Productive Economy, Contributory Economy

10Transition Without Chaos?

10.1. More complicated than sedentarization

The societal mutation underway is proving to be of a magnitude comparable to that experienced by our ancestors when they settled down.

Like them, we have to face a physical and physiological adaptation and, like them, we have to adapt the rules of our living together.

For example, our health care system was designed for rather shortlived illnesses and rare accidents. It must evolve to deal with long term infections and psychological dysfunction.

Of course, we must learn to treat them and adapt our health system so that the families affected are not isolated in the face of their tragedy, but we must learn to prevent them. These tragedies have their origins in our model of society: the products we accept to consume and the bad details of our daily life that we allow to continue.

Before sedentarization, the economy of functionality was the norm: people did not move around carrying the stones used for grinding or burning. Everything was left behind for the next person or for the return journey. People were careful not to exhaust nature.

The notion of common property was the norm, even though there were a few light and therefore transportable personal goods, such as fetishes. The notion of property that characterized sedentarization is at the heart of the cultural mutation we have to imagine.

10.2. A global but differentiated shift

10.2.1. Alternately at the forefront of human history

Each geopolitical ...