Is Utopia Possible?

The answer to that depends on what your vision of Utopia is.

If it is to have the most beautiful, devoted, loving spouse in the world, enough money to have and do whatever you want whenever you want and never have to work, that is available to you right now.  You just have to want it enough that you are willing to choose to override your conscience on a few things.  Like ignoring the poor and homeless.  Or the many wars that rage even now in this supposed world at peace.  Or the pollution created by so many industries (maybe even yours).  And that is just for starters. 

If it is to live off the land, making a living by the fruit of your own two hands, that too is available.  But you are also dependent upon what land you have (fertile or rocky or...), what kind of weather you get (and will get as global warming changes weather on a global scale), whether you choose to interact with the rest of the world (they already have most of what you are scraping to produce, and in such cheap abundance that you will not get much in trade if you want any of the other items the rest of the world has - cars, computers, home appliances, even nails and shingles).  And will you have the knowledge of medicine to heal your family (or the money to pay a doctor if you don't)? 

The US was conceived as a place that would be free of the hindrances of a ruler far away that was skimming off the bounty of the new world.  Independence was a deliberate attempt to forge a new way of life with new rules and a new way of governing ourselves.  In the 200 plus years that the US has existed, it has blossomed into a wonderful and prosperous land.  I happen to like living here.  But there are stress fractures starting to appear.  And the speed of technological changes is increasing so fast that many aspects of life that used to be hard and fast realities are now blurring and becoming indistinct. 

Things are going to change.  This is a fact.  What is not predetermined is what we will have in the future.  As long as things are going to change, we owe it to ourselves and all future generations, for probably innumerable reasons, to figure out what we want our future world to be like.  We should at least aim for Utopia.  We may not get there right away (or ever), but if we don't figure out and achieve what we want, we may get something we wish we had not let happen.

Terrorism is spawned mostly by poverty and neglect, and is often a response to acts against which the perpetrators feel their only course of action is the monumental, the attention-grabbing, the horrific.  The atrocities commited against the United States September 11, 2001 may have been committed by educated beings who were not impoverished.  But they probably didn't subscribe to the life of terrorism from that level.  They were probably recruited from poverty.  

Think about it -- if you were dying of starvation and someone came to you and said he could lift you up out of poverty, could give your life meaning, could give you the opportunity to change the circumstances of your family, friends, town, country, and those of your religion, the choice would not be hard.

Socialism/Communism is supposed to be based in giving away with the expectation we will all work hard for the good of all in return.  But when everything has been given away there is nothing left, and it becomes very easy to eye the wealth of neighbors.  Terrorism can flourish in such a fertile culture of despair.

Capitalism is based on exclusion: if you want something you work for it and it is yours alone to the exclusion of everyone else.  But not everyone is capable of working (for whatever reason) and these are the fodder of the terrorist leader.

We must find something else that includes all people without giving away the farm.  We must push ourselves to think beyond what history has already established.

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