The 2000 post seems like a landmark, though I remember the disappointment that moving the year from 1999 to 2000 was not so exciting.  To mark this occasion now  here is the introduction  to a book I am drafting, the intro is of course still a draft,

The working title is

GardenWorld and Civilization:
Its Politics economics and philosophy-
The drama of humanity

Click on link for pdf

intro aug 5

Here are the opening paragraphs..

Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION
Any politics which does not aim toward the humanization of its people and the gardening of the world is not an adequate politics.  – DC.

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Since we all want to live in a vital combination of nature and civilization, why do’t we use our wealth to go there? Without a goal to enhance the globe and its nature we have embraced the blind path of killing it off. The goal was to develop technology so as to free people from work and to live in a beautiful world – but not to free them from income. The world we have, where technology, governance and infrastructure support the wealthy and their professional supporters, but not the majority of people, needs to be seen as a grand failure. There is a goal for the world, a mix of nature and civilization, what I am calling GardenWorld, that has a deep appeal to many and could possibly be a goal to which we can work. GardenWorld would replace the drive for growth and consumption that has benefitted the few and not led to a society we love nor can trust, that limits basic security and creates meaningless work and worse unemployment..
We can think our way to a better society rather than just being carried along like a semi out of control. Our society is not ready for autonomous driving (though the tech world is moving us there). We need a shared sense of what is happening and we need a goal to know what we are doing. “Without a vision the people are lost.” We are not
using our intelligence to furthering the well being of the species but to enhance favored individual lives. Early societies had elites that took the well being of the population through the complex process of food as crucial, and managed fairly well.
A return to thinking about how the human species and the natural environment can be interrelated is essential, to our survival. We are organized to favor increasing complexity linking money, innovation and markets rather than favoring flexibility to deal with breakdowns and misjudgments. Flexibility may even help us to a more delightful life. While we need innovation, we also need, as a balance, restraint and reflection on secondary consequences of innovative proposals. Proposals need to be consistent with society, with the human life cycle, as well as technical requirements. Learning to appreciate each other and others cultures needs to be the core of a new culture for humanity.
One lesson I hope we all understand: it is very important to be better educated: philosophy , history , anthropology. We tend to believe that we already know the outlines of what is important. This is not true. In fact we have built institutions that reinforce narrow thinking by creating narrow departments and a current practice that supports careers management, not insight .