The local is what is near to you; what is easily seen and interacted with. In everyday life this is the language you speak, the cultural traditions you practice, the way problems are approached, and the field you work in among other things. The connotations associated with local are usually that of geolocation but in this sense the "local" is much larger comprising all that is close in all dimensions of existence.

This is contrasted with the global. Not just as in the far, but as in everything that exists. Things that are encompassing, too large to fit squarely in the local.

In this way being a "global" person is not possible because there are human limits to what we can think and do, because we are finite we must be local, leading to bias towards the near. Despite this bias people have found ways around it, human scientific progress in some way has been the slow escaping and expanding of collective human locality, looking into places that are more unfamiliar to us over time. Human thought has taken us to new places and new ways of thinking about things.

As time has gone on and I have grown as a person escaping what is close to me has allowed me to understand the world better. The problem I face is that I have yet to find a reliable way to discern these blindspots other than to cycle through novel experiences, but whatever the future does bring I want to escape locality.

Examples:

In the 1950s United States it was easy to view homosexuality as a mental disorder, and as something to be criminalized, but upon inspection of other cultures from other time periods it is found that such things are natural.

Where I live the only way to get around is to take a car but when I went to Los Angeles I was astounded by the high quality public transport and the walkablilty of much of the city and how big of a difference that makes on how enjoyable a city is.

Capitalism is the current economic system for most of the world but this was not always the case and most likely will not always be the case. I find that people constrain thought too much by the current capitalist system, what things are and are not impossible as stated by the current system (what would the world be like without money?)

*Inspired by this

**This is my first lesswrong post I've been a lurker for the longest time here, so I thought I would try to post some of my low resolution t...

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