Culture vs Authority

I was talking to a friend last evening and I was going on and on how future technological capabilities will bring forth a new level of human civilization when she stopped me and asked where I will we find someone to enforce all the things I was talking about. At that point, something clicked in me and I realized that I didn't structure my arguments clearly enough and I did not make a difference between culture and authority.

"Programming" human behavior

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Human nature is vast and it spans over a very large array of behaviors, individuals only manifest part of it and that part is mostly influenced by the outside context. There are situations in which people will go against the grain and develop in such a way that is opposed to the environment, but in most cases, there is a direct correlation between environment and behavior. This is a well-known fact that has been used to shape society since maybe the down of civilization itself.

From what I observed, there are two main ways human behavior can be directed in a certain direction, an authoritative approach and a cultural one. Let's take as example marriage and taxes, neither are biological imperatives that surface naturally in our behavior like eating and mating, but both are generally accepted. Marriage is not enforced by any authority, but it tends to happen because there is a cultural consensus that this is the way things should be done. Taxes are also something people conform to, but not because there is a cultural consensus, but rather there is an authority that can punish people that don't pay their taxes.

Both ways seem to get things done, but they do it in very different ways. Authority can impose a new behavior very quickly, but it uses a lot of resources to enforce it. While a cultural norm takes a lot of time to ingrain itself into society, but after its there, no resources are needed to enforce a certain behavior, society will do it by its own free will.

Culture and technology

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I strongly believe that the advances we will see in the next 20 years in technology will give us the opportunity to structure a global society of abundance, inclusion, and peace. It's will be a very hard journey and no one is able to predict exactly how this will happen, but I believe one thing is for sure. We will not arrive at such a society in an authoritative way. The only chance we have to bring forth such a beautiful future is to understand the potential of technology and reach a consensus that it must be used for the betterment of human life.

We must try to create a culture in which technology is used to facilitate better education, healthcare, finances, and all other things on which wellbeing rests on. The cost of enforcing such behavior is enormous and it would also create a lot of tension with people and organizations which use technology for profit and control. Such an enforcement would result in a lot of conflict which is never good. But a cultural approach would be able to phase out pure monetary gains related to technology and phase in a prosocial approach towards using technology.

So, to the question that my friend asked yesterday, who will we find to enforce the future of abundance we want to create, the answer simple: all the people that want to see that happening and are willing to change their perspective in order to change all our perspectives :)