Team Human

Transcending the game altogether means becoming a spoilsport—someone who refuses to acknowledge the playing field, the rules of engagement, or the value of winning.

Socialization depends on both autonomy and interdependency; emphasizing one at the expense of the other compromises the balance.

So the story we are taught in school about how trees of the forest compete to reach the sunlight isn’t really true. They collaborate to reach the sunlight, by varying their strategies and sharing the fruits of their labor.

Particular media environments promote particular sorts of societies.

The most direct benefit of more neurons and connections in our brains is an increase in the size of the social networks we can form. Complicated brains make for more complex societies.

In each case, the story’s initial proliferation has more to do with the medium than the message. The viral shell is not just a media phenomenon, but a way of grabbing attention and paralyzing a person’s critical faculties. That moment of confusion

Without socially positive opportunities to exercise our autonomy, we tend toward self-promotion over self-sacrifice and fixate on personal gain over collective prosperity.

Where learning was the purpose—the figure—in the original model of public education, now it is the ground, or merely the means through which workers are prepared for their jobs.

Commerce is not the problem. People and businesses can transact in ways that make everyone more prosperous. If anything, capitalism as it’s currently being executed is the enemy of commerce, extracting value from marketplaces and delivering it to remote shareholders. The very purpose of the capitalist operating system is to prevent widespread prosp