Canadian Politics Today

Maybe its more a matter of accepting it for what it is by realizing the idea of an absolute we is and always has been an illusion that's impossible to resolve. Everything is relative to the observer and even more so as they increase their efforts to pin the same thing down at the same time and place.  Obviously a compromise of some sort is what we get by with because its the only way forward.Taken together, Graham's answer to the 2nd question and Michael's 3rd question shaped my next response.

Yes, but there is a fake idea of 'we' just as there is a fake idea of 'identity' or 'who am I'.  It's fake for the same reasons that the physics you mentioned above is uncertain:  I'm a bunch of different people, and so are 'we'.

I'm a loving father and great bandleader to some, but to someone else I'm the **** who didn't signal before that turn.

Recent events and now this thread have have steered me towards thinking about the psychohistorian Hari Seldon in the sci-fi Foundation Series.  In the story Hari Seldon develops a theory of mathematical sociology and uses it to predict the collapse of a centralized Galactic Empire followed by a 30,000 year interregnum. He crafts a plan to shorten that to a 1000 years based on using his theory to predict the future of large populations[sic].

Love that work interregnum.  We are said to be in one now. 
   

Technological development and how it shapes society is as big a feature in the Foundation story as it is in this thread but will the bigger influence on what shapes cultural forms in our future be technological or sociological?  The latter I think.

I think the former, because humans don't behave very differently from... ever.  They used to listen to wizards... then they listened to scientists... and today they listen to crazy morons.

We'll live in several communities that are changing according to us not the other way around. Technology will be a key feature in each communities cultural and physical sustainability and especially with regards to the natural biophysical environment they occupy but ultimately what people do will be the determining factor and predicting what that will be is the rub. In any case the future is ahead of us not in the rear-view mirror.

We need to get our minds wrapped around the fact that the dangers we are biologically programmed to face are no longer as relevant.  Strange tribes, wild beasts, famine and even war are on the way out as the value of life goes up.

We need competition in some ways to keep us honest but not really that much.  A meritocracy can sustain itself without huge penalties for failure, but with rewards for success.