This essay was a finalist in the How We Saved the World essay contest, where people wrote as if it was 2050 when the world was working, saying how we got there starting with something they did. Here's the intro to this presentation of results, with links to the other finalists and an invitation to make comments about the contest.

4

The World Counts to Five

Whack!

My granddaughter flinched a little at the sound when I blocked, even though she had been the one swinging a stick at me.

“Again,” I said.

She moved the jo back and forth, from a ready position to one more poised for attack. She swung again. “Oh, crap!” I said. This time I just barely avoided getting hit by stepping inside the arc the jo made as it sailed toward my ribs. I ended up standing on Kate’s toes.

Kate laughed, and I stepped back and said, “Nice job!” I gave her a little high five with one hand. She met it. Both of us kept our sticks in our other hands, and both of us laughed at the way we were eying one another, neither one of us trusting the other not to attack.

“Ready for a break?” I asked.

Kate shrugged, but tucked her stick under her arm and rubbed her hands, which meant no matter what she thought, she needed a break. I took her stick, paired it with mine, and leaned them both against the house.

I handed Kate her water bottle, and took a drink from mine. “Grandpa,” she said. “Why is it so much fun to fight, even when we like each other?”

“It isn’t.”

“It isn’t?

“No way! Fighting is scary. The world shrinks down, your heart pounds, and you might feel like you’re going to throw up, except that you have to keep moving.”

“Then why is it fun to crush you with a stick? Like a bug!”

“Ah, that’s different,” I said, taking another drink. “Play fighting is fun. We’re people, which means we’re caught halfway between apes and angels. That’s not my line, by the way. Lots of people have said that. But it means we have a higher nature, one of great love and kindness, and an animal nature, that can react with fear and violence. And we can’t just say no to that part of us: it is part of who we are.”

Kate looked skeptical. “We like to hurt people?”

“Part of us does. Part of humanity, and part of each of us. But if we’re healthy, and in the right context, it’s just done for fun. You know Grover, right?”

Both of us turned to look at the fat Chocolate Lab dozing on the porch.

“Sure…?”

“You probably don’t remember this, but when you were a baby, Grover used to sit beside your crib and watch over you.”

Kate shifted her drink into her other hand, and gave Grover a pat.

“But you know how he gets when we say b-a-l-l.”

Kate nodded. “Especially when it squeaks.”

“Right. He plays hard. He plays violently, even. But since he was raised right, he has never hurt anyone, not a person, not another dog.”

Kate looked out at the sky for a minute. “Does that work with people?”

“It does,” I said. “It does.”

“How?”

“Well, you know from your history classes, the world used to be different right? More competition, more violence, less cooperation. People didn’t get along as well as they do now.”

“So what happened?” Kate asked.

“Well, it took a long time, and a lot of effort, but the world finally changed. In fact, there were five major changes that helped people get along better. If you’re interested, I’ll explain them while we’re resting, and you can count them down with me. One.”

I held up a finger, and so did Kate.

“When things are going great, and everyone has more than enough to eat, people can cooperate or not. They can squabble, break into feuding groups, and gossip, all for little or no reason. Out of boredom, even. But when there’s a big challenge, from within or without, people have to get along, and eventually people realize it. The changes in the climate were the almost literal fire under humanity’s collective behind that showed us we have to get along. If one person is hungry, they might find food, and the problem is over. If one person is stuck in a frozen lake, they might get rescued by just one other person, or maybe two. When the whole world is threatened, everyone needs to act. They can act in large ways, and they can act in small, but that was the fire bringing people together.”

I paused for a moment, and Kate nodded seriously. Then, after a while, she put up a second finger. “Two?”

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “Two. Changes in technology. When the digital revolution spread around the world, it moved through different places at different times and in different ways. There were places in Africa where folks used online banking on their phones when they didn’t even necessarily have electricity in their homes.”

“No!”

“Yes,” I said, waving my little accidental peace sign at Kate. “Computer technology spread slowly for a long time, then spread like crazy.”

Kate made a crazy face.

“Exactly. It went everywhere, and changed everything. Banks, grocery stores, schools, doctors, dating—”

“Didn’t you meet Grandma—”

“Hush. Yes. But hush. I’m explaining the whole world. I need to focus. Computers changed everything, the internet changed everything, social media changed everything, artificial intelligence changed everything, and eventually, people had to say, enough is enough.”

“And they stopped the change?”

I shook my head. “Nobody could stop the change. But when enough things went enough wrong—when the economy crashed, and it was all because of computerized stock trading, and it was the same week a completely false story caused a riot in Omaha, Kansas—people started trying to figure out how to redirect it. To use it, rather than being used by it. That’s where we got the emotional simulators, to help people feel what the results of their actions will be. And the extrapolators, to see the logical implications. And two more things: people got the right to their data, and, in large sections of the internet, verification became required. Rather than letting lies and misinformation speed at the, well, speed of light, we agreed to slow down, just a step, and only send claims with provenance.”

“Provenance?” Kate asked.

“It is like a line of promises. We all agreed that we will only pass things on if we can trace the message, the meme, the tweet, the claim, the bleet, the xeet, back to a real person. If a company or AI wants to post something, they have to put money down, since they don’t have a word to swear to.”

“Okay.”

“There’s also the lateral reading app, which everyone calls the fishbone.”

“The fishbone?” Kate asked.

“Draw me a fish?” I said in answer. She did, picking up her stick again and drawing in the dirt. She started with the pointed head and went down the spine to the flaring.

“You know how, once in a while, you read something online and you don’t know if it is true or not?”

Kate shrugged, flipping her stick once. “Kinda.”

“Well, that used to happen all the time. The fishbone app automatically links from the story you’re not sure about to all the other stories out there related to the first story.”

I drew in the fish’s ribs. “Fishbone.”

“Oh that. Sure,” Kate said. “That happens all the time.”

“That happens all the time now. Used to be, people didn’t know what others were saying, and got confused and lied to. It is a lot, a lot, a LOT easier for people to get along when they agree on what is true and real than when they don’t. Okay. Where were we?”

Kate held up three fingers. I did too, and gave her a snappy little salute. She crossed her eyes at me, and I went on.

“The next thing that changed was the economic structure. You’ve studied some about the indigenous people of our region, right? The first people to live here?”

Kate nodded. “We did a project. And heard stories.”

“Then you know some. Well, I won’t try to convince you that indigenous peoples were automatically perfect. That kind of false story just leads people to distort reality, and ignore what’s there. They were human. They made mistakes. In some cases, like the Aztecs, they made really dark, ugly mistakes. But most indigenous people around the world set up their societies so everybody got fed. Lots of other societies built in mechanisms too, so while people didn’t necessarily get rich, they didn’t starve. And other cultures did other things to make sure things didn’t get too out of balance. Jewish cultures had what they called a jubilee year, so every 50 years everybody’s debts get erased. You get to start fresh. Other places let the poor glean—

“Glean?”

“Glean.”

“Sounds weird.”

“It does. You know how we’ve watched harvests at the farm?”

Kate nodded.

“Well, gleaning is going in after the harvest and picking up what’s been missed. Apples that are too small for the machine to get. Ears of corn that got knocked down.”

“Gleaning,” Kate said. “Cool.”

“It is. For a while there, the economy was rigged wrong, making it easier for the rich to get richer than for the poor to get fed. We changed that, passing the gleaning laws and the right to data laws, so other people can’t get rich off your jokes, or memes, or pictures, and universal basic income. Basically, ha, what we did was make it so you can still get rich if you work hard, but everyone has enough. People get along much better when they have enough. You aren’t likely to steal something or beat someone up if you know you’re always going to have enough. Your baby won’t starve. You won’t freeze.”

“Cool,” Kate said again.

“It is,” I said. “But all of that wouldn’t have done anything, and wouldn’t have come into being, without people changing their hearts and minds.”

“That sounds hard,” Kate said. She frowned a little, and twisted her stick in her hands.

“You have no idea. No, I take that back. You do. You remember that time you fought with your brother?”

“Which time?”

“Ha! The big time. The time you two broke—”

“That time.”

“Well, you remember how long it took for you two to get along again? How you had to talk and hiss and clean up after the new puppy together?”

Kate covered her eyes. “We did not hiss.”

I pulled out my phone, and started to show her a video.

“You were explaining the world to me, I think!” she said.

“Ha!” I said again. “Well, think of how hard it must have been for all the different people, the different groups of people, to get along, after they’d fought wars and blown up their buildings and told each they were going to hell.”

Kate mouthed “How?” without saying anything.

“How indeed,” I said. “It took people from all the different religions sitting down together, and, well, less talking than listening. They, and all the people who didn’t really have a religion, listened until everyone felt heard, and until everyone agreed on the basics. We’re not ever going to agree on everything. You like mayo on your fries, I think that’s crazy. But even if we can’t agree to all do the same things, it turns out we can agree not to do some things. Like kill each other.”

This time Kate rolled her eyes. “People didn’t know that?”

“People knew that. But people felt scared, and like they had to act like they didn’t know that. And it wasn’t enough to just know that here.” I tapped Kate on the head with my stick. “They had to know it here,” a tap on the heart. “And here.” A poke in the belly.

“How did they learn that?”

I sighed. “Lots of trials. Lots of failures. Some people got hurt. Some got killed. But others kept attacks from happening, and took in refugees, and replanted trees together, and started neighborhood watches to keep kids safe and drains unplugged when the rains got heavy. They put on town plays together, and picked up dog poop at the park without being asked. Or paid.”

“And that was enough?”

I shrugged. “Not really. It was like, those were the actions, and we needed the words to go with them. Leaders from all religions finally started talking, all religions and all peoples. Some people had to leave their homes, due to war and crises. Well, that gave them something new to say. They spoke up for the world, explaining how everyone needed to get along. And eventually, one grandpa, one shaman, one inventor, one soccer player, one kid at a time, people listened.”

I looked at my five fingers, all open, all spread out. Kate spread hers too.

And we intertwined them, until no one could tell whose were whose. And we went on with our days and our lives. Together. Sometimes fighting, but mostly getting along.

 

THE END