Engagingmy80s asks Lovingmy50s: “If you had the job of redesigning human beings, what would you put into your new design?”

Fabulous question, particular stated without parameters.  How to proceed?  Am I redesigning humans for the here-and-now (on Earth, 2012, all geopolitical systems as-is)?  Or for some farflung future, post-Earth apocalypse, when the human race inhabits 2,176 space vessels seeking a habitable relocation?

Malgre the fascinating conundrum of a mechanical redesign for alien conditions, I’ll consider a deeper level reconstruct.

‘The problem with people’ is often put down to easy differentials.  White/black. Young/Old. Differences in gender, culture, politics, socioeconomic status. Things that ‘divide’ us.

We need to compete; genetically constructed to that end, through many components of our corpus.  An easy one to label is the hormone testosterone, which in both genders drives us to outdo the rest. 

Young humans learn from their earliest days all about patience, empathy, teamwork, deference: the appearance of collaboration that they will use all their lives (unless they are extremely rich, lucky, and/or completely sociopathic) to ‘get ahead.’

We need a redesign that permits the fascinating and endless variety of individual differences, while requiring symbiosis for life itself.  We need a redesign that doesn’t handle crazed solo lunatics with semiautomatic weaponry by building systems to express our helpless outrage, but actually makes everyone’s life itself dependent on interdependence. 

Coffee drinkers get grumpy without their periodic fix; supposed the lack of human touch engendered the same reaction?  We must eat to live; suppose we also needed to exchange an interpersonal pleasantry in order to avoid irritability, faintness, and eventual death?

Initial element of my redesign: Replace testosterone with ‘togetherone.’