Manifold Nature, The Civilization Machine, and The Shaman/Wizard Archetype

If vehicle wheels and tires had followed a different path, our road system might be completely different than it is today. The model of a "wheel" as narrow, high pressure, and spoked was deeply embedded in people's thoughts by the dawn of the industrial era when the first trains and cars were being built. Roads were made of stone, and then asphalt and concrete to support heavy vehicles with high pressure tires--trains are the most extreme example--steel wheels and steel roads. A set of solutions to a really basic problem, like transportation, creates a sort of skeleton for the civilization beast, or is the framework of the civilization machine.

It's really common for people to argue that those frameworks are fundamental, or driven by first principles. That is, those frameworks represent a ruthless winnowing process that could only have one outcome. Implicit in that linear history argument is that those systems "won". An aspect of those frameworks that's peculiar to our time is they are part of a financial system, which reinforces their existence by creating a network of dependents and political interests.

Those solutions, though, are really arbitrary and accidental. The way of living that grows up around them is also arbitrary and accidental. The current system of consumer/corporate life and commuting by car replaced an earlier era of trains, which replaced an earlier era of canals and rivers and stagecoach roads and plank roads. The canal era created a whole culture that has long since faded away. Animal power has long since faded away, too, which is mostly a good thing.

Dog Carts used to carry milk and other goods to market, but
have mostly been banned because people abused their dogs horribly

The civilization egregore is a complex creature. It's not merely a creature of the mind--it really grows out of the whole, including things like the transportation network and food production system. I think the Amish are the only people who really consider the impact of engineering on their lives. It also seems like elements of the traditional Japanese culture have a similar skepticism of technological advancement for its own sake.

The manifold/fractal aspect of reality and nature suggests to me that monopolistic and monocultural systems, like the western system, are prone to catastrophic failure and collapse, rather than transformation and growth.

A decentralized weaving and creation of the fabric of culture is probably a more resilient approach. The people who are playing and experimenting with ostensibly stupid or childish things are really the civilization builders.