The human condition is shaped by random events and acts of god (over which humankind has no control) and human behavior, which might appear to be dominated by institutions and their leaders.

However a closer inspection may show that governments, religions, and economic systems are like logs in a flowing stream. Leaders are, as Samuel Clemens wrote, "like ants on these logs."

If this view is correct then human condition is determined by underlying currents.

What if these currents are produced by the collected personal acts of billions of individuals? What if each of these personal acts results from a cognitive convergence of genetic predisposition, sensed physical environment, and transmitted social content? Then, the cognitive processes of the global constituency determine the human contribution to their condition.

Shaping future conditions would require shaping the way all individuals in a future generation gathered, structured, and gave value to information.

In this context, improving the human condition means, identifying unwanted human conditions, the personal behaviors that cumulatively created them, weaknesses in cognitive process that choose these behaviors, and creating the means to develop better cognitive processes in a future generation.