Whether discussing humans, products, companies or governments, the debate between serving acceptable perceptions or addressing sustainable health rages on.
It doesn’t really matter if we’re discussing financial policy, costs of goods and services, long-term health treatments or disaster responses, we often lean heavily on how things will look. As we move deeper into the 21st century, the need to examine the true costs is coming deeper into focus.
Are we following time-accepted actions and outcomes, or are we addressing decisions and situations holistically and “in time” to devise the best solutions and outcomes? In society’s push into immediate gratification, is there any opportunity to take a breath before taking action? Should it continue being a matter of keeping up with ‘The Joneses’, or is that a remnant of a time we’ve moved beyond? (Or, have we?)
Data points are overflowing yet we’re full speed ahead and are disregarding – consciously and unconsciously – the equations that don’t align with the hypothesis we’ve internalized. While systems are in place to streamline known pathways and disruptions can cause delays, lapses in funding or worse, are we able to raise our hands to explore new paths? Has the system grown too big to fail, or too big to succeed? Scratching the surface is the start to recognizing where we might pump the breaks or press the pedal into the future.
Join the Augmented Society Network to discuss:
- Illustrative examples where we’ve gone too far in either direction of aesthetic or health at the absolute cost of the other.
- The telltale signs of inherent biases/perspectives/control that inhibit members of society from making the best choices and why they were put in place.
- Ways in which we might lead to ways in which to provide transparency and/or offer the best of both worlds when faced with decisions between how things look and how they truly feel into the future.
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The Augmented Society Network is an RSA US Thematic Network founded in 2019 by two RSA Fellows with a passion for humankind. The network meets to discuss the impact technology is having on society and will continue to have in the coming weeks, decades and centuries. To learn more about the Augmented Society Network, go to https://www.augmentedsociety.org/.
Photo attribution: The original image may be accessed via Unsplash and is the work of Karim Ghantous.