The Wakeful Wanderer's Guide to Disillusionment

Doppelgänger

You may remember that in my last tour, I found myself in the neglected town of Glenville. I arrived there shortly after my trip to Sherwood. I remember that visit fondly. The people were generous with what they had; the conversations were lively, and I left with a renewed vision of cooperation between the better and less Merited tribes and a painting of me offered by one of the children there. I keep it with me and I treasure it.

Since then, I'm sorry to report the interaction between Glenville, Cos, and Sherwood has been on the decline. What started in the spirit of new cooperation and sharing has faded. The people of Cos and Sherwood have returned to their old habit of ignoring their less Merited neighbors. The upward pull of prestige and generosity has left them behind again, and I fear that before long, the town will once again be abandoned. Glenville has been a repository for the rejects of the higher Merited communities that surround it. Children who need to be in closer proximity to their parents, older people who can't offer the desired services and goods to the younger tribes, and people tagged with the stigma of belonging to a town which has fallen off the Interconnected's map suffer a lower reputation and lose a sense of dignity and greater belonging.

This is a tragedy, not only for the town of Glenville and all such communities, but for all the Interconnected tribes. Our single-minded focus on the upward flow of giving and receiving makes us blind to our greater belonging. Some might see this as unavoidable. It certainly seems inevitable if nothing changes.

Many among us would say this isn't a problem. Our goal was never to build an egalitarian society, but one that rewards ingenuity and generosity. We know that those who fall behind are less generous than those who don't. Those who rise to the top contribute more to our society and therefore are more worthy of reward. We have written our own prosperity gospel and we believe it to be true.

As a tribe, the people of Glenville are engaged, social, and generous with each other and travelers like myself. Having met them, it's hard to see why they couldn't become better Merited members of our tribes. Still, because they cannot or will not conform to all of our social mores, they are excluded from our greater community. These are not greedy takers or Feudalist hard-liners. They are merely skeptics, dedicated to their families, or afraid of invasive technologies. Many of them are our elders. Many more of them are children. If we did nothing else, welcoming back the families with children would be of immense benefit to our tribes. Still, they are ignored. The reason we shun their wisdom and perspective is that we simply find them uninteresting.

I haven't been posting my location for several weeks now. Many of you have wondered why I remain hidden. Many have asked me to return to the way I was posting before I abandoned my unicycle and abruptly ended my previous volume. The reason I have done so is that I feel the need to view our world from the outside. I want to see it as a whole, not as a fish in our immense school but as a remote observer. In my recent travels, I have come to the opinion that we are missing something critical and I want to understand what it is so that I can reflect that back to you.

I have posted before that the attack on my tribe in Reverside alarmed me greatly. At first, I thought the problem was one of defense and security. That was a hasty impression on my part. The danger to us is not the roving gangs that may threaten our resources and personal safety, but the rift we have allowed to grow between our way of life and the communities, big and small, which surround us. We are like Troy, surely, and the Mycenaean ships are on our shore, but the problem we face is caused by our own exclusivity. Our way of life is limited to an exceptional few who can embrace the rapid currents of extreme social connectivity. We are kidding ourselves if we think that the entire world will follow our example. Some people are simply incapable of thriving in our transparent bubbles. Greater than two percent of all people are born with social disabilities. Many of the older generations, especially those who remember life prior to The Great Tide, can't take the leap to an Interconnected world view. Some people will always value their privacy and wall themselves and their families off from our constant penetrating gaze. Some people are born to families who are devoutly religious. We cannot include everyone in our complex culture unless we make some changes. So long as we cling to our dogmatic openness, we will forever live with barbarians at the gates.