The secret ingredient for recovery is to encourage communities to take responsibility for their own futures.
Basically what's going on is that we're emerging from a massive transition of post-war human civilization. After the wars we had all moved to cities and created the assembly-line culture. Everything was mass-produced, including our communities (the suburbs).
The global community was born with newspapers, then radio, then television, and finally the internet. We are now more informed and educated than ever, and all of our old traditions and beliefs are being questioned. Where we used to stay close to our small clans and towns for stability, we had to retreat further into our individuality as we were overwhelmed by the diversity of the global human race.
And so we lost the sense of community and our religion. It was every person for themselves. And now we're at a turning point where we can finally enjoy individuality and simultaneously experience it as a group, because we better understand one another and can effectively choose to hang out with people like ourselves.
But our social structures now have to be rebuilt. So we're starting to come back together with a new energy and lots of new ideas. Our new approach to society will be collaboration, because we've now got the tools to make it really easy and effective to work together. In many cases you only need to commit as much as you feel like to a cause, and that's enough thanks to sheer numbers and effective systems to make it work.
I seriously believe this is where we are heading. It's a very natural direction, and it's the one we've been on for a very long time.
