What it means to be human, has changed over time. From bestial beginnings, to tribal hunting to minimize death in the wild, to days of toiling the fields just for sustenance - the minimum human condition has improved no doubt.

The absolute number of people “In Poverty” as defined by the world bank reached peak 1.9billion people in the 1990s and has quickly reduced to less than 800 million in three decades, the first ever reduction of such speed and absolute volume in the world, while the % In Poverty has steadily declined.

Modernity presents conundrums, at the center being excess and too much comfort. I suspect many suffer this much as I do. Everything is automated and regulated. There is little maintenance, let alone work, to stay comfortable. For the first time in human history, masses are being freed of duty, labor, and responsibility.

What a human being “does” today seems very different from when I was a child. There are primarily two distinctions:

• The world is flatter, everyone has access to all information, including the best of the best

• Information can be sped up or slowed down, not just via the internet but via tricking of the human senses - multimedia and drugs. Our lives have (primarily) been sped up

• Our tools - Smartphones and computers, are much more powerful than biological tools or compute

We live today in ever increasing speed, consuming the best of the best whenever, wherever. The great sensationalism also brings great suffering, as if repeating my life and the lives of others, akin to eternal hell.

Those who are at efficient frontiers finds that it takes longer and more focus to expand human frontiers, their efforts are naturally rewarding in and of itself in a humanist, love-for-brethren type of way.

Yet there will be less and less reaching frontiers (even optimistically, reaching frontiers later in life), more everyday folk consuming the endless information that documents humanity’s greatest narratives. This book is for the everyday folk.

Can we, those who are not at the efficient frontiers of human civilization, somehow contribute more to ease our existential burdens? In my three decades of life experience, the only times when I can ease my burden is when I engage in acts of compassion for fellow human beings, often knowingly committing myself to difficult environments to prevent my own escapism into comfort. Yet acts of compassion are inefficient and tiresome and my brethren may not have need for it (It is in fact I who has the need for it).

Localism applies here - one is a human being natural to be empathetic to, one million is a statistic.

Morals do not apply - Moral judgement is subjective past common human biology. Your judgement of someone else may equally apply to you someday. It is forgiveness that creates human diversity, which creates prosperity.

Except to certain politicians and people responsible. Responsibility is a burden that not everyone can, or would want to bear.

Let us transcend to become more than just a piece of data+time+attention in the capitalist’s servers+content+coffers. We, the comfortable ordinary folk of the 21st century, seek meaning and inner peace.

What it means to be human, has changed over time. From bestial beginnings, to tribal hunting to minimize death in the wild, to days of toiling the fields just for sustenance - the minimum human condition has improved no doubt.

The absolute number of people “In Poverty” as defined by the world bank reached peak 1.9billion people in the 1990s and has quickly reduced to less than 800 million in three decades, the first ever reduction of such speed and absolute volume in the world, while the % In Poverty has steadily declined.

Modernity presents conundrums, at the center being excess and too much comfort. I suspect many suffer this much as I do. Everything is automated and regulated. There is little maintenance, let alone work, to stay comfortable. For the first time in human history, masses are being freed of duty, labor, and responsibility.

What a human being “does” today seems very different from when I was a child. There are primarily two distinctions:

• The world is flatter, everyone has access to all information, including the best of the best

• Information can be sped up or slowed down, not just via the internet but via tricking of the human senses - multimedia and drugs. Our lives have (primarily) been sped up

• Our tools - Smartphones and computers, are much more powerful than biological tools or compute

We live today in ever increasing speed, consuming the best of the best whenever, wherever. The great sensationalism also brings great suffering, as if repeating my life and the lives of others, akin to eternal hell.

Those who are at efficient frontiers finds that it takes longer and more focus to expand human frontiers, their efforts are naturally rewarding in and of itself in a humanist, love-for-brethren type of way.

Yet there will be less and less reaching frontiers (even optimistically, reaching frontiers later in life), more everyday folk consuming the endless information that documents humanity’s greatest narratives. This book is for the everyday folk.

Can we, those who are not at the efficient frontiers of human civilization, somehow contribute more to ease our existential burdens? In my three decades of life experience, the only times when I can ease my burden is when I engage in acts of compassion for fellow human beings, often knowingly committing myself to difficult environments to prevent my own escapism into comfort. Yet acts of compassion are inefficient and tiresome and my brethren may not have need for it (It is in fact I who has the need for it).

Localism applies here - one is a human being natural to be empathetic to, one million is a statistic.

Morals do not apply - Moral judgement is subjective past common human biology. Your judgement of someone else may equally apply to you someday. It is forgiveness that creates human diversity, which creates prosperity.

Except to certain politicians and people responsible. Responsibility is a burden that not everyone can, or would want to bear.

Let us transcend to become more than just a piece of data+time+attention in the capitalist’s servers+content+coffers. We, the comfortable ordinary folk of the 21st century, seek meaning and inner peace.