Most of us Americans only live in peace with maybe hating your job being your biggest gripe. Or indeterminate worry that you’ll be burgled that warrants you getting the security system with your home wifi.

The depth of chaos in the human experience are abstract concepts to many. In your backyard or abroad. Across time and space. We’re not as civilized or mature as you may want.

Emotional appeal has its place but reality is much more mechanistic than theoretical word flips. Once you understand that, you realize politics is something we all participate in and there’s a spectrum of tools to communicate our view. Talking it through is fairly recent and coincides with us becoming more global in the 16th-20th century. Law, rhetoric, rational reasoning, emotion, physical domination, familial ties, religious belief, business agreements, national allegiance. All and more tools for how the world is decided.

Principles aren’t common and your obvious isn’t another’s. Even your sense of time may greatly differ from another’s. So how do we reconcile to a sense of peace? That’s much more messy and something we put on the professionals. It’s almost pushing them to lie when the people are removed from the realities of a system while making demands and delivering critique.

Being inundated with access to information (and power to produce it) without adequate tooling or skill to understand it has led even more people to shun the pursuit of truth. But that’s because the literate pie is much bigger so a slice is multiplied in size too. We may be the most informed society to exist so far. We have an opportunity to best synthesize this privilege to get to an even more robust civilization. The steps to get there are much bigger than any one individual but will require individual contributions.

Don’t believe anyone with a master plan. Create a plan, follow someone with a plan, help with a plan, coach a plan, vote for a plan, set the atmosphere for a plan, argue a plan. Whatever your role, your donation means something. Antisocial tactics are at direct odds with our social nature.

It’s not a coincidence that Japan is an island and has the cultural force it does. With access to the water and mindful maintenance of trees.

My city Atlanta commonly felt like an island within an island. No water but plenty of greenery, music, and charm. We always say, “there’s Atlanta, then there’s Georgia”. With ties to the countryside, I know very well.

As I’m less than an hour or so from where my grandma must have grown up in Jersey, it’s so clear.

You think you could live in a country like China assuming race wasn’t a factor?

It’s interesting to see a country try to plan out much more of its market. Less individual freedoms but more collective thoughtfulness—still dominant globally. It’d be an worthy experiment to compare although I figure I’d like the US more.

Could be a reality if West Africa or another region becomes one country in our lifetime. That’d require figuring out the balance of economic and governmental principles. I’m not sure if a highly individualistic culture could unite a new country unless some unit had power in guns, steel, or international diplomacy. Possible but also possible for an India-like tolerance for cultures with some pragmatic harmony policies could lead to a new country too.

The US we know today is formed from a country that had a head start in many ways and a very alien population hyped on Manifest Destiny. Is that enough going forward? For which nations? What will be the successful ways for a people of 100s of million to unite in the future?

If we look back on cultural waves, there seems to be some foundational elements that each needed. Here are a couple I noticed and one I think we'll look back on in 2030.