A Vital Society
We could have a vital society. A society where excellent well-being is something everyone strives for and helps each other achieve. Where everything is set up to make human thriving the default.
The new social health app Vital has a small, enthusiastic community. Some go so far as to propose that this community could become such a society!
“Network state” refers to a concept from Balaji Srinivasan of a new kind of society and, ultimately, state.
A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.
Wild idea. What would a “vital” network state look like?
What would it look like?
The foundational areas of focus would be sleep, exercise, and diet. There would be a community dashboard tracking average sleep statistics, exercise, and diet, with everyone being able to easily opt in to sharing. Health would be centered in a citizen’s attention. The norm would be to check your personal health dashboard and the community’s health dashboard every day.
Personal training would be the norm. The community might negotiate a discount on personal training with a service like Future. Everyone would strive to have the fitness of an athlete.
Better health leads to better outcomes in other areas of life. It might be not only the fittest but also the happiest and most productive society in the world.
Like Balaji Srinivasan’s proposed motto of “Win and help win”, the society’s motto could be “thrive and help thrive.” The culture would be a mix of serious commitment to personal and societal excellence and generous help to anyone who needs it: advice and encouragement. No excuses, but also generous help to everyone who tries. Everyone levels up together.
We can imagine a day in this kind of society.
A Day in the Life
You wake up well-rested and spring out of bed. You see that you got a perfect sleep score last night and share it with the group you’re doing a sleep challenge with, 7+ hours every night this month. Your success rate is 100% so far.
Next, you do your morning workout. It’s a good one. You share your stats with the group. You’re on track in the challenge to burn at least 500 calories a day this month.
You go to work, walking there so you can hit your 10,000 steps a day challenge. Exercise is woven through your days, with accountability to, and encouragement from, your peers helping you stay consistent. The community is set up to make it easy and pleasant to walk or bike to do the everyday basics of work and errands. It is in a place with a great climate year-round to enable exercising outside almost every day.
Broader Impact
This kind of society would be great for the people in it, but could also be valuable to people outside of it. There could be studies of how community health experiments worked. Generally, it would be a model for others to learn from. It could inspire competing communities with their own take on vitality.
It could be a key early success for the network state concept, perhaps paving the way for less obvious experiments. It would be a step in revitalizing a world that seems stagnant in many areas.