The inspiration for this piece comes after writing “Systems. Leverage Points. The limits of growth and the growth of limits!”. I recommend reading that before unpacking this one.
Our ever-globalized and interconnected world is magical in that we can video call virtually anyone who lives on the otherwise of the world, buy something from a local business in another country or even travel and immerse ourselves in another culture for effectively a bargain (relative to what it cost in lives and resources to travel even 100 years ago). However, this also means our society is becoming more homogenous.
America’s culture is exported as far as India, Australia (& its surrounding Islands), and even in certain ways to China. The systemic risk that can occur here is that we effectively become a ‘mono-culture crop’. A fact is that cities/settlements and civilizations collapse. If we are a mono-culture, we only need one downfall/crisis to take all of us down.
If the above assumptions are true then we need to consciously create more experiments and take more shots on goal. Blockchains may allow us to experiment with the incentives driving the re-diversification.
To me, this is a humanitarian ‘meta-crisis’ as coined by Daniel Schmachtenberger. As you will learn in Finance 101 about the importance of diversification and not putting all your eggs in one basket we need to re-engage with this concept on a species-level scale.
It is a species-level problem to rely on only two or three permutations of culture, food systems, economic models, and general-purpose technology platforms.