Awareness versus detail
Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist describes the real differences between the left and right halves of the human brain. It's not simply "emotion on the right, reason on the left," but something far more complex and interesting.

The southwest Pacific island is of special interest because it appears to have achieved sustainable development. An island of 1.8 square miles and 1,200 inhabitants, it is described by Jared Diamond as being "micromanaged for continuous and sustainable food production" ¹

Wall Street, symbol of investment banking and the stock exchange.

The history of Wall Street institutions reveals a pattern of overconfident exploitation of financial advantages, followed by unexpected setbacks and investor panic. The pattern has characteristics in common with progress traps, most notably the ability of financiers to pursue their activities in a culture that is insulated from the world that lies beyond commerce. As it happens, that world is greatly affected by high finance, but financiers are not aware of their effect until panic has set in.

In A Green History of the World, Clive Ponting gives a sobering account of one society’s demise as a direct result of development. He relates in detail how the southern Pacific ocean’s Easter Islanders, remote from any other civilized society, slowly succumbed to the results of their ingenuity.