I had a great conversation today with @MrTeacup on Twitter. It was roughly a debate between capitalistic vs. socialistic solutions to social problems. I was on the capitalistic side, and I thought I made some good arguments.

To explore the other side of the argument, I went on to watch this video  from The Zeitgeist Movement. It talks about the problems we’ve created for ourselves through social inequity, stemming from disproportionate distribution of resources (particularly money). These problems include (but are not limited to): poverty, starvation, poor health, lack of clean water, violence, economic crises, unsustainable means of production, unsustainable sources of energy, international conflict, artificial scarcity or resources, wasteful economic practices, pollution, and a growing population of people who are unlikely to achieve economic prosperity in this system. The Zeitgeist Movement proposes an idea to use technology to solve as many problems as possible, including automating as much as possible to create an abundance of resources for everyone to share. 

I agreed with the necessity and feasibility of everything I heard, except for the point about eliminating private property. Even if people learn to accept that a robot can do their job better than they can, and they come to rely on automated sources of food, transportation, services, etc., I find it hard to believe that humans will ever give up their attachments to their stuff.

It’s like communism. It looks great on paper, but when you consider the way humans seem to think and behave (call it “human nature”), there’s not much evidence to suggest we will make a radical and immediate change to a system free of private property, where we all take care of each other out of altruism and concern for our collective well-being.

The truth is there is still racism, sexism, nationalism, and general xenophobia all over the globe. I believe this is rooted in a basic dualistic way of relating to the world in terms of Self and Other. We have all lived with this distinction since we were infants. As adults, “self” grows to include “those like me”, and “other” turns into “those different from me.”

I like to think I’m a realist. I don’t believe humans will change radically from how they are now. I think any plan to save ourselves from the broken systems we have created has to account for actual current human behavior, not desired behavior or potential behavior.

So I had an epiphany, which I expressed in the following tweets:

1) We won’t experience global cohesion until there is an “other” with which to contrast our collective identity.

2) We are conditioned to think in terms of self and other. That’s why individualism and nationalism are so pervasive.

3) We’re not concerned about the well-being of others here on Earth, because we’re too attached to providing for our selves.

4) To boost the global consciousness and create more care for fellow human beings, we need to use our existing human psychology to help us band together, in contrast to a cosmic “other”.

5) If we could take the indifference we currently feel for fellow humans and project it onto something outside this Earth, we would take better care of each other and our terrestrial home.

6) We NEED extraterrestrials to exist, if we’re ever going to be one human family.

7) Self and Other is too engrained in our psychology to drop it entirely.

8) We NEED evidence of life outside Earth. It’s not just interesting, but necessary for our identity, now that our awareness is going global.

9) We’re getting claustrophobic here on Earth. It’s a closed system.

10) Knowing only ourselves causes us to fragment into self and other amongst ourselves. We create divisions that don’t really exist.

11) I think we NEED these divisions. We NEED an other. It’s not ideal, but it’s how our minds work.

                               …After a few minutes of contemplation…

12) It’s just sad to think that we might be floating in space all alone, fighting with each other, killing ourselves…

13) Because we can’t (or won’t) take care of ourselves and our home.

These may seem like disparate thoughts, but they all follow from the thought that we could take our existing sense of nationalism (or any other group identification around a similar identity) and turn it into globalism, if we only had an “other” with which to hold ourselves in contrast.

This idea may seem inconsequential, given that there is not a group of extra-terrestrials (that we know of) with which to contrast ourselves. However, the psychology of it is relevant. If we only had some ”other” to hold in our minds, we might identify more with each other. Even the thought that we’re all alone in space, and we only have ourselves and the Earth for survival may create an “Us vs the Universe” mentality that would inspire global cooperation to ensure our survival. 

Anything is better than the thought that we may end up extinguishing this speck of intelligent life because we failed to care for the small planet that nurtures it.

-Nick-