The internet has made education cheaper and much of it free, so that's a great development.

About water and food I'm not sure. Not everyone lives close to foraging / hunting grounds with clean rivers abundant, in an unpopulated area and a year-round growing season.
"Free" is usually understood as without spending money, but physics defines it as "without expending energy". And if I am to expend energy, how is that different from expending energy to make money and then spending that money?

As for shelter, you could build a hut, but there are laws against that because there are many people in the world.
And then, unless you live at decent latitudes, you'd have to heat it and it would have to be a solid build with insulation, vapor barriers etc.

And then if we spend time learning basic skills like foraging, hunting and carpentry, who will build advanced technology (like the aforementioned internet)?

Division of labor is a great development, and that's where money comes in.

Have you ever worked food service in the United States? I have, and while I did I was forced to throw away two 55-gallon trash cans full of food everyday. If we stole the food we were fired and the authorities were contacted. A good friend and myself would smuggle boxes of stale bread out of the place to take to homeless encampments downtown and if we were caught doing so we could have lost everything. Food abundance, food distribution networks and empty housing are already apart of our culture but greed and the forced use of currency blocks access to a lot of people.

Freeing people from having to work to survive and allowing us to spend more time on our education might lead us to solutions to our major problems faster such as greater automation, space travel which could lead to interplanetary colonization and a greater of quality of life for all beings. I'm not saying that people would have access to all the food and whatever kind of housing they want but I believe giving people something basic and healthy that they need should be the standard.

You may be asking "what would the incentive be for people to work the land, grow and make the food?" Is it so hard to imagine that citizens should be in service of others? Is it so hard to imagine doing something for somebody else and you didn't get anything out of it?

Here is another thought experiment. I live with a girl. She was without a home and I took her in. I provide her with clean water, baths, excercise, healthy food, healthcare, bed, shelter, love and compassion. She is a dog and lets be honest, this animal does nothing for me besides allow me to love her. Is it so hard to imagine you doing the same for another human being?

Thanks for typing this up! I could not have said it better myself.

I believe that man is happy when he has the skills to take care of himself. World today is so complicated that taking care of one self can be very daunting task and if you come from poor background or have health issues you can fall through the system and have a miserable life.

In nature you have lots of balancing systems that prevent one plant, animal or species becoming too powerful. Humanity doesn't have many such systems currently and capitalism exploits this.

Culture and morality are balancing factors to exploitative capitalism. I think we have it better here on the old continent. We don't want full blown socialism here as we have seen what it has done to our neighbors.

To live a good life, you need to have a fair chance in life and opportunity to develop the skills you need. If the state or the corporations have too much power the individual easily becomes enslaved to either one. Building societies with such freedom requires developing culture and values rather than forcing political systems. Of course the result of such cultural development is legislation that promotes these values.

I'm not a fan of socialist utopias, because if you are stripped of all responsibility, you become mentally weak and get easily lost spiritually.

Science is actually finding that ecosystems work well when organisms form symbiotic relationships with each other. Here is an example if not familiar with the term. Now look at our social systems such as capitalism which was formed with an incomplete understanding of evolutionary theory that focusing mainly on ideas like competition and survival of the fittest. Knowing what we do now, why would we not evolve and update our our social systems to reflect what we have learned?

To shed some light on what you typed, I am familiar with being self sustainable and am working hard and learning as much as I can to make it a reality. I should be pretty far a long that path once I graduate college. I think once humans have achieved nuclear fusion and we have an abundance of energy, we will see great change which makes me excited for my son's and future generations.

This is common practice, some years over 40% of the US wheat harvest gets intentionally destroyed to keep prices artificially high. It does benefit smaller farmers since they don't have the scale to turn a profit with prices too low, and therefore keeps them employed at the farm. US farm subsidies, smh.

Separation from nature. In other words, humans live to some extant at least separated from the sources of food and water and medicine. That some “some extent, at least,” is the root of problems, ime at least.

These are all quite interesting points. I agree about the food, etc. to an extent. And if we were inherently honest this could all be achieved. But I am going to go in another direction. Someone earlier said fear, and I would like to elaborate on that a bit more. Fear, distrust, and dishonesty; not only with one another, but with ourselves. We have evolved to have to squirrel away our amenities in life when there is clearly enough to go around. This lack of honesty with one another leads to distrust, and that distrust leads to fear. Fear that someone else will have more than us, or that when we need help, others won't be there to help. And these fears create a deeply seeded polarization within the mind. This brings us to the way we interact with one another today. This "my way or the highway" attitude that is harbored by 90% of the world. And not only is it the highway, but you can wither away and die if it's not my way. These attitudes perpetuate hate, war, etc. Someone else also said that if we were not competitive we would evolve at a snail's pace. I ask you this. Would that be absolutely terrible? If we were less evolved? We are evolving to a point to where we are turning our backs on nature and ourselves. Perhaps had we not evolved so far so fast, we may still work together in order to survive. Because right now it just seems to me like it's every man for himself.

Many problems.

The root of humanity's problem is the propensity to simplify all of its problems into one problem, lol

Yep! Overgeneralizations and oversimplifications are generally a huge issue (like that simplification and generalization? ).

One love

Overcomplication is another problem imhv.

I think we are entering the era where we are slowly becoming aware of the inner workings and underlying principles of complex systems.

If there is going to be a major paradigm shift sometime, i hope it will be this one. And i am positive as well, because the theories of complex systems are the only theories that work in explaining difficult things like the climate, ecosystems, or the world economy.

Well said. And with that, everyone should read Godel, Escher, Bach, to kick off this paradigm shift assimilating complexity

One love

Great thread! It's interesting to read different perspectives on this topic.

In my opinion greed and power-hunger are two of the main culprits of humanity and they will eventually be our downfall. Greedy people see what damage they do to mother earth, but they continue regardless. The accumulation of money seems to be an addictive activity for many.

Us humans need to understand that we need to reinvent the way we live on this planet. We need to realize that this is our home. We need to change our relationship with earth. We need to live in a symbiotic relationship with nature, instead of in a parasitic one.

i believe it can all be broken down to bad communication. as advanced as our communication is, i don't think it is good enough to truly understand each other.
without proper understanding of other peoples intentions we make decisions without concern for them. the butterfly effect takes care of the rest, driving societies to division, greed and general self destructiveness.

with proper communication money becomes redundant too. imagine the possibilities in a world where money is redundant <3

Yes, great thread and interesting perspectives indeed!

I just want to step pack one bit. What does 'humanity' means here? Current global society (or societies?) Or humanity, as Homo sapiens?

A big part of the question is also by how bit part of how we are, think and behave is socially transferred and how bit part is in our DNA? This has been a long debate and but it seems like science now are more and more questioning the border between the two.

i was assuming "humanity" to mean all humans on earth today that are alive.

what exactly do you mean by "bit part"? i thought you meant "irrelevant" or something suggesting we are not an important role as an individual, but it does not make sense to me in the last part of your post so i think i misunderstand.
imo how bit part we are (as in "insignificant", even in our own minds is a result of our society too, in fact imo it is a byproduct of the way we think and behave.

The only true evil in this world is the indifference of good men.

'Ten Years After' wrote, I'd like to change the world but I don't know what to do, so I leave it up to you.

Socrates wrote that the unexamined life was not worth living.

Leo Tolstoy wrote everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Oh god, I could load this entire page with quotes to support my thinking here. I'd like to keep this simple as I think the solution to the worlds problem should be simple. I think we complicate our minds, we complicate our world, both reflect the other. It is hard to truly do some hard work of self examination. It is one of the hardest things I have done. Like a broken clock, I broke myself down into the small pieces to see the inner workings, why they work the way they do and how they work. I found darkness, I found pain, I found all sorts of things I would have rather avoided. I found things about myself I do not like one bit. It's a hard pill to swallow. It's hard work. The hardest kind of work you can do as a human. Lack of self examination is the core of why humanity remains in the shackles of greed, indifference and lack of empathy. The world over we have examples of good men and women, the ones who have examined themselves are the ones that go forward to tell others.

It's platos allegory of the cave pure and simple. You can tell people their problem all day long but in the end it is up to them to discover the shadows on the wall are illusions of their own minds. I hope someday more people will choose to self examine. To truly see that what you do to others you do to yourself. Treat others as you would have the treat you. Foster empathy as much as possible. Lessen the suffering of others. We do this because we understand pain and fear and the rest of the crap we have inside that keeps us in a cave. We have looked deep inside and understand why others behave the way they do. We can create a different kind of world if more made the choice to look within. I am not confident that this will ever occur to the point where we all live in peace. This would take a great change in the leadership of this world. I think the lack of leadership we have in the world is on display for all to see at this moment. Do not rely on leaders to lead.

My thinking about all of this is that we will continue down this road as long as we need to enable to learn what we need to enable to progress towards a future where we can live in balance. Balance will occur at some point in time. We will destroy ourselves or we will create beauty. We do this every single day. If you look at the world you can see this every single day. These extremes are built into every single human being. Simple.

For me, Ken Wilbur's idea really built this concept for me(and I would highly recommend him). That it all stems from an issue of perspective has always resonated with me. The idea that our social system has built all of our religious, interpersonal, and economic crisis'. That people are only concerned about themselves and their families in this one generation, much of which has been heavily influenced by Abrahamic religions and then perpetuated through Atheism, and that we aren't ever truly thinking about things in the long term or our children's children's children.

But yes, I agree that things should be kept simple. And that with all the advances of modern science we are finally at a point, with thousands of years of history, to actually make informed decisions rather than repeat our past failures. Generally I believe that people want to improve the world, but often lack the guidance and education for them to make a huge impact. While I think often too much impact is placed on the individual, like the whole idea of recycling in the US, each person does have an impact, and can truly make a difference to help spread the wisdom and help slowly improve our world.

I would also go a step further and say not only don't rely on your leaders, but don't rely on any government. A government is never a replacement for a strong community. Without this instinctual grouping that humans have relied on for millennia they tend to seek replacements which has led to our eroding western world, the rise of fascism(from any political party), the encroachment of freedoms and perversion of politics.

Sorry. I'm just to lazy (and/or dyslectic) to re-read my own posts. It should have been:
"A big part of the question is also by how big part of how we are, think and behave is socially transferred and how big part is in our DNA?"
Simplified as the 'Nature versus nurture' question.

And yes, 'humanity' as all humans on earth that are alive today. That puts some frames on the question.