environment is everything
Environment is everything at every level and the elevation of our spaces, our society, and our conversations is imperative to the continued forward progress and advancement of all people. When you consider the impact that an environment of household dysfunction has on human beings, what reason made known to us long before science definitively proved, the long-lasting effects of unrecognized and unhealed trauma that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have on larger society cannot be understated. Among all of the people from the 50 United States and District of Columbia surveyed during 2011–2020, approximately one in six adults reported having lived through four or more ACEs. When we elevate our awareness to the widespread disservice to all of society that these individual traumatic experiences which are defined as preventable have, this knowledge allows for the implementation of healing, prevention, and growth.
Whether living with unrecognized and unhealed trauma or in environments of persistent poverty, functioning fully is not any kind of possibility while operating in survival mode. Poverty is often multidimensional and includes lack of income, education, food, health care, shelter, political inclusion, choice, safety, and dignity. We have more than 700 million people, or around 10% of our global population, living in extreme poverty and much of our population located in rural communities around the world currently experiencing an equally unnecessary degree of poverty. With nearly half of the world’s population in poverty and limited to survival mode, we as a civilization are not living to our potential. All of humanity benefits when the people living in these environments without resources experience organized prioritization of the ultimate goal of the United Nations to eliminate poverty entirely by creating the conditions for everyone to live with dignity. “Ending poverty is the challenge of our time. But it is a challenge we can win,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently on International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.
From countries that were initially built lacking basic concepts of human dignity, we have a collection of histories from which our people, our neighbors, and our generations steadily recover and move forward. While not as widely celebrated as more concrete progress largely in part due to the inhumanity from which we’ve come, it’s our social advancement that remains our greatest continual breakthrough and basis for the development of humanity. Taking even just a moment to look back at recent history where desperation and tragic loss of life led to the development of anesthetics, antibiotics, and immunizations unveils monumental progress for our people. It’s the elevation of our environments, understanding, and conversations with all people represented that consciously and collectively leads to these more visible advances for our global society.
We’re now living in an era of unprecedented opportunities offered by science, technology, and innovation with real-world AI and robotics technology driving the next generation of industrial innovation. In the last ten years, the number of robotic solutions deployed in Amazon’s global warehouse and distribution network has increased by 74,900% from 1,000 in 2013 to 750,000 in 2023. Designed to recognize, select, and handle individual items, robotic handling systems work alongside and support employees by taking on highly repetitive tasks. The design and deployment of robotics and technology across Amazon operations has created hundreds of thousands of jobs in over 700 new higher-skilled job categories.
Tesla has long been custom-creating technologies and developed advanced real-world AI to equip their autopilot, enhanced autopilot, and full self-driving capability vehicles. These vehicles integrate Tesla-designed systems and robotics technology uniquely transferrable to humanoid robot application, setting the stage for Optimus, the Tesla Bot prototype first revealed in late 2022 after just six months of development. Mid-year progress and the most recent update demonstrate an increasingly promising ability for Optimus to interact in a useful and sensible way with the environment. As with their vehicles which are expected to maintain a production target of 1.8 million this year, Tesla is delivering an experience far beyond what anyone has ever historically been able to offer - like something of the future, but it's not the future. It's now.
These robotic solutions are a concept that, when paired with a Universal Basic Income, are set to eliminate reverberating problem after problem that environments of persistent poverty present for individuals, families, and communities, for the benefit of all people and for us as a civilization. “If you’re washing dishes all day, even if you really like washing dishes, do you really want to do it for eight hours every day? Probably not. … Basically if it’s dangerous, boring, has potential for repetitive stress injury and that kind of thing, then that’s really where humanoid robots would add the most value initially.” Elon Musk, Technoking of Tesla, shared on the Lex Fridman Podcast shortly after the Tesla Bot concept was announced. It’s this very kind of work that currently presents the highest human labor and poverty challenges, being most associated with generations of people having dedicated and given their lives to meeting these employment demands in order to avoid starvation, homelessness, and debt.
When human beings are no longer needed to support these unlivable wage and low-skill jobs while being limited to survival mode, we allow for a future where people are empowered to succeed with all of humanity in mind. For as long as unlivable wage and low-skill jobs exist, we’ll continue to see the withholding of state-of-the-art education that waits readily available to anyone with internet access in communities where feeding the employment demands for this work has become a systemic priority. Given the freedom and time to ask and answer questions of substance rather than “How am I going to keep living?”, humanity is enabled to work towards life-sustaining, future-building, and God-given purpose-fulfilling initiatives. “In other words, the realm of freedom is not one devoid of obligations. It is the realm of projects to which we commit ourselves - individually and collectively,” to quote a bit of relevant insight shared in After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time by Helen Hester & Nick Srnicek.
While fear remains a foundational basis delivered to the people as an undertone commonly expressed in organized religious teachings, The Bible mentions the phrase "do not be afraid" 365 times; the mathematical significance of which cannot be ignored, for fear = hate = destructive ignorance. The forward progress and advancement we’re seeing with real-world AI and robotics technology comes after having moved past the initial resistance of an inability to imagine beyond a baseline fear of reducing labor needs. Now provided with the knowledge and resources needed to shift our focus, we are released from an obsession with the unachievable task of attempting to calculate and maintain unemployment per livable wage employment opportunity ratios. No longer limited to survival mode with internal conflict as a social driving force and the systematic sabotage of human beings to meet unlivable wage and low-skill employment demands, all of humanity is enabled to advance with mission, vision, and purpose. With each generation a collective gift of every generation before, we now live in a world where we can overcome the greatest challenges of human labor, poverty, and oppression.
Environment is everything and we’re here to help.
