For thousands of years, humanity fought over the planet we inhabit.
Kings, emperors, dictators, despots and governments tried to conquer as much territory as possible. Nations formed alliances, broke alliances, invaded their neighbors, defended their borders, and sacrificed millions of lives in the pursuit of power, territory, resources, and security.
And what did we achieve?
War after war after war. Death after death. Destruction after destruction.
We built civilizations, destroyed them, and built them again. We conquered territories, lost them, and fought to regain them. We drew borders across the planet, moved them through violence, and defended them with ever more sophisticated weapons.
And for a very long time, we believed this was simply the way the world had to be.
Until, at long last, we agreed.
Enough was enough.
The Fatigue of War
Looking back at the early twenty-first century, the pattern was painfully familiar.
Russia and Ukraine. Israel and Palestine. And countless other conflicts, large and small, across the planet.
People killing people. Homes destroyed. Families torn apart. Children growing up without parents. Parents burying their children. Millions displaced, injured, traumatized, or permanently disabled.
And for what?
Territory? Resources? Political power? National pride? Security?
War had become so familiar that many people regarded it as an inevitable part of human civilization.
Every generation inherited the fears, resentments, territorial claims, and unfinished conflicts of previous generations.
When one war ended, another seemed to begin. Sometimes the same conflict erupted again decades later, with new weapons, new leaders, and new generations of young people sent to fight.
And when the fighting stopped, we rebuilt what we had destroyed.
We buried our dead, cared for the wounded, negotiated new agreements, and prepared ourselves for the possibility of doing it all again.
What an astonishing waste of human life, intelligence, energy, and resources.
But perhaps the greatest tragedy was that we rarely questioned the foundation upon which this endless cycle rested.
We argued about who was right and who was wrong, who had the legitimate claim, who had attacked first, and who had the right to defend themselves.
And while these questions certainly mattered to those involved, they seldom brought us any closer to eliminating the underlying problem.
The Illusion of Security
For millennia, humanity pursued security through control.
A ruler conquered territory to secure resources for his people. A nation expanded its borders to protect itself from potential enemies. Governments built armies, fortifications, and increasingly powerful weapons to defend what they considered theirs.
But there was a fundamental contradiction in this approach.
Whatever we conquered, we had to defend. And whatever we defended, someone else might eventually try to conquer.
The more territory and resources we controlled, the more we had to protect.
And when our neighbors saw us strengthening our defenses, they often perceived us as a threat. So they strengthened theirs.
We responded by strengthening ours even further.
And the cycle continued.
This was known as the security dilemma.
One nation’s attempt to increase its security could make another nation feel less secure, creating an escalating cycle of fear, competition, and military preparation.
The tragedy was that both sides could genuinely believe they were acting defensively.
Yet their combined actions made everyone less secure.
We had mistaken control for security.
And for thousands of years, we tried to solve the insecurity created by this arrangement through even greater control.
We invented increasingly sophisticated weapons, established military alliances, built enormous defense industries, and devoted extraordinary amounts of human ingenuity to preparing for conflicts we hoped would never happen.
But the underlying problem remained.
We had divided the planet into possessions, and every possession represented something that might be taken away.
Who Owned the Earth?
There was a question we should have asked ourselves much earlier.
Who actually owned the Earth?
Who created the continents, the oceans, the mountains, the forests, the rivers, and the fertile soil?
Certainly not the kings, emperors, governments, corporations, or individuals who claimed ownership of them throughout history.
The Earth had existed for billions of years before humanity appeared.
Yet we divided it into territories and declared that this piece belonged to one nation, that piece belonged to another, and countless smaller pieces belonged to individuals, corporations, and institutions.
We turned the surface of our common home into a gigantic collection of possessions.
And then we spent thousands of years fighting over those possessions.
We even developed elaborate legal systems to determine who owned which pieces of land, who could extract which resources, and who had the right to exclude everyone else.
A person could be born on Earth and still have no right to occupy a tiny piece of it without paying someone else.
An entire nation could lack access to resources that existed abundantly elsewhere on the same planet.
And people could become extraordinarily wealthy simply by controlling access to things that nature had provided.
All because we had accepted the idea that the Earth could be owned.
But was that ever anything more than a human agreement?
And if we had agreed to divide the planet into possessions, couldn’t we simply agree to stop?
We Finally Grew Up
So, this was how we lived for millennia.
We conquered, defended, competed, accumulated, threatened, negotiated, and fought.
We called it civilization.
We called it national security.
We called it the natural order of things.
But eventually, something changed.
We began to recognize that our extraordinary technological development had not been accompanied by an equally extraordinary development in how we organized our lives together.
We could explore other planets, manipulate matter at microscopic scales, develop artificial intelligence, and automate increasingly complex tasks.
Yet we continued fighting over ownership of the planet on which we were born.
And finally, humanity had enough.
We grew up.
Not because everyone suddenly became wise as God, infinitely generous, or free from disagreement.
But because we finally recognized that we could not continue trying to solve the same fundamental problem with the same fundamental thinking.
We needed to change the foundation itself.
And so we did.
We drew a line through history.
Not to erase what had happened, or forget those who had suffered, but to declare that the old claims of ownership would no longer determine humanity’s future.
We nullified the ancient assumption that land and natural resources could belong exclusively to nations, corporations, or individuals.
We started again.
As adults.
We finally agreed.
The Declaration of Earth
The declaration was remarkably simple.
Planet Earth, including all its land, waters, atmosphere, and natural resources, was declared unowned and recognized as the common heritage of all humanity.
No nation could claim exclusive ownership of a territory.
No corporation could claim ownership of the planet’s natural resources.
No individual could claim a piece of Earth as private property to be sold and traded. Instead, we agreed on becoming stewards of Earth, caring for the land we live on.
We had already established a similar principle for the Moon decades earlier, when humanity agreed that no nation could appropriate it through claims of sovereignty.
Now we extended that principle to our own planet.
Earth was not something to be possessed owned.
It was our common home.
And with that declaration came a new responsibility.
We were no longer competing owners of separate pieces of a planet.
We became its collective stewards.
Of course, the declaration did not instantly transform every aspect of civilization. There were enormous practical questions to resolve, existing systems to reorganize, and centuries of habits and assumptions to overcome.
But the fundamental decision had been made.
We were no longer working toward a world in which everyone could never own enough.
We were creating a world in which nobody needed to own anything in order to live well.
And that changed everything.
From Ownership to Stewardship
One of the first things we changed was our relationship with the natural world.
Forests were no longer regarded as somebody’s property from which financial profit could be extracted. They were recognized as living ecosystems providing countless benefits to the planet.
Agricultural land was cultivated to provide nutritious food while maintaining the health of the soil.
Homes were provided for people to live in, rather than treated as financial assets to be accumulated.
Minerals, energy, water, and other resources were managed intelligently, sustainably, and cooperatively.
We no longer asked how much money could be made from a particular resource. Money ceased to exist.
We asked what it could contribute to the well-being of life on Earth.
And because ownership had been replaced by stewardship, the responsibility for managing resources was based on knowledge, competence, ecological understanding, and the needs of the communities they served.
We developed cooperative councils at different levels, from local communities to global coordination, helping ensure that decisions reflected both local circumstances and the needs of the planet as a whole.
No single person, government, corporation, or artificial intelligence was granted ownership or absolute authority over Earth’s resources.
We had learned enough from our history to understand the dangers of concentrating power.
The End of the Monetary System
Once we had abandoned ownership, another ancient institution lost its purpose.
Money.
For thousands of years, money had been the principal mechanism through which we distributed access to resources.
Those with the greatest purchasing power could obtain the most, while those with little or no money often struggled to acquire even the necessities of life.
This had produced a civilization in which enormous quantities of useful resources remained inaccessible to people who needed them, simply because they could not afford to pay.
But now we had changed the underlying principle.
Resources were no longer commodities to be owned and traded.
They were part of our common inheritance, managed for the benefit of everyone.
So we reorganized production and distribution around actual needs, available resources, ecological limits, and human preferences.
Advanced artificial intelligence helped us understand resource availability, forecast demand, coordinate production, and minimize waste.
Robotics and automation took over much of the repetitive, dangerous, and physically demanding work that humans had previously performed.
And instead of competing to sell more and more products, we cooperated to produce what people actually needed and wanted, as sustainably and efficiently as possible.
We no longer had to ask whether providing something was financially profitable.
We asked whether it was useful, desirable, and physically possible.
And as our productive capabilities expanded, we were able to provide increasingly abundant access to housing, nutritious food, clean water, energy, healthcare, education, transportation, communication, and countless other goods and services.
Money and trading gradually became obsolete.
Not because we had outlawed generosity or exchange between people, but because we had developed a far more direct way of sharing the abundance of our planet.
What Happened to Security?
Perhaps the most extraordinary transformation was in our understanding of security.
Remember the security dilemma?
For thousands of years, nations had tried to protect themselves by accumulating military power and controlling territory.
But now the foundation of that dilemma had changed.
Why would one community invade another to secure resources when those resources were already part of a globally coordinated system serving everyone?
Why fight to control fertile land when food production was optimized and organized cooperatively?
Why conquer territory when everyone had access to housing, healthcare, education, energy, and the necessities of life, regardless of where they were born?
Human Disagreements
The old incentives for territorial conquest had largely disappeared.
Of course, human disagreements did not vanish.
We still had different opinions, personalities, desires, traditions, and ways of life.
And we still needed ways to resolve conflicts, protect people from harm, and address destructive behavior.
But we no longer organized entire societies around the expectation that other societies might try to seize their possessions.
The enormous military establishments of the past gave way to cooperative systems of protection, emergency response, disaster prevention, and peaceful conflict resolution.
The human ingenuity once devoted to developing increasingly destructive weapons was redirected toward preserving and improving life.
And we discovered something remarkable.
Security no longer depended on how much of the Earth we could control. It depended on how well we could care for one another.
Instead of securing the Earth against one another, we secured the Earth for one another.
What Did We Achieve?
Peace.
Not the fragile peace that had once depended on military deterrence, political alliances, and the constant threat of retaliation or invasion.
But a far more durable peace built upon shared access, cooperation, and the removal of many of the incentives that had driven humanity into conflict.
Global Prosperity
Not the prosperity of a wealthy minority surrounded by people struggling to survive, but a civilization in which everyone could benefit from global resources, humanity’s collective knowledge, technology, and productive capacity.
Freedom
Not merely the freedom to compete for money and possessions, but the freedom to live without the constant fear of poverty, unemployment, homelessness, or financial ruin.
And perhaps most importantly, we gained something that had been extraordinarily difficult to achieve in the old world.
A Common Purpose
Instead of competing to maximize the wealth and power of separate nations, corporations, and individuals, we worked together to improve the conditions for life on Earth.
We restored damaged ecosystems, regenerated forests, cleaned polluted rivers and oceans, and developed more sustainable ways of producing everything we needed.
We designed cities around the well-being of their inhabitants rather than the profitability of real estate.
We created communities where people could contribute according to their abilities, interests, and passions, without having to sell their labor merely to survive.
And we began to measure our progress not by financial growth, but by the actual quality of life we were creating.
How healthy were our ecosystems?
How well were people living?
How much freedom did they have to pursue their interests?
How effectively were we using our resources?
How much suffering could we prevent?
How much beauty, knowledge, creativity, and joy could we bring into the world?
These became the questions that guided our civilization.
And the answers continued to improve.
Welcome to the New World
Looking back now, it seems almost incredible that it took humanity so long to arrive at such a simple realization.
We did not need to own the Earth in order to enjoy everything it had to offer.
We did not need to compete for its resources when we could cooperate in managing them.
And we did not need to fight over the planet when we could share it.
We had spent thousands of years trying to conquer the world.
But our greatest achievement came when we finally stopped trying.
We did not unite Earth under a single ruler or empire.
We simply recognized that it was our common home, and that everyone deserved to benefit from it.
It took us a few thousand years to grow up.
But we finally did.
Our New Friend
And now, we have a rather unusual new friend among us.
Mr. Benjamin Michaels.
Our bewildered billionaire, who recently woke up after spending a hundred years in cryonic preservation!
As you can imagine, it has been quite a shock for him.
In his former world, ownership was everything. The more you owned, the more powerful and secure you were considered to be.
Benjamin was very good at that game. In fact, he was one of the richest people on the planet.
And now?
Well, now he has awakened in a world where nobody owns anything!
No money. No buying or selling. No financial empires to build or protect.
Everything is shared, and everyone has access to what they need.
You can probably imagine his confusion.
For him, it is almost as though the entire world has gone mad.
For us, of course, it is simply normal life.
But we understand him.
After all, he spent his entire previous life learning how to succeed in a system that no longer exists.
It takes time to adjust to something like that.
Fortunately, he has me.
Aweena.
His personal guide, showing him all the ins and outs of this new world.
And believe me, there is quite a lot to show him!
He has been here for a while now, and I think he is finally beginning to adjust.
We are all cheering for him, doing whatever we can to help.
After all, imagine falling asleep as a billionaire and waking up in a world where nobody owns anything!
Welcome to the New World, Benjamin!
Oh, and one more thing.
If you like, I can give you a guided tour as well.
Just read Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, a book written about our world a hundred years ago.
You can find it HERE.
I’ll be waiting for you!
— Aweena, 2115