Why
“It’s not what you do, it’s why you do it” – Simon Sinek
Why is some kid asking you to read his rambling about the state of our world and how to fix it? Several reasons
Here’s the timeline —>
1. Inspiration
Food Insecurity: In late 2019, when coronavirus hadn’t collapsed our society yet, I attended a CALPIRG meeting on my campus about food insecurity. Some shocking, but unsurprising statistics came out of this: 46% and 31% of surveyed UCSC undergrads and grads, respectively, experienced food insecurity in 2019. Obviously this has unimaginable negative affects on a student population, from mental health to learning outcomes, to the point where it’s probably cheaper to ship food to people’s doors than to let them starve. This got me started on the idea of a food sharing website/app to connect community members and reduce food insecurity by also decreasing food waste. Or simply for generous citizens to have a platform to share food and take care of others around them. This sentiment of local connection became something bigger, where our support network could become the people around us. Given how this timeline is going, I see this being the norm in the future.
The American Loneliness Epidemic: Before the Coronavirus, America was dealing with another sleeping giant of a problem. It’s become very clear, America is facing a loneliness epidemic, especially among the younger generations:
NPR Article: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/01/23/798676465/most-americans-are-lonely-and-our-workplace-culture-may-not-be-helping
Dr. Vivek Murthy - 19th Surgeon General of the United States: https://brenebrown.com/podcast/dr-vivek-murthy-and-brene-on-loneliness-and-connection/
U.S Department of Health and Human Services: https://www.hrsa.gov/enews/past-issues/2019/january-17/loneliness-epidemic
From the laughably low turnout in all U.S. elections, especially at the state and local level, to our rising loneliness and depression, often linked with social media use, the outlook is bleak. How do we solve this?
—>
2. Concrete Action
This was a moment when a bunch of stuff came together to make me pivot towards what it is now
(Social) Media Monopolies - or - The Tragic Death of Local Journalism: Today, 5 corporations own 90% of media, 2 of which are Comcast and Fox (writing this was painful). This only includes legacy media. I can’t find reliable metrics on how much power Facebook and Google have to themselves, but I’m sure they are astounding. The problem with this is a majority of Americans end up getting their news from an entity that most likely doesn’t have their best interest in mind. The traditional media empire doesn’t stand to gain from the prosperity of the country, but from keeping a stressed, fearful populace that is easily manipulable and more receptive to advertisement. Same goes for New Media Monopolies, except they can track you across the Internet, develop a hyper-accurate profile, and micro-target ads designed specifically for you. All while reinforcing whatever biases you may have as a human, creating echo chambers ripe for polarization. Additionally, their model for public engagement are symbolic at best; changing your profile picture or signing a petition has little impact in the real world. Once citizens lose their (sometimes only) source of information on their community and issues affecting it, they go online and, due entirely to unethical anger-reward models, become polarized. There needs to be a place for local journalism to flourish again, but with 21st century decentralized media.
Civic Engagement and the Failed Potential of the Internet: This media empire bias, along with the death of local journalism are major threats to American Democracy. Even worse, probably THE worse problem, the one that Humanity Involved tries to solve, is the complete lack of civic engagement in America. In 2008, only 15% of people surveyed said they were part of a group that tries to influence policy/government. From 1976 to 2004, civic engagement in adolescents decreased by a couple percentage points, while community service actually increased 15 percentage points. This might be because, during that same time, public hope and trust in government again decreased a couple percentage points. It seems people trust themselves and their networks to do a better job than the government, and take things into their own hands. There’s a great quote I found browsing this wonderful website by a guy named Joichi Ito, “The Internet has enabled organizations and movements to emerge in decentralized and bottom-up ways, but the nature of networks has also created a new kind of monopoly and centralization. These new monopoly-like enterprises have similar dynamics to the previous generation of monopolies. Our challenge is to use our new forms of organization and intervention to fight against these new forms of centralization as well as the old — a post-Internet, community-based approach. We need to shift the paradigm of society from its orientation toward short-term capital to long-term flourishing, so that organizations and individuals can change their behavior, and the systems can evolve to become more robust and healthier”. This is my dream, and what I aim to get done with Humanity Involved: A decentralized community engagement hub focused on real, local progress.
3. Long-Term Plans:
Community Service/Volunteer Work Time Banking: If people are going to be sharing food and feeding each other, why not go a level higher and make a platform to facilitate community service and volunteer work. We’ll get deeper into this in the Long-Term part, but I believe the nature of work and life stand to fundamentally change in the next few decades. Whether that is good or bad, and whether the outcome is positive or negative remains to be seen. But, the ideal scenario seems to me the one where simple, repetitive tasks are automated away, people are given the freedom to pursue their passion, and work that has been economically ignored until now finally gets the recognition it deserves. Not least of which is community service and volunteering, helping people around your town, cleaning up trash in your environment, taking care of a loved one. For this work to be recognized, there needs to be a place where citizens can keep track of their contributions to society, and eventually get recognized for it.
Local CryptoTokens: Imagine a world where every city has its own currency, residents and local stores could transaction with a money fully backed by a local bank. Citizens could invest in certain cities. Or States. Or whole Regions. Anything is possible. Complementary currencies tied to regions and fiscal localism would change in our mind towards shared prosperity in the community. A case study on Tumin, a local complementary currency experiment from the local university yields fascinating results on the potential of widespread adoption. Through regulated markets and other exchanges, competition would arise and every region would want to perform its best, leading to thriving economies. Possibilities are endless and could easily strengthen our sense of self through community. Still, this is a multi-generational effort that’ll take studying, tinkering and readjusting; but given the potential benefits, should be undertaken with the individual, the community, and their prosperity in mind.
TL;DR:
We’re in the middle of a vicious cycle of toxic media leading to polarization, leading to degenerating politics and an apathetic population ripe for quick anger-reward models that social media thrives on. Rinse and repeat. To break from this, we need a new standard of trust based, decentralized networks.