Oct 25th 2022, originally published on Discord

On progress ​

Reflecting on what progress is, i think one can come to the conclusion that progress is always based on higher levels of unity.

For the longest time, humans lived in small family tribes, without the ability to form higher levels of cooperation to make life better for everyone.
Then suddenly, we started defining moral frameworks that enabled us to collaborate in more and more complex social structures. From the family tribe to the village, from the village to the city state, nation states and now institutions like the Commonwealth, the USA, EU, and the UN. Although each of these stages had their problems along the way, and still do, it is clear that if we zoom out far enough, we can see how paradigm shifts in social contracts enabled these new levels of unity and new forms of network complexity. Evolution so to say, is the journey from basic forms of life to complex forms of life. We humans have experienced insane evolution over the past say 10k years - and it seems like it's only increasing in speed...

I once thought, that all problems can be solved by increasingly better technology. "If we only had X, Y, and Z in abundance (which technology can provide), we will all live in peace.".
I held this perspective quite strongly - but through personal experiences, and especially by watching the current world events, it becomes clear that that is not the case.
There are other things at play, the basis of which is a lack of understanding through terrible miscommunication. We can have access to all the beautiful material things in the world and still slide into disgusting acts of ego.

So going back to the idea of "evolution = higher forms of unity", unity becomes the ultimate goal... If we're in unity, we'll come to the right conclusions eventually. What builds unity? Communication... Not the idle bantering kind of course, but true communication, with unity as the north star.
Hence, communication skills - learning how to listen, understand perspectives, seeing everything as a journey towards a common truth (which is just extended evolution towards higher forms of unity), are the key to human progress. Better technology can only be a result of that - otherwise it's more dangerous than useful.

All that said, i pride myself for having a few good technical skills. Just realized that in order to grow unity, it's not at all what we need... And i'd like my kids to grow up in a more unified family, village, city, country, world..."