# Frontiers drive human flourishing Frontiers bring out the best in us: courage, vision, drive, collective action. Frontiers force us to strive, not against each other, but against the world, to contend with and master objective reality. Frontiers are hard. But perhaps that’s the point. Humanity’s tendency to strive beyond the limits of what’s possible is one of our defining characteristics. Exploration and frontier-pushing is how we turned ourselves from just another savannah-dwelling bipedal ape to a civilization that spans the entire planet and has made baby steps beyond it. Exploration and frontier-pushing drove our ancestors to cross the Bering Land Bridge and ply the vast blue horizons between the pacific islands. More recently that same drive pushed us to strive across the great snow-covered southern wasteland and delve deep into the building blocks of reality. <[[Opening the space frontier requires new fire hand-axes and clothes]]>  Frontiers enable non-zero sum growth — both in material well being, knowledge, and ethics. In medieval Europe, the only way to create more wealth was by taking it from others. For the most part, knights were state-legitimated mafiosos. Yes, there are stumbles along the way, but the feeling that there is plenty to go around and the deep-seated belief that there will be more tomorrow than there is today enables people to treat their neighbors as friends and potential allies rather than competitors over a single slice of pie. <[[People are less worried about equality when the pie is growing]]> Frontiers don’t just turn neighbors into allies through positive-sum growth, but by acting as an existential threat that doesn’t require a human enemy. Fractionated societies unite in the face of common foes. On a frontier, that foe is death by cold, starvation, broken equipment, rivers[^1], or wolves. It could be the hard vacuum of space, radiation, or fuel. Frontiers also create cohesion by enabling those who don’t want to cooperate to leave instead of fighting tooth and nail for the reigns of power. Written records point to Leif Erickson, the Scots-Irish and British Royalists, the Puritans, and the Greek settlers of Sicily who would merge with the Eutrustcans to become Rome, but it’s easy to imagine that the same dynamics drove Polynesians to set out to a new island, or for early groups to leave Africa. Frontiers drive flourishing not just among the frontier openers, but among those left behind or who come later. The objective demands of frontiers force the development of new technologies and uncover discoveries that are useful far beyond the frontier: food preservation; sailing and farming techniques; potatoes and corn provided cheap protein for millions in Europe. Frontiers even inspire new art and philosophy: see Shakespeare’s Tempest and Rousseau’s romanticism. Indeed, looking at the hard lives (and frequent deaths) of those who open frontiers, it might be possible that frontiers benefit those who come later or stay behind the most. A frontier’s ability to shift us from a strive-against-each-other mode to a strive-against-the-world mode extends to discovery and invention as well. New fields with many unsolved problems and open questions drive collaboration and shared celebration. Mature fields where there is no yardstick beyond the opinion of other practitioners drive politics, fierce battles over scraps, and at worse, pure falsification. But the two are coupled, the physical and knowledge frontiers. We’ve almost exhausted those bizarre phenomena that act like tips of icebergs, hinting at unknown workings of reality beneath: the loadstones that attract iron, the amber that sticks to feathers, the crystals that turn sunlight into a rainbow. We’ve exhausted those phenomena, at least, that can be stumbled upon at one atmosphere of pressure, temperature ranges between -50 and 100C, length-scales on the order of a meter, timescales on the order of a human life, and water-based chemistries. <[[Phenomena-based cycles are stuck]]> And beyond all the rational reasons that frontiers drive human flourishing, I believe frontiers are important to humanity because they are. Call it our telos, meaning-making, destiny, what have you. [[Frontiers are hard]], and that may be the point. Close your eyes and think about the achievements that stir your heart. How many of them involve individuals or groups doing something hard, overcoming obstacles and going beyond the possible? Those obstacles can be created either by other people or a frontier. Let’s choose the latter. Adventures stir the heart. Exploration opens the eyes. Frontiers enable courage to matter. ### Related * [[Conquest state of nature]] [^1]: Real frontiers don’t have ferries. Always caulk the wagon and float [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Frontiers+drive+human+flourishing) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Frontiers+drive+human+flourishing)