ANTHONYRUGGERI.COM - Essay: How I View Society

How I View Society

I view society as a vast cloud of activity: people going about their daily lives. Through this cloud society slowly evolves and changes over time.

One way of looking at this activity is as a collection of vectors in n-dimensional space. Each dimension in this space represents a variable within society, and each vector represents an individual acting to change it. For example, over time we say that society "progresses" (or at least we like to think so). What does that progress consist of? Knowledge? Technological sophistication? Financial stability? "Happiness," as ill-defined as that may be? A possibly infinite number of variables may be involved. Every moment of every day, every individual is doing something that has an impact on that individual's experience of the world, and has an effect, even if minute and imperceptible, on society as a whole.

Now, the thing that bothers me about all this is the amount of energy expended in all of those moments for all the people on the planet. Some what argue that this is the essence of freedom, with everyone working in their own self-interest (even if they are not really sure what that is), and over time society drifts closer to satisfying more of the people within it. I see it as a waste. So much activity, so much energy, and yet so much of it not contributing to the higher purpose of moving civilization to a "better" place.

There is no arbiter of what that better place is, but I certainly have an idea, and honestly I'm not sure many people do. My optimistic future is a technological one. I see no future for the human race without increasing use of, reliance on, and control over technology. The more I can work personally to further that goal, the more I as an individual am working to move the path of civilization in my favor. The less I work on that goal, the more I become merely one of the infinite number of blips that make up the cloud of activity, accomplishing nothing.

Throughout history there are people who have had an effect on the path of civilization, some good and some bad. Caesar, Newton, Napoleon, Einstein, and Hitler come to mind immediately. While I may not aspire to that level of greatness (or if I do, I am realistic about my chances of attaining it), I refuse to live my life without paying attention to the direction in which civilization is going -- and acting to change it.