The way of future through voluntary selection

This article is a follow-up to the recent publication introducing the concept of “Voluntary Selection” which allows for engineering the phenotypic profile of a population by adopting the reproductive cells of donors rather than couples themselves. Foreseeing a genetically converging world through Voluntary Selection, and looking from a Middle Eastern and Northern African perspective, the article focuses on five major themes where improvements are necessary to allow for maintaining stability and achieving a minimum level of living standards despite matters such as different levels of access to environmental resources, global warming and depleting fossil fuel resources. These themes are namely the provision of evolutionary explanation for religions, women’s rights, generating wealth in the form of living atmospheres, distributed workload across society and distributed food production. The following discussions illustrate how by changing the way we look at the world, utilizing our available but neglected resources, dreaming, believing, and acting, we can solve some of the most fundamental global problems. The provided solutions are protective of individual freedoms, facilitate the convergence of lifestyles to a pleasant, practical, elegant, sustainable and modern model and protect the fabric of society as the foundation for higher-level achievements necessary for the maintenance and improvement of our living standards.

Introduction

Talking of achieving a desired level of living standards including personal freedoms, together with sustainability and having regard for physiological needs associated with survival and reproduction as the major factors contributing to intense emotions leading to major conflicts between populations, it is first necessary to address both the sufficient provision and fair distribution of required resources. Voluntary Selection [1] has already offered a solution to the problems of scarcity and imbalance in the possession of genetic qualities looking from a practical, computational, and human viewpoint in contrast to conventional Eugenics [2,3]. However, there will remain major matters to be addressed; differences in our religious beliefs, achievement of human rights, access to environmental resources, compatible and pleasant lifestyles, individual living experiences, environmental disasters including global warming as well as security of water, food, and energy resources. The article provides solutions to these problems.

Evolutionary basis of religions

The article introducing the concept of Voluntary Selection [1], has already pointed to the advantageous role of society in contributing to the collective survival and reproduction of humans which has been made possible thanks to cultures adopted by human populations; often synonym with religion. To elaborate, religions established a system of distributing social privileges so that people no longer had to rely on violence for the same purposes of obtaining food, mate, and shelter. Obviously, this peaceful cohabitation prevented a waste of people’s collective resources for fighting among themselves and instead diverted their powers towards doing more work, teamwork, more complicated work, better utilisation of resources, producing more food, making better shelters, and better protection against other populations and individuals. These advantages bridge the gap between Evolution in the sense of Natural [4] and Sexual Selection [5], and the formation of societies while the necessity of removing violence through culture for the formation of societies relates society to religion. In other words, the formation of religions is indirectly linked to evolution in the conventional sense through the formation of society. Cultural or religious constraints have also acted as evolutionary forces and therefore have shaped the genetic composition of societies [6,7].

Comparing religions that have the largest number of followers i.e., have been most evolutionarily successful, points to similarities, most notably the regard for marriage and family. Marriage commits couples to each other and as such acts to not only respond to their sexual instinct and the need for food and shelter but also to suppress the overall uncommitted sexual demand in society leading to more stability and mental health. The similar cultural choices about marriage, made by distinct human populations point to their inherent advantages over alternative paths. Looking from an optimization perspective, if the objective of conventional evolution is individual survival and reproduction, the objective of evolution as part of a society which has been the path humans have taken, is collective survival and reproduction and as such, nature has imposed certain costs such as limitations on people’s sexual choices in exchange for offering societal value. For example, families as stable building blocks of society, act as a welfare system for a larger number of society members for a longer proportion of their lives; society also provides services such as foreign defense, insurance, and domestic security. Providing a greater degree of welfare, in turn, could have allowed for the survival and nurture of a broader set of genetic traits over generations contributing to our modern living standards.

It is important to recognize that nature -God if you will- evolved us the hard way. It gradually gave us mental capabilities allowing us to make conscious choices about what was advantageous. Relying on the same mental capabilities, we must now be able to consciously make alternative decisions to maintain our societies and achieve our desired living standards including by taking control of our genetic profiles through Voluntary Selection. As for why we need to look for alternative ways to make decisions to what is presented by religions, the answer is that having regard for the role of society as well as spirituality can act to improve people’s feelings and behavior; a lot of what we have achieved or would like to achieve is not a direct product of religion in a conventional sense but rather a product of utilizing the possibilities that nature has provided to us in finding scientific explanations about our world and using them to make new decisions about all aspects of our lives.

Just as a stream of water finds its way downhill; life is a complex product of nature, in its trial-and-error quest for arriving at an optimum point with the objective of survival and reproduction, which are also complex interpretations of the same laws of physics directing the stream of water, has led to results which might not be aligned with our conscious choices. There were no checks in place in nature to guarantee that different populations achieve the same level of living standards by pursuing their own instinctive tendencies and cultures, and there were no checks in place to ensure that there will not be any conflicts between populations pursuing their own separate objectives, there are neither any checks to guarantee to arrive at the desired results in terms of living standards and genetic composition through a safe and moral path if we were to pursue the same evolutionary objectives but with a global scope. On the other hand, genetic and cultural divisions are the bloody path we have walked as humans throughout our history. There is no guarantee that in our more educated and better-informed world where there is a far larger population desiring nothing but the best living standards, stability will be maintained to a greater extent than in the past. It is therefore wise to look for ways to achieve convergence, but genetic, cultural, economic, and political gaps should all be tackled if arriving at a desired state for all populations and global stability is intended.

Going a few steps back, humans ended up forming large societies as choosing to form large societies rather than following the patterns of life among animals has been naturally more stable perhaps because individual humans got to a level of biological development that elimination of even the less competitive ones was too costly. It is possible that we got to a point where our greatest barrier against utilizing nature and achieving survival and reproduction was other people and accommodating them was cheaper than fighting them. As we formed societies, the rules governing them enforced a new set of evolutionary constraints, and as a result, traits such as empathy which bind people together were carved into our biology. A good indication that empathy has instinctive roots are the facts suggesting that empathy acts bring people closer to each other inside a society while making them ruthless in their interaction with others [8]. As reflected in historic realities, however, the same empathy, if trained to cover the members of another society, can lead to a merger by inducing new suffering and aggression, and leading to unconsciously defined collective results. The same can be said about religions as the operating systems of societies acting to achieve convergence through promoting stability within their boundaries while being hostile towards outsiders.

With these evolutionary explanations, there is a common foundation for different religions, and science is the reference for constructing a common alternative platform for making decisions considering our different physical realities. For directing the existing economic, cultural, political, and genetic realities of a society towards a new desired state, mechanisms relevant to the certain objective i.e., effective in influencing it must first be identified. Every mechanism would have side- effects so if a mechanism does more harm than benefit, it cannot be used. For example, in attempting to realize enhancements we should not compromise the stability of our societies. This article proposes developing a so-called “Decision Support System” for deciding which approach to take regarding laws, discourse, genetic composition, lifestyle, and any other factors affecting the state of society. Developing such a tool involves achieving an acceptable mathematical representation of the realities of each population. Such models can then provide an analytical understanding of realities helping to make the best decisions for achieving an improved state or they can be used as a basis for developing closed-loop algorithms concerned in Control Theory [9] for the same purpose.

Such models and algorithms, developed in a democratic and transparent process by qualified experts, are safe from the strong biases caused by the interests of individuals and distinct societies, are applied non-selectively except for among distinct societies, are open for everyone to contribute to, and for adjusting in order to achieve improved results. Making modifications to such models and algorithms would then be the topic of debate among politicians and the public. Changing the nature of a society’s phenotypic profile, economy, culture, and politics would change the models describing it and therefore the decisions that are needed to realize a stable and desirable steady state. However, since people’s will is also a variable in any system involving humans, achieving the desired results will always involve a great degree of uncertainty and would require the right education and discursive preparation.

Women’s rights

Talking of improvements, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, some of the most critical questions are associated with women’s rights and the balance between the protection of the fabric of society and personal freedoms. While societies have historically been able to achieve a level of stability, they have not been particularly successful in providing a level of living standards for women acceptable to people today. We must therefore look for a mechanism to offer a change in the desired direction without compromising the foundations on which our existing living standards rely. The roots of some of the restrictions imposed on women can be traced back to far past when physical realities were very different from today and therefore lifting those restrictions such as strict clothing limitations will not be adversely consequential.

On achieving a balance between personal freedoms and social stability, the matter is complicated by several facts. An excess of personal freedoms would quickly affect the commitment of people to the entities of family and marriage as they will seek greater sexual and economic gain. But then because people’s access to genetic wealth is not equal, their success in achieving the amount they want will be greatly different. This will degrade the living standards of many people who will have less compared to what they would, in a stable culture thanks to marriage and family, and their contribution to society will also gradually decline leading to degraded stability and overall living standards for society as an entirety. Even those achieving more will have to lose their prime position as soon as they lose their privileges as a result of sickness or old age. On the other hand, the mentality that everyone can achieve as much as they want without restrictions gives rise to an explosive increase in expectations which is by no means on a level with physical realities.

In order to offer improvements, the solution is to ensure the protection of the fabric of society through suitable mechanisms so that equalization of women’s rights can happen without adverse consequences. A suitable mechanism is winding the financial interests of couples with the aim of achieving a reasonable average age of marriage, a fraction of married people in the age of marriage, and marriage longevity. A suitable average age of marriage allows for sufficient education and therefore better living standards, a higher proportion of married people leads to a better collective mental state, and longevity of marriages allows for giving everyone a share of life’s meat, fat, and bone while also establishing a system of welfare at old age. Winding the financial interests of couples can be done by enforcing laws that divide the overall amount of wealth they both generate equally only since they got married. People will therefore be inclined to marry earlier as they will not gain more by postponing marriage. Once they do marry, they have common interests in saving and spending and financial conflicts between them will fade away. With the success of marriage and making achievements together, they will be reluctant to get divorced because both will immediately lose half of their wealth leading to a decline in their living standards. If they get divorced at an early stage of marriage, it will not be consequential for the fabric of society because their best interests are in getting married again soon while they are still sexually as wealthy.

The constraint also lifts one of the points of resistance against the employment of women as men will have an equal interest in their earnings. It opens the way for nature with its realities such as physical and mental capabilities in producing wealth, giving birth to children, and raising them to set an equilibrium in the power dynamics between the couples and an order in society without artificially limiting the freedoms of the couples or giving rise to endless conflicts in their relationship. The next matter is divorce rights, which need to be equalized for men and women. As mentioned, divorces at the early stages of marriage should not be consequential for society but when it comes to divorce at older ages long after marriage, for those many who do not end up remarrying, the consequences to their mental and physical health can be stark. There is therefore a need for stricter divorce rights for couples at an older age.

Generating wealth in the form of living atmospheres

Talking of improved living standards and sustainability, we can make big differences by turning our living atmospheres into wealth. A lot of it can be done by simply changing our vision of our cities and making better use of our vast lands and natural views. “Atmosphere” here is used in order to emphasize an additional dimension over the environment and living spaces and is meant to also involve how people feel. Lush landscapes as abundant in many developed countries are frequent elements of competitive living atmospheres and the association of green landscapes with mental well-being is certain [10,11]. It is, therefore, necessary for development plans in the Middle East and North Africa to come up with an approach to provide sufficient sustainable fresh water not only for residential, industrial and agricultural applications but also for creating and sustaining competitive living atmospheres. Among other issues to be addressed are pollution, lack of order, lack of security, overpopulation, poverty, a lack of competitive architectural styles at the suburban level, over-utilization of nature, and disregard for individuality.

Obtaining a comprehensive set of features to describe a desired living atmosphere should be a topic of interdisciplinary research for psychologists, architects, landscapers and environment experts; however, it appears that the design of urban plots, landscaping, architectural styles, green spaces, economic wealth, social freedoms, order, cleanness, and security all contribute to the realization of such atmospheres. It is valuable to look at competitive living atmospheres as wealth. It is a kind of wealth that benefits all members of a society and does not require competition among different countries to have a greater share and as such, is unlikely to face impedance in its realization in the international scene. Wealth is what there is demand for it, the more demand there is for something, the more valuable it is. The value of anything is therefore defined in a relative manner by supply and demand. Optimally turning atmospheres into wealth requires being inspired by the existing living atmospheres regarded as having the greatest value. It is obvious though that as far as architecture goes, every place has its own unique identity which should be treated as intellectual property. We should be able to imagine our own competitive living atmospheres as natural resources at our disposal are not the same.

As far as the Middle East and North Africa are concerned, subsiding subsurface freshwater resources, global warming, recent occurrences of numerous violent conflicts, internal displacement of populations, mass migrations, and depleting reservoirs of fossil fuels [12] draw a dark picture of the future and therefore the necessity for transformation in order to even maintain the current living standards is an absolute necessity. However, the vast coastlines of the region which despite hosting major cities, are sparsely populated and underdeveloped due to dry climates provide a significant amount of new space for development for the region’s over 480 million inhabitants [13].

The idea of generating wealth in the form of living atmospheres for the region can be realized by developing self-reliant properties in terms of electricity and freshwater generation. Each property - built at a higher altitude than what the rising sea level may reach - is developed for a certain application for example farming, private residence, industrial activity, hotel, public space, etc, and is rated for a certain water and electricity generation capability. As depicted in Figure 1, the bigger picture would be an urban plot where a large number of properties form their own shared electricity grid and freshwater pipeline and are eventually connected to the national grids and pipelines. “Photo-Voltaic” electricity generation would be the preferred source of energy which can be used in conjunction with “Reverse Osmosis” [14] or “Solar Thermal Desalination” [15] for seawater desalination. The distributed nature of energy and freshwater generation acts to generate a much larger amount of these resources thanks to the involvement of the masses, and it can also help match the demand and supply better due to people’s recognition of the value of these resources. The accumulated excess amount of electricity generated by households can act as a sustainable resource for public usage and for ensuring the stability of these utilities. The excess amount of fresh water generated by households should also be used to create particularly green landscapes.

Research on optimal landscape design for seaside and in-land developments, as well as other matters such as environmental impact, urban infrastructure, and food production self-sufficiency, is also necessary as is the promotion of architectural templates to prevent maldevelopments. Maldevelopments occupy the existing and limited resources, poison the atmosphere for others to do desirable developments, and create impedance against change due to conflicts of interests of those who benefit from previous maldevelopments. In places where natural wealth is scarce, it is wise to preserve the natural state of existing resources in the best way possible and provide the opportunity for public utilization in a way that does not cause any harm. Some of the best examples of environmental protection can be observed in Australia which can act as a great model. As for the architectural templates and also relating to the Australian model, an observer would notice that suburban houses are designed with gable roofs with slopes on all sides, are designed to have free spaces on the sides in addition to the front and back, a large ratio of the land is used as front and backyard, each property has a typical land size of about 450-600m2 while an average floor area of about 250m2 [16], a share of the land is allocated to the public green space in the front, hedges are used rather than tall brick walls in the boundary of the properties allowing for the beauty of the houses to form part of the beauty of the suburbs, window guards are absent thanks to the security present in the atmosphere also promoting further security.

One important feature of the proposed idea is that it also shares the responsibility for food production among the consumers which means that while the highest living standards can be created and sustained; those wealthy beneficiaries can also enjoy a pleasant lifestyle in proximity of nature [17]. Such settlements can be a great refuge for people in drying cities or an excess of population in large cities and can therefore reinforce stability and improve living standards across these countries. With the rise of the described settlements and if it turns out that there is an excess of resources for the existing populations, also with the means that Voluntary Selection provides for genetic convergence, there will be an opportunity for mutual developments between countries of the region and countries which have a complementary set of environmental gifts and threats. There can also be geographical unions subject to regulatory rules introduced as part of Voluntary Selection acting as environmental insurance, keeping in mind that in the absence of an emergency, it is better done well than fast.

The middle east is one of the cradles of civilization and many existing cities date back thousands of years ago having their own cultures, languages, historic monuments, and architectural styles. If the population of these cities is already limited to a sustainable level or can be reduced to such levels by implementing population regulation programs or directing the migration of a part of their populations to the new coastal settlements, then it will be possible to turn them into equally competitive living atmospheres. The fastest way to realize the physical part of the desired living atmospheres is to open vast urban areas as public spaces and develop green landscapes, recreational areas, pedestrian-only paved streets, and otherwise business areas designed with the contribution to public pleasure in mind. There is also a necessity for developing new suburbs as mentioned above in the lands surrounding the existing cities which should rely on sustainable sources of water, energy, and food for example as described for the new coastal settlements. Part of these new suburbs can be allocated to residents of the city center whose lands are chosen for release as public spaces. Such suburbs can also act as a competitive aim for the elite layer of society and can help localize the system of incentives in the society which prevents migration and promotes stability. These people are themselves part of the material needed to develop and maintain the same living atmospheres and their presence is a great contributor to high public morale. Obviously, building competitive living atmospheres would be impossible without also providing the necessary social freedoms, security, and a healthy business climate for their activity.

As more regional centers develop into competitive living atmospheres, the pressure of migration on capital cities and developed countries is also lifted which enables overcoming the most acute challenges of today’s world. Such aims should be pursued as part of master plans developed with a holistic view in mind, developed by the greatest dreamers and experts, and supported by laws protecting against maldevelopments. As we grow, our dreams grow too, and we should dream big because what we will create will never be greater than our greatest dreams which point to the importance of preserving the gene traits of our best dreamers and ensuring their genetic qualities are nurtured. It is also particularly important for such plans to be devised through brainstorming and agreement of the broadest assembly of the greatest minds of society as in addition to leading to the best results, it has the best chance of arriving at the intended conclusion in the long course that it takes to realize.

Distributed workload across society

Moving towards a world where the phenotypic profiles of populations are adjusted through Voluntary Selection for the optimum functioning of the society to achieve a desired and sustainable set of living standards; an important question that arises is if it is fair to leave the burden of physically intense jobs to some people and if not, how to perform all the physical tasks needed for the society. In answer, realizing a scenario where the living standards outside work for people possessing certain genetic traits are on average equal to people in other genetic groups is feasible. This matter might be best researched indirectly in developed countries such as Australia where the middle class is dominant and the income among people in blue-collar and white-collar professions is not significantly different. However, the workloads can be very different and there are jobs in the construction sector, industry, and agriculture that can be physically intensive. These jobs can have side effects on the health of the people involved [18] and moving towards a world without fossil fuels we will need to do much more physical work if we are going to maintain and improve our living standards.

This issue necessitates coming up with solutions to distribute the workloads fairly and to prevent the side effects altogether. Learning from the experiences of developed countries in carefully regulating the workloads can teach us what can be done with the existing realities. The solutions emphasized here are on three fronts, namely technological, managerial, and cultural. On the technological front, investment needs to be made in alternative sources of energy such as nuclear fusion [19] and renewables as well as electrically powered alternatives for fossil-fuelled machines. On the managerial front, planning is needed so that our new lifestyles demand the least amount of physical work and where there are such tasks, they are well divided into non-consequential smaller tasks which are distributed within the broadest number of members of society. For example, developing high rises is not a necessity and horizontal developments can be pursued. In horizontal development, planning is needed to ensure the living atmospheres are desirable as mentioned before. Such an initiative would require appropriate construction materials for each geography, architectural templates, and user manuals so that people can build their own houses as part of the fun, insightful, and rewarding DIY projects without having to do intensive or overly specialized tasks. The architectures can be modular so that people can upgrade or extend their houses easily and that would be valuable to have software allowing for visualization of the outcome under different scenarios. Such projects also require the availability of reasonable cost and time estimates under each construction scenario so that people are encouraged to plan for and implement them. The necessary skills can be taught in educational programs at schools.

Cultural work is needed to familiarise people with the new lifestyles and their benefits and once a new lifestyle prevails, it can bring with it great cultural benefits. For example, couples building a new house together may manage to build a stronger sense of attachment to each other thanks to the symbolic achievement they have made and the path they have walked together to get there. A misconception among some people is that work is an attempt to obtain a share of existing wealth while work is primarily value-addition and secondarily an exchange of value. Providing the opportunity for young people to take on manageable physical tasks as part of a rewarding construction project can have a lasting influence on their attitudes throughout their lives. The utilization of machines made possible by an abundance of energy resources and technological developments has created a possibility for us to enjoy a lifestyle that requires a lot more work than what we do as humans, and this has created a disconnection in our minds between an understanding of wealth and how much work it really takes to produce it. Teaching the public about these misconceptions can elevate the discourse [20] and help people make the right decisions throughout their lives.

Distributed food production

With the exhaustion of fossil fuel resources, moving towards settlements as described before and as we distribute our workloads, there will remain another challenge to overcome, and that is sustainable food production and distribution. This is because we might not have access to cheap transportation anymore and the climate and water resources might not allow for traditional agriculture in all locations. In this section, distributed food production utilizing greenhouse and hydroponic agriculture and cultured meat production supported by an online management system is proposed as the solution. Think of the settlements with each residence producing its own fresh water and electricity and maintaining its own infrastructure including a greenhouse. With these resources at our disposal, it is possible to have an accurate estimate of the upper limit of food production for every residence. The residences should be designed in each climate with self-sufficiency in mind at the beginning. Then it comes to technologies such as genetic engineering, cultured meat [21], and plant [22] production which need to provide the materials, equipment, and know-how for optimum results.

Food production facilities need to be managed by an online management system/IoT network which considers the needs of the society and distributes the tasks in order to ensure the production of sufficient food throughout the year. Each residence can then commit to part of the responsibility for production. The management system should also allow for the production of an extra amount, considering the uncertainties arising from environmental changes as well as the varying levels of commitment and experience of individual settlers in delivering the committed results. Obviously, the aim is to have a free lifestyle so such provisions in the background would allow people to choose their lifestyles without imposing insecurity on the settlement. The IoT platform will also let people source the fresh materials that they need well ahead of time and minimizes food waste and water consumption. The IoT network should allow for monitoring of the progress in achieving the planned results in order to prevent surprises. It is obvious that services needed to operate and maintain such production facilities will be among the new professions in the settlements because some people will need to specialize in the other professions needed by the society and some people will not have the physical capability to manage their own production facility. There will also be a need for establishing a service for local food distribution either as a point-to-point service or as a production site-to-market service. The new plan might dictate some changes to our diet as it might not be possible to produce whatever that we have access to today in all climates even with the existence of greenhouses as we will have limited energy resources available for maintaining controlled conditions inside the greenhouses but with proper planning, the changes to our diet can be minimized.

Discussion and conclusion

Looking from an evolutionary point of view and having regard for matters associated with survival and reproduction, the article is written based on the idea that having a system for non-selective distribution of social privileges in a reproductive context, prevents the expression of instinctive and violent tendencies in humans. Tendencies that are currently buried under layers of achievement through society and civilization and our disregard for their management has long been neglected because of the slow pace of the expression of their consequences in the global scene. The article is also based on a belief that humans have an instinctive tendency to stray away from being biologically and geographically isolated. It is wise to think that in the far past when humans lived only in small populations, - and therefore most dramatic genetic changes were possible before populations rose to their contemporary scales - those who had a tendency for venturing outside of their biological and geographical territory and also had the capability to succeed, were more likely to spread, survive and have children because they were less affected by the unpleasant changes in their original living atmospheres and also more likely to find better resources. As heroic as it may sound, such tendencies can translate into brutal conflicts even in the modern world when it comes to competition over fine resources.

Being instinctive, these tendencies mean that it might not be easy to keep populations with distinct genetic profiles within the same territory while setting strict boundaries between them or leaving their intermingling unregulated. This is because the first scenario leads to mounting frustrations and the second one leads to imbalance and violence – if not enough – in addition to endangering the gene pools of populations with the most desired genetic traits. There is therefore a necessity for limiting the scale and extent that populations with different phenotypic profiles are brought together to form common societies and where such populations are already forming a society, regulating their intermingling. An analogy for these regulations is adding structural support at the intersection between two populations in order to facilitate their safe cohabitation. Voluntary Selection provides a long-term solution to the problem of genetic isolation as it provides a pathway for gradual genetic transitions at the population level and might improve the relationship between the receiver and donor populations if living within the same geographical boundaries. On the other hand, mutual developments and geographical unions between countries with complementary natural resources can be effective responses to the sense of geographical isolation.

Viewing a foreseeable future through the lens of Voluntary Selection, the article identifies five themes where significant improvements toward realizing a better world are within reach. The first theme explains how evolution formed religions and points to mathematical modeling and development of a Decision Support System as the go-to approach for representing the realities of our societies and the language of conversation about their problems and solutions. The article then focuses on women’s rights, discussing how problems such as limitations of clothing, unequal divorce rights, and employment opportunities can be solved by offering equal rights while ensuring that through the application of suitable mechanisms, the key parameters describing the health of a society, such as average age of marriage, the longevity of marriages and the fraction of married people in the age of marriage are maintained at a reasonable level.

It then focuses on answering the question, of what needs to be done in order to tackle the draught and exhaustion of fossil fuels in the near future so that our living standards are not only maintained but also improved. The proposed solution is to establish settlements in coastal areas where each property produces its own electricity and fresh water. The properties can also include their own farm and might have industrial and other applications. The concept brings with it a lifestyle that is pleasant due to its proximity to nature, educational due to keeping people in contact with the origins of their wealth, and sustainable because of its distributed nature. The following themes of distributed workload across society and food production also contribute to the same goals; offering insights about how we can improve individual living experiences and ensure food security as we change the perspective of life on our planet.

As final remarks, although the essence of this article is promoting changes to physical realities that positively contribute to an inherent improvement of our living standards, at the same time, it is based on the belief that it is the job of cultural education to remind people about their responsibilities and that having a functional system never dismisses them from making morally sound decisions.

Figure 1: Top: An image of Eram Garden in Shiraz as an example of Iranian historic architecture, Middle: Inspiring public images for developing residences in coastal regions of the Middle East and North Africa, Bottom: An illustration of an inland settlement with solar thermal desalination and photo-voltaic electricity generation. The proposed settlement features public green spaces irrigated by the provided fresh water by the residences, each property features a desalination system receiving water from a seaside pumping station and returning its waste to a dedicated pipeline which takes it to a reservoir inland or returns it to a safe place at sea. The harvested fresh water is stored inside water tanks and its excess is exported to a shared pipeline for providing water security. Electricity is similarly generated by photo-voltaic panels, stored in batteries, and shared with the grid. Both freshwater pipeline and electricity grid can be boosted and insured by connecting to conventional sustainable and centralized sources of fresh water and electricity which is particularly valuable in dealing with consumption fluctuations and seasonal weather changes.

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