| Reasonable people, given the same set of facts will most
likely make the same decisions, based on those facts. The first thing
to look at in heading toward Utopia is to lay out on the table as much
as we can of what we know about ourselves -- what social, political and
economic orders exist or have existed, and what resources are available
and will or will not be in the future. This is a group of precepts
that should be closely examined and debated, and that can be added to or
changed as such a basis for choosing what direction to go.
It is better to give than receive. Altruism
is just a word to far too many people.
We are mortal --- perhaps it is possible to live a "best" life within the
75 or so years we are on earth? There is no law, contrary to the thoughts
of some philosophers, that the human condition has to be a miserable existence,
that one must have unhappiness to appreciate
happiness. Every moment one is happy is a moment not sad. Ascertaining
what makes people happy gives us a chance to aim to make everyone's every
moment happy. Finding ways to know and understand what makes people unhappy
gives us the ammunition to finesse unhappiness. If unhappiness can be experienced
indirectly, then a person has a reference point from which to appreciate
his or her happiness. It has been documented that people who laugh more
tend to be emotionally and physically better off in the long run.
While the micro reality
is that no one has the exact same idea of what would be a perfect life,
there is sort of a (for lack of a better [real] word) macro-distillation,
a large overlap across all people, with a gamut
of preferences that can be at least be grouped. It is in our interest
to retain a lot of diversity of cultures, ways to look at things, styles
of living. Among the things that overlap are food - clothing - shelter,
a need to belong, a desire to contribute, the ability (practiced or innate)
to do a few things well, outlets for expression (physical, artistic, of
anger, of joy). The actual manifestations will differ widely.
|
|
In economics there
is a phrase, "guns and butter", which refers to the way a country can spend
its resources. The more it produces consumables ("butter"), the less
capacity there is to provide militarily ("guns"). It takes a lot
to provide a military: not just the personnel and equipment, but also all
support necessary to maintain them. A world without nationalistic
tendencies would mean only a small military, relative to the scale of the
world of the turn of the second millennium, would be needed. That
would make for a lot more "butter".
How much do
we need, and how much effort is it right to demand that each individual
contribute? Certainly it makes sense to expect that a person contribute
as much effort as the equivalent effort put in by those providing the
food, clothing and shelter he uses over the course of his life (which is
more than what he can produce during the prime producing years of his life).
And perhaps he owes a bit to those who come afterwards to carry forward
all the civilization that was present when he was born. If Utopia
achieves total mechanization of laborious work, what would we do instead?
A pecking order exists
among people, and would emerge over time even if people were to start as
equal. It is a physical reality that people
differ in many respects which cannot be overridden by "nurture".
The more this can be diffused the smaller is the range between the "haves"
and "have-nots".
Economics (what occurs
in the "market" over time, or on a simplistic level, Adam Smith's invisible
hand) can be compared to the steady force of water flowing
to the ocean, able to cut huge canyons over time; politics (taxes, laws,
incentives, controlling interest rates, price controls, etc.) can be viewed
as the dams that society puts up to try to direct that flow --- people
can erect the dams much more quickly than economics can cut through them.
Civilization rests
squarely on the shoulders of an accumulation
of all that has come before.
No person can rightly claim to be able to exist as a purely independent
individual with neither need of help from, nor any obligation to, anyone
else. The very young and the very old are two undeniable, universal
examples. Ayn Rand not withstanding, the people who produce must
by definition of our humanity produce more in sum than what is sufficient
for what the producers want in sum. The producers were once helpless
children, and they will become the helpless aged. And there will
always be accidents -- of life, of nature -- that will preclude some from
being effective producers, in terms of both time and capability.
Competition
can just as easily be for the higher art of the venue, whatever the venue,
as be for victory over an opponent. Perhaps it is possible to beat the
sword of survival into the plowshare of beauty without destroying the vigor
of life. |
|
|
As long as we are making
what we need for day-to-day and long-term life, we might as well put in
the extra effort to make everything as well as
possible so that everything made is wanted until it falls apart into
dust. And that dust should be recyclable.
The best way to be
sure to know we are actually getting ahead is to measure our GROSS WEALTH
(cumulative) or NET PRODUCT (incremental) as opposed to measuring GROSS
PRODUCT. Otherwise we don't notice we are spinning our wheels
doing duplicated effort, creating obsolescence, producing shoddy goods,
arguing and performing other forms of "work" that end up not contributing
to wealth and the good of all in the long run. Making a highly valued
item and simultaneously creating pollution that will take more to clean
up than the value of the item is a negative sum.
Life is what you focus on, so if everyone focuses
on betterment, it is easier to align efforts and there is less entropy.
Those already embarked on a common goal can go farther more effectively
if there is communication and cooperation.
The
light
of day cures many evils. If all people were to live their lives as
if they were on TV, they might act a bit differently.
There may always be
people who, for whatever reason, do not have the self-control to refrain
from actions that harm people or things that
should not be harmed.
Hate,
fear and terror; and greed, envy and jealousy are powerful motivators
-- a legacy of eons of surviving. The question is are we better off
without them? Are there enough positive things to strive for that
preempt the need for them? Does human nature ultimately dictate that
we must have some sort of stick behind us as well as a carrot in front
of us to keep going?
Instilling in people
the will always to do what is right
cannot be legislated, but it would be much more likely to come about if
everyone were aware of what the consequences to other people would be and
what they would feel as a result of any action. This is the basis of morals,
and civilization has the need, right and obligation to teach this thinking. |
|
|
Education
needs to be engaging, and needs to begin within a few days of when a child
is born. The scale has to be appropriate, and everyone should be so attuned
to the benefits that they will assuredly do it on their own and not need
it to be institutionally force fed. If most of the ingrained learning a
person does is accomplished in the first few years of life, that is when
they should be exposed to as much knowledge as possible. It is also when
a desire to learn ought to be instilled in everyone in such a way that
all seek to continue learning for the rest of their lives, albeit at a
different level of learning.
The sphere of human
knowledge, though large, is certainly many orders of magnitude smaller
than the total knowledge available in the universe. As the surface area
of the sphere of our knowledge expands, pushing it farther will become
exponentially trickier because everything is holistically interrelated.
And as individuals in their lives each contribute a given amount of knowledge
that expands the sphere in whatever area, the larger the sphere becomes.
The expanding virtual area of the sphere means that individuals will only
be able to know a smaller and smaller part at the farthest reaches of the
shpere (not to mention all the details held inside the sphere). So
an individual is only able to expand the sphere by a smaller and smaller
percentage of the total surface area.
As we know more and
believe more in ourselves, it is still no one's right to deny others' belief
in any religion of their choice as long as that religion does not call
for negative actions towards anyone.
The surface of this
earth is finite and humans have only been on it for the blink of an eye
in geological terms. We owe it to the earth that spawned us, to the other
creatures with which we share the earth, to ourselves and to our children
to make as small a footprint as possible on the earth so that as much wilderness
and biodiversity as possible is left intact. Sending our progeny and sustaining
agriculture into space to keep from overwhelming earth should be one alternative
we seriously consider. Pollution, habitat
destruction and overpopulation are becoming
the seeds of our destruction.
Legal hair splitting
can destroy togetherness and squander time. If we are all working
toward basically the same final outcome, we should recognize that there
is far too much to be done to waste time arguing.
Fossil fuels are finite.
Humankind's harnessing of energy energy spawned
the industrial revolution. We have based most of our energy consumption
on fossil fuels, including both the fertilizer and fuel for agricultural
equipment. Almost every industrial process is based on fossil fuel. This
is very serious "writing on the wall" that we continue to ignore.
The industrial revolution, and the harnessing of technology are based on
the ready availability and supply of cheap energy. |
|
|
There is a balance
between producing items when demand for them is low and producing the technology
to mass produce items when demand is high. Foregoing immediate consumption
of direct production allows the benefit of much higher supply with less
actual work done by people, freeing them up to work
on the next highest priority items.
Loans (with their cost
measured by the ensuing interest) are made by institutions on the promise
that the institutions will be repaid over time for use of things now.
The entity (person, company, etc.) taking on the loan does so because he
does not have enough stored value to pay for the needed item at the outset.
Money
allows us to incrementalize values on many things and to elevate barter
into a completely indirect transaction. The evil perceived in money
is actually based in greed, in wanting the power that can be wielded by
one who possesses a large amount of money, or in abusing that power to
make other people incremental, indirect slaves.
Genetic engineeringin humans will soon be a reality, regardless
of what laws are passed prohibiting its use and development.
Utopia must be a place
where each person wants to be by choice. Members should be free to
leave at any time, for any reason, with no restrictions.
Conversely, Utopia
should have the ability to accept anyone who wishes to join, as long as
the person can speak the main language and can and will contribute toward
what all Utopians have determined to be the sum of all needs, wants and
desires. |
|
|
Diversity is valuable
-- it provides multiple perspectives and environments. To function
cohesively, people need to be able to interact using a common set of rules
in addition to a common language. If someone does not want to maintain
his cultural heritage, it is not his obligation to do so. However,
if a culture is losing its members, we should do our best to capture the
essence of that culture for historical purposes -- in case someone a generation
or two after a culture has disappeared wants to know or try and revive
the culture.
Life often places us
in situations that are not clearly right or wrong -- there is a gamut of
shades of gray in between. It is often not possible or even desirable
to polarize a situation into black and white, and so sometimes there can
be several "right", although possibly painful, courses of action for a
situation. Situations where a choice must be made between the lesser
of two evils should be examined to see if they can be avoided in the future.
The value of guns is
constant. They provided settlers with provisions necessary for survival.
This need is obsolete. They provide "sport", but perhaps in the interest
of making hunting and target shooting true sport, other weapons might be
more appropriate. Guns provide the military of the nations of the
world with one method of defending themselves. If we no longer had
wars, this need would be obsolete as well. For now, we have a long
way to go to get there. Police need guns because criminals have guns.
Criminals should not have guns, and as long as they do, it is marginally
rational for those who wish to posess a gun to do so. However, we
have the technology to keep track of guns owned for defense, as well as
the technology to render the guns useless to anyone other than the owners.
Requiring this technology is an absolute mandate immediately, with or without
any other progress toward Utopia. A goal of Utopia is to reach a
level of civilization that will obviate the need for guns.
There are more and
more people. This forces us to live in closer proximity to one another
and to come in contact with and interact with one another more. These
higher density environments require that we make more individual compromises. |