These Frequently Asked Questions appear in the Preface and Afterword of the book.
What is this about, what are you doing, and why do I care?
Looking around, it seems like something is very wrong with the state of the world. Despite our immense potential, humanity is not living up to the challenges that our world faces on a daily basis. And we’re not improving at an acceptable rate. Although our increasing dysfunction is multifactorial, I think that the path to a better world is far less complicated than it might seem, though it will require all of us to make some changes if we want to see it improve.
I work on the development and commercialization of healthcare technologies, but that job becomes less and less meaningful in an increasingly chaotic world. You see, healthcare is not the same thing as health. Even as we develop increasingly sophisticated medical technologies, they are being delivered to an increasingly unhealthy society. This is not going to end well unless we take a step back and address the underlying cause of our deteriorating societal health.
This book is my way of calling attention to the issues that cause our dysfunction and suggesting some changes we can make to overcome these challenges.
I hope you agree with me that our collective quality of life could be significantly better than it currently is, given all the advancements that humans have made in our history here on earth. You may also share my concern that our planet faces increasing potential to become destabilized by any number of events.
What is wrong with the world and how do we fix it?
I think that our technical complexities and global socio-political and economic systems are displacing our humanity. But the biggest danger we face is that we’re all too busy to find a better way to live and we won’t act quickly enough to save us from ourselves.
Our challenge is a global one. Things like carbon emissions, wealth-inequality, regulatory capture, and the decay of critical thinking skills aren’t problems that start or stop at the borders of the US. We live in a globally connected society, so even though you may not feel pain from these issues today, you’d be wrong to think that they aren’t affecting you; you just haven’t identified their impact.
Civilization
dangles from a fraying thread,
madness waits below.
Current efforts to address these problems have been limited to narrow tactical maneuvers, by necessity, because of our socio-political systems. But this isn’t good enough. We can and must do better by addressing our root cause societal issues. We need to start treating our disease and not the symptoms.
The solution is to embrace our humanity by valuing our collective quality-of-life over our individual accumulation of dollars. I have some thoughts on how to do this, but what I think isn’t important; it’s what you think and choose to do that matters. Some conceptual issues are captured in my fiction writings, so I suggest starting there.
How can I help?
I’m glad you asked 🙂 No one will change the world if you don’t, so you need to do something or nothing will change. And I can’t tell you what to do. But I can convey some ideas that may help you if you’re willing to listen, so let’s start there. Just read the stories and see if you can relate them to the world you see around us.
And if you understand the message, then make it your own; live it and share your wisdom with others. If we all do that, then everything will straighten out eventually.
But our accelerated technological pace poses a very real risk to our continued survival so we do need to undertake deliberate coordinated actions while time remains. These stories are my first step, calling attention to what I think are many of our most dire collective problems. If you enjoy this book and share it with two more people, then our message of Eudaimonia can grow exponentially.
I will be at WouldYouEatABaby.org with additional thoughts and writings.
Stay mindful, my friend.
Choose your thoughts wisely.
Meditate and be aware,
each moment in time.
Possessing nothing.
At one with the universe.
Being everything.
Afterward
So you have made it through the stories. Perhaps you still think that I am naive. Indeed, it may seem that a single person with a simplistic approach to improving the world is delusional; but I think that resigning oneself to the thought that the world is so hopelessly complex that a single person can’t make a difference is also a delusion and a far more dangerous alternative. If you agree with the message and bring it in to your everyday life, then there are now two people who believe in a simple approach to making the world a better place.
It may seem insane,
but don’t tell me I’m crazy.
Tell me if I’m wrong.
It has taken me several trips around the world, an extensive education, and my interaction with thousands of people to learn a lesson that should have been obvious from the start. Irrespective of the huge differences in all of our environments, everyone the entire world over seeks the same thing, a quality-of-life so that we can be happy. I want that also. I want to live in a world full of happy people.
But there are a few complications to our implementation. The combination of our accelerated technological developments and unprecedented economic productivity have placed huge pressures on our social and political systems. At no point in the history of our civilization has there ever been so much simultaneous potential for everyone to live The Good Life or for utterly horrific global devastation, yet it is still not clear which path we will choose. We can either make a conscious choice or the decision is made for us. What are we waiting for?
An important step to finding a better way is to realize that although we seek happiness, we measure our success in dollars. Remove the misalignment created by the financial profit motive and an unbelievable number of the current challenges of our world simply vanish. We can do this if we recognize that greed drives us all to acquire much more than we really need to be happy, and this comes at the very real cost of lowering everyone else’s quality-of-life, even to the point of death.
The other lesson is that we’re all in this together. Our human history is filled with bloodshed where we have sought to eliminate those who don’t share our values. But as technology empowers everyone, there’s no way to selectively keep it out of the hands of those who are dissatisfied and might use it to do us harm. The only thing we can do is to make sure that everyone’s quality of life is improved to the point that we will all want to coexist. And if we can’t or won’t raise everyone’s quality-of-life to that level, then we will have chosen our own fate of self-destruction. We need to stop thinking about the world as Us and Them; there is only you and me, and in reality, we are both the same.
So now you know my perspective on our challenges. If you agree that some small changes in our values can have a dramatic effect to improve the quality of our lives, then stop being too busy to make the world a better place; find your own happiness through simple pleasures and help everyone else reach their own potential for fulfillment.
Illumination.
Enlightenment of wisdom
brightens the shadows.
Why should I pay any money if this book is free?
This book may be shared freely and without compensation. No-one asked me to write it, but it needed to be written. I distribute it freely because I believe that the ideas in it will make us all better off if we took them to heart and thought about what it is that makes life worth living. We need to transition from a world dominated by money to a world in which we value everyone’s quality-of-life; where peace and happiness are our real goals. But how do we get from here to there?
We live in a largely capitalistic world and money is inextricably tied to the next adjacent-possible of our evolution. But no amount of money will buy ourselves out of the world’s problems when money is actually a significant enabler of our dysfunction. The most important thing we can do is to build our global humanity by shifting our values from counting dollars to seeking a better shared quality-of-life.
Still, money is necessary in the present day world both to help us spread the message of Eudaimonia and to mitigate damage from our most dangerous misalignments. I dream of a WYEAB organization that works both strategically and tactically to facilitate the transformation of our societal values to promote our collective quality-of-life. Put another way, the mission of this organization is quite literally to save us from ourselves. The scope of such an organization must reach across geopolitical and cultural boundaries, and it will require disruptive methods in order to connect with all members of society. Of course, the actual work of changing values can’t be delegated; it must be performed by each of us because we believe it is the way to live. Because this agency will operate in the present day world, it requires a budget just like any other organization, which is why financial support is necessary. This book is a seed which is now planted and from which we can grow such an organization. I have funded it to this point, but it will need far more nourishment of all sorts if it is to grow healthy and strong. For this reason, I’ve started a Patreon account which is linked from WouldYouEatABaby.org
Contributing through Patreon serves several important purposes:
- It lets me know that I am not alone and will encourage me to think and write more; not for the money, but because I’ll know that my words are helping someone, and that they are appreciated.
- It is my dream to work full-time for an organization which safeguards our survival by raising our collective quality-of-life. But like you, I must currently work a different job in order to pay for basic goods such as food and housing. Your pledge is what creates this organization and enables a transition from working on what a company would have me do to generate profit to setting my own priorities and methods for making the world a better place. I don’t want to be rich, I want to be live in a better world filled with happier people.
- It demonstrates to everyone that there is a real path from our current world to a better world. This book’s contents are available freely to everyone, but those who can pay without incurring hardship choose to do so willingly. If WYEAB is successful, then it also encourages others to find creative methods of taking our world to a better place with more happiness.
- It enables tactical projects for critical misalignments that must be addressed before the consequences are irreversible. These are issues like net neutrality, media consolidation, the first-past-the-post electoral system, the abandonment of scientific guidance, and the hijacking of democratic institutions through big-data enabled disinformation campaigns.
- It provides a modest revenue to Patreon for necessary IT services: a scalable communications framework, subscriber management, payment processing, etc.
We all have different financial situations so it is important that no-one’s quality of life be lowered by a financial contribution. Ask yourself if you can pledge without causing yourself hardship, and if you can, then do so. And if you can’t contribute financially without affecting your quality-of-life then that’s fine also, because either way, the most important thing that any of us can do to build a better world is to work on finding our humanity.
We stare in still awe.