Recap:
If our city is organized in such a way that it is unwilling
to save people from death unless they are deemed worth it, then we are
vulnerable, not only to the problem of the streets, but to any danger to which
our city decides our lives are disposable.
People, generally speaking, want to live.
A city that decides to deliver death, then, can be presumed
to be a city whose method of deciding has been stolen away from people.
If we are people who wish to live, then, we will have to fix
the way the city decides.
End recap.
•
So, we’ve learned a present danger to my neighbor means an
eventual danger to me, no matter how much it presently favors me.
This suggests that—even if I am only driven by
self-interest—I would do well to watch for dangers to my neighbors, and then
change our human systems to protect them.
How far will the change have to reach? To the very
boundaries of the city.
A question: Where are the boundaries of our neighborhood?
I’ll answer with another question, an ancient one: Who is
my neighbor?
•
Who is my neighbor? Well, there’s the people to either side
of my house. No question about them. You’d probably want to include the people
directly across. After that it can get fuzzy. Two houses down? Three? The next
street over? Two streets over? Three?
What do I mean by “neighbor” within the context of the
question “What are the boundaries of our neighborhood?”
Not my neighborhood, or your neighborhood,
which have actual legally defined boundaries. The metaphorical neighborhood,
the one that’s applicable to questions about our natural human system. The one
that provides value and harm in ways that are invisible and inextricable and
automatic and inherited, as naturally as rain falls on roofs, or fungus unites
a forest’s roots, or streets connect houses to other houses. How far does that
neighborhood stretch?
To rephrase: what are the outermost boundaries of our
natural human system?
To answer the question, I first think of all the obvious
steps necessary to maintain or modify or improve such a system, which begins
with knowledge—awareness of the need and an acceptance of responsibility to
act, and then ends with resolve—a decision to act and an agreement to pay the
cost.
A suggestion for a workable definition: the boundaries of
the “neighborhood” are definable by the extent to which knowledge of
connectivity can be achieved, the extent to which our actions deliver value to
other people— shared, invisible, foundational, generative, automatic,
inextricable, configurable, and inherited.
Our “neighborhood” is the system within which that value
flows.
The way it flows reflects the priorities of the society that
built the system.
Any change to the system, therefore, must first involve a
change to that society’s priorities.
I think you change a society’s priorities, not primarily
with better arguments, but with better stories.
Let me tell you a story.
•
Suppose this: a hundred billion light years from our
planet, on another planet, there exists a civilization, living much as we do. The people on our planet don’t know about it. We have no
knowledge of it, nor of any effect of our actions upon it. Thus, we feel no
responsibility for it, because we could never maintain or modify or improve it
or harm it.
This hypothetical faraway civilization is not within the
boundaries of our “neighborhood.” Its denizens are not our neighbors.
But suppose something changed in this scenario. Suppose we
develop a quantum telescope—a device that allows us to observe this
civilization in real time. Rather than detecting the report of light escaped
millions of years ago, reaching us only now from a vastness of space, the
quantum telescope detects intelligent life. Because the quantum telescope utilizes relativistic technologies, it allows us to see all intelligent
civilizations across the entirety of their time—exactly as they live, their now, or into their past,
their then, or even their future, their will be. By observing the
development of these civilizations—the discoveries they’ve made that we
haven’t yet—we are ourselves able to hugely benefit, taking giant leaps forward
in medicine, transportation, agriculture. In short, imagine an unimaginable
lurch forward in our knowledge, made possible by a change in technology.
But suppose something further. Suppose when we train our
telescope back to societies we’d previously observed, we discover something
disturbing. The past of these far civilizations, the presents, the futures …
are changed, and for the worse. The courses of their histories have now taken
terrible turns, reach tragic ends and early extinctions. We run tests. The results are conclusive: Use
of quantum energy has led to effects we’d not anticipated. The fact that we
have observed these civilizations has benefited us at present, but has changed
the reality of their course for the worse. Without intending it, we appear to
have … it seems impossible, but in some way we don’t understand,
through quantum effects of observation, we seem to have stolen their potential. More disturbing still, the
very weft of reality, at the edges farther from us but moving inward … is
beginning to warp and skew. We’ve drawn upon something necessary and vital, used it as a resource, and
there is nearly unanimous consensus among our foremost experts: to draw upon it
further will speed the degrading effect. There is a growing understanding that engaging
in these activities risks creating paradoxes that threaten existence itself.
To go back to a point where we no longer know the things
we’ve learned is literally impossible. To stop using our invention means losing
much of the benefit we’ve gained, and cuts us off from future benefits and growth
along these lines. But … to continue to use it as we have is to subject entire
civilizations to ruin, and to throw the natural order of the entire observable
universe to hazard and chance.
We’re conflicted.
We say: but we didn’t intend to do that.
We say: but there’s nothing we can do about it anyway.
And we ask: what does this have to do with me?
But the fact remains that we hadn’t known, and now we do know.
Technology has changed us. A global society has suddenly
become universal.
We train our quantum telescope to the skies, and we see
civilization after civilization all beginning to work on similar projects.
They’re all building quantum telescopes.
Suddenly the universe is filled with neighbors.
•
It’s a science fiction premise, I know. I put it forward for
the same reason that most science fiction premises are put forward, which is to
demonstrate something true about our present reality.
Here’s what my sci-fi premise demonstrates: Innovation—new
technology, new concepts, new ideas—often expands our knowledge. It also
expands our potential, both for good and for harm, because it expands what we
know, by introducing to us something that was always true about our natural
human connection.
It was always true. We just hadn’t known. We learned through
innovation. The innovation changed things in ways that couldn’t be reversed,
and which nevertheless happened.
Innovation, by the way, is a natural human system. "Human" because humans can discover it, use it, and configure it, then inherit the
effects of those configurations. "Natural," because innovation is never just
created; rather, it’s the discovery of something that had previously been
unknown, but which was always true, always there, always ready for humans to
discover and configure.
Innovation is a new street, so to speak, which leads to a
new location.
Innovation doesn’t change our priorities. It just expands
the effects of those priorities, which provides us new opportunities to
identify what those priorities are—the real priorities, the ones that reflect
what actually happens.
In the story, we lived in an entangled universe, and we
always did. Learning that truth didn’t make it true; it just made us aware.
Ignoring it won’t make it stop being true, it will just make us deliberately
ignorant in ways that endanger our future existence. The truth of our entanglement was always there, waiting for us to
know it.
Our knowledge is something that changes, and as that
knowledge changes, so does the scope of what we can maintain, modify, or
improve ... and harm.
This suggests that the boundaries of “our neighborhood,” the
answer to the question who is my neighbor? is also subject to change. Or, not so much
‘change’ as new discovery. We learn that people we hadn’t thought were
neighbors were actually neighbors all along.
Do you see it? To our perspective, our “neighborhood” is
getting bigger, and our count of neighbors are increasing. But in
truth, the neighborhood was always this size.
Yesterday our awareness was one thing. Today it is something
different.
Let me tell you another story.
•
OK, let’s create a setting for this story.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, there was a distant
planet called “Earth,” and when it had become a very old planet indeed, there
lived upon it for a very brief time creatures called ‘humans,’
who—impressively—could stand upright and run for dozens of miles without taking
rest, and who—less impressively, but more pertinently to this story—had
enormous brains that allowed them to make marvelous connections between
themselves and each other, and between themselves and other parts of the world—could
make configurations, both intentional and unintentional, to their natural
systems.
Let's say there was a time early in the history of these humans where
the outer limits of human connection were defined only by the biological family.
These ties provided the mutual interconnectivity that allowed for shared
values, which allowed for trust, which allowed for cooperation, which allowed
for cohesion, safety and survival.
This arrangement provided each human with
collective value that was automatic, inextricable, invisible, natural, and
inherited, and available only within the boundaries of the family. It was well
understood in these human families that each person would act within their
self-interest, but it would have been seen as a dangerous and destructive
corruption of the very bedrock of society to put one’s self-interest above the
family interest in matters pertaining to the family. And it was clearly
understood in human families that to harm one was to harm all, in a way that
simply wouldn’t be relevant if applied to anybody outside of the family.
For a
brief while in the early history of human families, no knowledge of outside
families even existed; but once that awareness was gained, there still didn’t
seem to human families to exist any need for deeper knowledge of outside
families, other than this awareness—they are not us. They are rivals for
the resources we need. They are not to be trusted.
What sat at the bottom of this false belief was the great foundation lie: the people who are us matter, and the people who are not us do not matter at all.
These humans were families. They were familial.
Families weren’t without conflict or abuse, but they were
a natural human system. Conflicts and abuses would arise when some member of
the family decided that more of the natural benefits of their human system
should come to them than they needed, at the expense of another who would
receive less than they needed, and then managed to configure the family to
reflect those unbalanced priorities, and solidify them into tradition.
What sat at the bottom of all these imbalances was the great foundational lie: some people matter more than other people.
Still, despite its shortcomings, the family was good. It was useful,
and remained useful. But it wasn’t the end.
What happened was that, over time, some families realized
something that had always been true but hadn’t yet been known. They learned
that what they did affected the families nearby, and what families nearby did
affected them, and that their conflicts over the resources they all needed actually
represented a waste of energy and resource both, and could even risk the
destruction of the resources upon which all the families depended. They learned
there were actually enough resources for all the families nearby, and that
families joined together over their commonalities of need and proximity could
create a human system that generated much more influence and value than single
families acting apart.
This was an innovation.
Here was the name of this new innovation: Tribe.
The humans
had been familial. They became tribal.
Some familial humans saw the innovation of tribe as a danger threatening to put an end to families entirely, and fought against the concept of "tribes" as a
result. But they couldn’t stop the knowledge of the innovation of tribe, and so
they couldn’t choose to not live in a world where it was true that tribes
generated more influence and value, and so, no matter how hard they tried, they
couldn’t live in a world where this truth was not known.
They were wrong, anyway. The tribe didn’t put an end to
families, any more than the human family ended the
individual—but it did put an end to the idea of the family as the outermost
boundary of human connection. A tribe was simply a more effective natural human
system than the family in many crucial ways, and it always had been. What the
innovation of tribe did do was this: expand the possibilities of what a
family could be, offer more choices in matters of forming families. And
so, the family remained vital and important and honored structures within most
human tribes.
Still, over time, it was understood that while everyone would have more responsibility for and loyalty toward their family members than other tribal members, anyone who put their family over the interests of tribal cohesion would be seen as creating a dangerous and
destructive corruption of the very bedrock of tribal society, because the tribe
was a natural human system which, as a practical matter, created more
value than the family—in fact, it provided the context within which families
existed.
The problem with being familial wasn’t that the biological family
was bad—it was uniquely good, in many ways that remained and continued. It just
didn’t take human connectivity far enough, and so to try to make the
family the outermost boundary of human connection meant living in a dangerous
and unsustainable lie that would eventually fall to the truth.
The innovation of “tribe” simply went further into the truth
of human connection.
The humans had innovated, and learned, and now there were more
neighbors. The tribal humans learned that more neighbors meant more resources and opportunity, not less.
The families that feared loss of resource were wrong, because the
tribe is a natural human system, and natural human systems are shared,
invisible, foundational, generative, automatic, inextricable, configurable, and
inherited.
The family had been the boundary of the neighborhood. Now it
was the tribe.
The tribe created new ties providing the mutual
interconnectivity that allowed for shared values, which allowed for trust,
which allowed for cooperation, which allowed for cohesion, safety and survival.
The arrangement provided each human with collective value available only through
the innovative creation of the tribe, while allowing them to continue enjoying expanded
benefits of being familial.
The innovation of tribe didn’t put an end to conflict or
abuse among the humans. In truth, the creation of tribes involved more
conflict, and new abuses, as the bad priorities already configured
within families inherited to tribal systems. For example: families resistant to
the new concept of “tribe” were captured or conquered or forced to comply, or
isolated and starved of resources as they tried to compete against a new more
effective type of natural human system, by tribal humans who had no interest in
the humanity of families not of their tribe; meanwhile, families who most
benefitted within the tribe still tried to use their influence to configure
this new human system, to unnaturally seize more influence, and to solidify these imbalances as traditions.
What sat at the bottom of all these imbalances was the great foundational lie: some people matter more than other people.
Logic demands there would be more conflict, and more danger
of abuse—this was, after all, a more efficient human system. It would naturally
be more efficient at delivering its corruptions and harms in the same way it
delivered its benefits—and there would grow among tribal humans the awareness
that the harm this new and efficient system could deliver might, if unchecked,
compromise their entire territory.
So among tribal humans there grew an awareness, checks,
taboos: that to harm one was to harm all, in a way that simply wouldn’t be
relevant if applied to anybody outside of the tribe. However, no common cause
with outside tribes existed, nor any need for that common cause, other than
this awareness—they are not us. They are rivals for our resources. They are
not to be trusted.
What sat at the bottom of this false belief was the great foundation lie: the people who are us matter, and the people who are not us do not matter at all.
And so, the tribe was good. It was useful, and remained
useful. But it wasn’t the end.
What happened was that some tribes realized something that
had always been true but hadn’t yet been known. They learned that what they did
affected the tribes nearby, and what tribes nearby did affected them, and that
conflict over the resources they all needed was a waste of energy and resource,
and could even risk the destruction of the resources upon which all tribes
depended. They learned there were actually enough resources for all the tribes
nearby, and that tribes joined together over their commonalities of need and
proximity could create a human system that generated much more influence and
value than single tribes acting apart.
This was an innovation.
Here was the name of this new innovation: Nation.
The humans
had been tribal. They became national.
Some tribal humans saw the nation as a danger threatening an end to tribes,
and fought the concept of nations as a result. But they couldn’t stop the
knowledge of the innovation of nation, and so they couldn’t choose to live
in a world where it wasn't true that nations generated more influence and value,
and, no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t live in a world where this
truth was not known.
They were wrong, anyway. The nation didn’t put an end to
tribes, any more than the tribe put an end to families or individuals, but it
did put an end to the idea of the tribe as the outermost boundary of human
connection. What the innovation of nation did do was this: expand the
possibilities of what a tribe or a family could be, offer more choices
in matters of creating tribes, or forming families.
And so, the family and the
tribe remained vital and important and honored structures within most human
nations. A nation was simply a more
effective natural human system than a tribe in many crucial ways, and always
had been. Still, over time, it was understood that anyone who put their tribe
or family over the national interest would be seen as creating a dangerous
corruption of the larger society, because the nation was a natural human system
which, as a practical matter, created more value than the tribe or the
family.
The problem with being tribal isn’t that the tribe was
bad—it was good, in many unique ways that remained and continued. The problem
with tribalism was that it didn’t take human connectivity far enough,
and so to try to make the tribe the outermost boundary of human connection
meant living in a dangerous and unsustainable lie that would eventually fall to
the truth.
The innovation of “tribe” simply went further into the truth
of human connection.
The humans had innovated, and learned, and now there were more
neighbors. The nationalist humans learned that more neighbors meant more resources, not less.
The tribes that feared loss of resource were wrong, because the
nation is a natural human system, and natural human systems are shared,
invisible, foundational, generative, automatic, inextricable, configurable, and
inherited.
The tribe had been the boundary of the neighborhood. Now it
was the nation.
The nation created new ties providing the mutual
interconnectivity that allowed for shared values, which allowed for trust,
which allowed for cooperation, which allowed for cohesion, safety and survival.
The arrangement provided each human with collective value available only
through the innovative creation of the nation, while allowing them to continue
enjoying the benefits of being familial and tribal.
The innovation of the nation didn’t put an end to conflict
or abuse among the humans. In truth, the creation of nations involved more
conflict, and new abuses, as the bad priorities already present within
families and tribes were inherited to national systems. For example: tribes and
families resistant to the new concept of “nation” were captured or conquered or
forced to comply, or isolated and starved of resources as they tried to compete
against a new and more effective type of natural human system, by nationalist
humans who had no interest in the humanity of tribes not of their nation;
meanwhile, families and individuals who most benefitted within the nations
tried to use their influence to configure this new human system, to unnaturally
seize even more influence, to solidify these imbalances into tradition, and codify them into law.
Logic demands there would be more conflict, and more danger
of abuse; this was, after all, a more efficient human system. It would
naturally be as efficient at delivering corruptions and harms in the same way
it delivered its benefits—and there would grow among nationalist humans the
awareness that the harm this new and efficient system could deliver could
compromise their entire country.
So among nationalist humans there grew an awareness, checks,
taboos: that to harm one was to harm all, in a way that simply wouldn’t be
relevant if applied to anybody outside of the nation. However, among
nationalist humans, no common cause with outside nations existed, nor any need
for that common cause, other than this awareness—they were not us. They
were rivals for our resources. They were not to be trusted.
What sat at the bottom of this false belief was the great foundation lie: the people who are us matter, and the people who are not us do not matter at all.
And so, the nation was good. It was useful, and remained
useful. But it wasn’t the end.
What happened was that some humans within nations began to
realize something that has always been true but hasn’t yet been realized. They
learned that what they did affected the nations nearby, and what nations nearby
did affected them, and that conflict over the resources they needed represented
a waste of energy and resource, and could even risk the destruction of the
resources upon which all nations depend.
What sort of resources? Oh, things like soil that produces food.
Vegetation. Breathable air. Drinkable water. An ecosystem. A planet that
continues to sustain life. In other words, the future of human existence.
What happened was some people in nations learned something
that had always been true but hadn’t yet been known: that there were actually
enough resources for all the nations, and that nations joined together over
their commonalities of a shared human need and a shared human planet could
create a human system that generated much more influence and value than
single nations acting apart.
Here was the name of this new concept: Planet. The humans
were nationalist. They became planetary.
I recommend we set our story about the humans right here, in
the midst of a great shift from nationalism to planetary thinking.
Let’s make this planet the humans live on spherical.
Globular. We could call the planet “the globe.” We could call their planetary
thinking “globalism.”
Here’s what’s going on with our humans.
Some of the tools of globalism these humans have developed are
empire and commerce and alliance and war and incorporation—which are largely the same tools used
by families and tribes and nations, too. Some of these tools are imperfect,
which means they can be improved, and should be. Some of them are bad, which
means they can be abandoned, and should be. “War” in particular is a real
stinker. "Incorporation" is perhaps the most popular, at this particular moment in our story.
Let's talk about war and incorporation.
So, in our story, the human innovation of planetary thinking
hasn’t put an end to conflict. Our nascently planetary humans are still
governed by the bad priorities already present within families and tribes and
nations, shaped by bad ideas with no place within a healthy system, that have configured their natural human systems
into something potentially unsustainable, inherited up from families and tribes and nations into the global system. In
truth, the creation of globalism has involved more conflict, and new
abuses. There have been, and are, nations resistant to the new concept of
“global,” who have been captured or conquered or forced to comply, or isolated
and starved of resources as they tried to maintain insularity rather than compete
against a new more effective type of natural human system. There are nations that
most benefit within the global system of empire and commerce and alliance, who
have used their influence to seize more influence and more benefit. It’s some
of these conflicts between nations that humans call “war,” and it happens a
lot. Alliance is a much more effective way of managing conflict than war. The
humans know this, and yet war has not ceased; rather, it has increased.
In the story, nationalist humans will have innovated a lot
of ways of warring between nations—which is generally seen as involving physical combat.
They also have created "incorporation," increasingly elaborate and effective systems of finance and commerce
and jurisprudence, which are able to deliver astonishing amounts of wealth and benefit to some humans. Unfortunately, the "incorporation" is aligned to the same foundational lies, configured for abuse, to
deliver inherited theft and harm to some with the same level of astonishing efficiency as it employs to deliver the inherited plunder to
others.
The nationalist humans still have incorporated war and theft because there are families and
tribes and nations, who wrongly see the planetary
view as a danger threatening to put an end to families and tribes and nations entirely; because there are families and tribes and nations infected by the oldest viral human lies, that some people matter than others; that the people who are us matter and the people who are not us do not matter at all.
And
we readers will clearly see that just as their precursors were wrong, they too
are wrong. The global view won’t put an end to nations, any more than nations
put an end to tribes or families or individuals, but it has already put an end
to the idea of the nation as the outermost boundary of human connection. And yes,
in our story there will still be nations that fear the idea of a global
humanity and resist it, to the determent of all. All nations in our story do this, in fact,
to one extent or another. It’s here the humans in our story find themselves,
caught in the teeth of this centuries-long transition between a nationalist
realization and a globalist one, applying old harms on a global stage,
in ways that compromise the entire planet.
Here’s the conflict of our story, the stakes: Either the
humans will learn to move into the truth of a connected planet, and, having reached the furthest imaginable boundary, begin at last to address their oldest foundational lies, or they will
deny that truth and remain in the lies. Either they will move into new and sustainable models of
living, that recognizes the responsibility of global connections, or else
they’ll go on putting their tribe or family or nation over the planetary interest, and in
so doing live an unsustainable lie.
If that happens, our humans will go extinct.
Pretty big stakes!
If we write the
story with skill, our readers will hope that the humans do not go extinct.
Eventually (and in our story we might introduce at least one
crisis that makes this timeline more immediate), our humans are going to have
to understand that anyone who puts their nation or tribe or family over a planetary interest would be seen as creating a dangerous corruption of everything including nations, tribes, and families,
because, unless these humans make some sort of unimaginable interplanetary
discovery, the planet is the natural human system.
We might even write the story so that planetary humanists were starting to realize that actually what humans were going to need to do to survive was not only learn to live in harmony with other humans, but with all other systems on the planet—that in fact the natural human system was only a component of a natural system upon which all humans relied in a way that was shared, foundational, generative, automatic, inextricable, configurable, and inherited.
The humans in our story won't be able to go back from global humanity, because
global humanity, like all innovations, is the discovery of something that was
always true. They can’t separate themselves from it, because innovation is part
of a natural human system as well, delivered to our humans as automatically and
inextricably as are the benefit and harm.
If we follow the pattern of human development, we, reading
the story of these humans, must conclude that a peaceful joined noncompeting
globe will simply be a more effective natural human system than the nation,
just as the nation was a more effective system than the tribe, and the tribe
more effective than the family.
If the pattern of human history is to be
trusted, a unified cooperative globe would create more value and
potential and opportunity than the nation or the tribe or the family—would, if our
humans let it, create new ties providing the mutual interconnectivity that
allows for shared values, which allows for trust, which allows for cooperation,
which allows for cohesion, safety and survival.
We readers might begin to
suspect that such an arrangement might, if the humans let it, provide each
individual with collective value that is automatic, inextricable, invisible,
natural, and inherited, and available only through the innovative creation of a
unified non-competing globe—an arrangement within which it would be clearly
understood that to harm one was to harm all, in a way that extends to the very
boundaries of planetary existence. No common cause with outside planets will
yet exist, nor any need for that common cause, not because the humans seek no
common cause, but because there remains within human awareness no common cause
left to seek.
But let's end there for now.
Let’s make this a happy ending. Let’s say the humans lead
themselves into the new truth their innovation has uncovered.
The problem with being nationalist, our humans will
discover, isn’t that the nation is bad—it’s good, in many ways that still
continue. The problem with nationalism is and always was, it didn’t take human
connectivity far enough, and so to try to make the nation the outermost
boundary of human connection meant living in a dangerous and unsustainable lie
that would inevitably fall to the truth.
No, the humans learn, the nation isn’t bad—it’s uniquely good
and useful, and remains so. But it won’t be the end.
Planetary thinking simply goes further into the truth of
human connection.
The nation will have been the boundary of the neighborhood.
But now it is the planet. It always was.
The nationalist humans will have learned that more neighbors
meant more resources, not less.
And our humans will have innovated, and learned, and now their
entire planet is full of neighbors. Logic insists that the families and tribes
and nations that fear loss of resource will have been proved wrong, because the
report of human history demands that more neighbors means more
resources, not less; and the globe is not a natural human system, it is the
natural human system.
But story can’t start with the resolution. We’ll need to
make this a conflict, so the story really has some fizz. Let’s start the story
at a point where it really looks bad; as if our humans are going to cling to
the old unsustainable lies—choose extinction over expansion, life over death.
What would be the situation that threatens a bad ending?
What would that look like?
Well … if we were to find that these humans were still
captured by our worst priorities, the ones most aligned with harmful ideas that
have no place in a healthy society, they might find themselves with a leader
who always puts himself before anybody else, who always puts his family ahead
of any tribe to which he might belong, who always puts the interests of his
tribe before that of the nation he leads, and who always puts his nation’s
domination over the global sustainability of human life.
Worse, our humans might have chosen that leader, and
be seriously considering choosing him again.
Yes. We might start there.
|
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
|
•
It's a sci-fi premise. It’s not meant as anthropology or
history.
Understand, I am aware that progressive innovation of
natural human systems of family and tribe and nation didn’t happen anything
like as cleanly or uniformly as presented here—but these innovations did occur,
and I think the fact that it happened gives us significant insight into the
question of who our neighbors are.
It’s worth repeating the reason we’re contemplating
neighbors. We’ve learned a present danger to our neighbor means an eventual
danger to us, no matter how much it presently favors us.
This suggests that—even if we are only driven by
self-interest—we would do well to watch for dangers to our neighbors, and then
change our human systems to protect them.
How far will the change have to reach? To the very
boundaries of our city—our natural human system.
Which demanded the question: What are the boundaries of
our city?
And then, as answer, another question, an ancient one: Who
is my neighbor?
•
A question: Who is my neighbor?
An answer: Who isn’t?
•
Another question: Who is your neighbor’s neighbor, if not you?
•
So: Who stole the value from my neighbors, and who gave it
to me?
And who stole the land for my house, my street?
Who stole value away
from my neighbor’s street, and who gave it to my street?
I’ll answer it with another question, one I’ve already
answered:
Who put my street
there?
A.R. Moxon is a writer. His novel The Revisionaries, is available now, with the paperback edition releasing December 1, 2020.
< Back | Forward >
0. NEXT
PART I: HERE
1. STREET
2. VALUE
3. CONFIGURE
4. NEIGHBOR
5. INHERIT
6. ALIGN
PART II: NOW
7. CONVICT
8. CONFESS
9. REPENT
10. REPAIR