of considering time.
Now let’s put it all together in a first sketch of what we might think of as a new ordering of the world.
The nature of man, we saw, was interdependent, social – but with an eye to small groups. It is only very recently in our history as a species that we have massed together in groups as large as cities, kingdoms, or nations. Perhaps as a result, we seem to do a much better job of governing ourselves, and even of being able to grasp mentally, a small local group than of a mass of strangers, let alone the world as a whole. (And yet: we will need to consider all men in all the world if we carry on wielding the immense impact we have been on the world’s environment.)
Society, we saw, needs to cooperate and coordinate its activities on a global scale, and yet at the same time it needs to focus on the local more than the wider scale. It seems we need to put our own house in order, and then agree with other ‘households’ to put our ‘town’ in order, and so on – all the way up to the full reach of all mankind’s billions.
Property, we saw, is not either/or: we don’t have to choose between utter familial communal sharing and rugged individual, absolute property rights. Instead, if we see property rights and ownership as covering a spectrum of responsibility and control, from the personal, temporary items that are an individual’s absolute ‘own,’ to the natural resources of air and water and minerals deep in the Earth, over which we all might exercise some degree of control, and from which we might all share some of the bounty.
And last, we saw that we must regard time on a sliding scale as well, and keep in mind the longest of terms even as we watch for the largest of scopes.
There has never been a human society that did not destroy its habitat. In the past, we have been able to walk away from the mess we have made, and find new unspoiled territory; or else we have perished locally – but another community, another culture, somewhere else, has survived to carry on man’s legacy and species.
These possibilities are slipping away from us very quickly. We have run out of room, and this wall has come upon us before we made migration to the stars practical.
Perhaps we have already run out of time. It is certain that we have reached this realization too late to save many millions, perhaps billions.
But we can only do what we can.
(Composed on keyboard Saturday 18 October 2008)
