A Visit to a Future

In many ways their world is very similar to our world. People live in houses and apartments with others or alone. They work and learn. They read, watch videos, play music. There is something like the Internet, but it just blends into the background. It is a tool like a hammer. They have parties, sports, walks in the woods. They have romances. Hearts are broken.

Some people are driven to succeed. Some do just enough to get by. Just getting by is somewhat easier. Success is a somewhat harder.

Just getting by is easier because natural resources are essentially free since everyone has an equal freedom to use them. It is considered a mark of great shame to use too much or not sustainably. Housing doesn't cost much. A house is passed along when people move on or die. They are mostly relatively small and built from prefab components. Some are hand made, but that is rare. Increasingly, they are grown.

There are many kinds of jobs, like in our world, but people tend to work at a variety of jobs. In some ways life seems less high tech than in our time. Since wars of acquisition have become almost unheard of, the drive for new dangerous toys is not that great. There is a great deal of attention to how to make life easier and better. Nature is allowed to work for them. They know a lot and want to learn more, but as we used to say, they work smarter, not harder.

People walk a lot and ride various human powered contraptions. There are high speed pods on magnetic tracks and something like balloons that get pushed along by the jet streams. There are a few space elevators, but space travel hasn't got as far as you would think.

Which brings me back to their ideas about success. People have a place to live, usually pretty nice, with nature around. Everyone has their prized possessions and access to the tools of their trades or their hobbies. But beyond that they don't have much or want much.

The real glory comes from personal accomplishment in whatever area they choose, in sports, art, science, engineering, hobbies. Problem solvers are especially glorified. Permaculture designers are demigods. The guy that first figured out the low labor permaculture system used in the temperate climates is almost worshiped.

Social facilitators are also highly regarded. Someone who can defuse a potentially violent situation or help some coop workgroup resolve their issues is always looked up to. There is still very much of a need for such things, because people are people, despite living without anything like a state for over a hundred years.

In some ways it is a culture of eccentrics. People very much go their own way and have their own, often weird, ideas and quests. But there is not much disagreement on the fundamental rudeness of interfering with someone else's life or the insanity of the old idea that nature can be divided up and owned. At most they see themselves as borrowing some part of it to live their lives. And they would feel humiliated if they were not able to leave it in good shape for the next person.