Sally came cruising up the driveway to her parent’s huge mansion in her light blue, electric convertible. It was a huge state-of-the-art villa, built eco-intelligently, constructed in wood and painted in white. The magnificent building was surrounded by a large garden with palm trees, bushes, colorful flowers of all shapes and sizes, an ambitious swimming pool in front of the spacious terrace, and a lake with many exotic gold fish.
How did mom and dad pay for all this? Dad had made a lot of money in Silicon Valley. Then he read the book “Rethinking Humanity” by Tony Seba and James Arbib and realized that having money came with an obligation to invest, and spend wisely for the good of humanity. Mom was a successful interior decorator, and once she became aware of the need to go full circular economy, she made it a priority to use only materials that were safe and could be fully recycled. Putting the mindset shift of mom and dad together, led to the formation of new start-ups, like the one that produced technology to grow food and other materials via so-called precision fermentation. This was one of the big transformational technologies described in “Rethinking Humanity”, besides those of energy, transportation and information. The technology and the precision fermentation devices, which Sally’s dad manufactured, were rented out to local communities so they could produce all their own high-quality food. Top proteins in gazillions of colors and flavors, all produced independently, based on open-source knowhow, with energy coming from their own renewable and fully recyclable energy such as solar power. That way, the communities, also ensuring their buildings used safe and fully recyclable materials, were fairly self-governing, not controlled by large, data-obsessed, global corporations and corrupt politicians. It made the American Dream available for everyone. The land it freed-up was used to implement regenerative agriculture, or have livestock roam around. In that way, via the animal’s natural way of living in the wild, high-quality soil that was rich in nutrients, could sequester carbon, hold water, and promote biodiversity was maintained. This also presented everyone with great possibilities for recreational areas. Independent local communities connected with other independent communities, like neural networks, and funded partnerships that would help each other, such as restoring the vital coastal rainforest in Brazil that was needed to transport humidity inland.
This was an unprecedented transformation in human history, moving away from the old, linear, centralized economic system of brutal extraction or breaking-apart of resources producing toxic waste, to a totally new system, based on local, bottom-up creation. Just as Nature did, using atoms, molecules, cells, and microbes, starting on a small scale, and enriching the environment. Or course, the implementation of the new system, orAge of Freedom as it was being called, needed the right choices to be made against stiff opposition from the power-thirsty, control-driven incumbents of the old, top-down, destructive, and short-term based economic model. That model
