Why change the outside when you can change yourself?

    In today's world of rapidly expanding industrial infrastructure it has become hard to discern what all this progress really accomplishes for humanity as a whole.  People often say technology helps us live easier and more fulfilling lives, but, evidence exists that gives credence to the idea that the technological demiurge actually mitigates our ability to live rewarding lives.  Obesity and technological addiction represent only two of the facets of modernity that seem anything but progressive.  People have given up their inherent rights to enjoy their bodies alongside their minds when they become sedentary obese consumers.  Much of the technology that we believe extends our human capabilities actually makes us into machines where our only self-directed activities have become pushing buttons or other input devices upon the computers we love so deeply.  Along with these negative externalities we place upon ourselves there also exists the obvious stress technology and industry places upon the environment.
    Modern agricultural man has always tried to adapt the environment to his own devices when all other humans have adapted their culture and mind to the environment they found themselves in.  Humans have adapted to different ecosystems and niches across the globe throughout our long history.  Humans live full lives in the Arctic Tundra, the Amazonian Rainforest, and the Arizona desert, among many other places. Why do westerners and their capital system demand that a given area be adapted to suit the needs of their monolithic culture?
   I personally believe that this method of attempting to control the environment will continue to wane in the years to come.  Environmental awareness and global activism represent just two aspects of this rising trend.  Now what will the system of environmental degradation give way to?  A 1960's like return to nature and abandonment of technology? No, I believe that the object of our transformative technology will cease being the outside environment and will begin focusing upon our own physical vessels, our bodies.  Why adapt the outside world to our minds and bodily tastes when we can use man's inherent mental adaptability coupled with our new found technology to transform ourselves so we may fit into any ecological niche, terrestrial or extraterrestrial, that we wish.  Nanotechnology, genetics, computer brains, all these frontier technologies would allow man to adapt his self to any role he saw fit.  As technology advances we may even become so amorphous that we are able to change both our thought patterns and body structures at will.
  An example application of this idea would be to create photosynthetic men that require only sunlight and water rather than solid animal food.  This would quickly solve our population and hunger problem.  Let us hope that man realizes the futility in attempting to control the chaos outside him and begins to turn his need for adaptation inward, upon himself.

A Neo-tribal Manifesto

How is it with the info-sphere bombarding our American minds at every opportunity that we can still all be so apathetic?  We all know America is using an unfair amount of world resources and seems to be creating history's largest military in order to defend this claim to rape and pillage the earth and its peoples.  It is also obvious that capitalism itself and our unsustainable farming practices are modes of life that are untenable.  With 7 billion people hurtling towards disaster isn't it time people walked away from this monstrosity?  The only thing keeping us eating McDonald's, working jobs we despise, and supporting a government that continues to build nuclear weapons is the paralyzing fear of the unknown.  Our imaginations have been so stunted by TV, video games, and the net that we cannot imagine anything other than this samsaric brave new world that we are all trapped in.  If people begin living on their own accord and waking up from their perpetual desire fulfillment games we may gain the imagination we need to surge through this hardship that awaits us.  If each person imagined at better world and tries to embody the world of their imagination the earth could be transformed.

To show that I am not just a rabble rouser I'll present my own idea for a whole new world system.  In this system people would live in traditionally sized groups of 50-100 people.  These people would live and work together in some kind of common building or parcel of land.  The difference between these groups and our present system or the communes of the 1960's would be that these groups would all have a stated goal and agenda.  The men and women in the groups(or "tribes") around the world would be sovereign to follow their group imaginations in order to fulfill the goal they had placed before them.  People of a certain age would be both matched and able to choose a "tribe" that suited their personal talents and aspirations.  Once in the tribe they would acclimate to its structure and make a decision to stay or not.  People would not be bound to one tribe but could move freely between tribes until they discover or found a tribe that encompasses their unique person.  Tribes would have all kinds of functions only chosen by their members.  An example would be a tribe that attempted to create the most sustainable agriculture.  Another, a tribe that attempted to study the human mind to its expansive limits/  The possibilities lay in the imaginations of the people the tribe is composed of.  With 50-100 people working for an obvious stated goal anything is attainable.  Now some may say that this would be a fragmentation of human society into competing groups that would resemble the very nation-states we are trying to escape from.  The difference would be that these tribes, different as they are, would all be in it together and would respect the sovereignty of the other tribes.  Also, the tribes would be in constant communication with each other through a worldwide internet that allowed the different tribes to share their breakthroughs with the rest of the world.  This system would give humans a purpose and focus but not bind them to  a mono-culture that stagnates with time.  It also would allow individuality of purpose while also encouraging a greater HUMAN purpose through the cooperation and mutual advancement of the tribes.  This kind of collective has the strength of the original human social form, the tribe, while also enfolding the technological advances we have made into a new system that embraces our past and future.    This kind of society resembles a collection of differentiated organs(tribes) created from inherently the same stem cells(humans)  What we have now resembles a  unbalanced coral reef of unrelated constituent parts at best, and a differentiated mass of cancerous single-cells at worst.  The hive system we are now trapped in has no interest in furthering humanity's or the planet's interests its only wish is to funnel more wealth and power to those already in power.  Imagine a new system and work yourself towards it.  More to come.