Utopia 2

Posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 3:39 pm in

I had some more thoughts while on vacation in Pasadena.

People are always talking about working towards the greater good of society, but this is a lie we tell ourselves. If we were truly working towards this end, we could be much closer to utopia. But again, utopia is not necessarily a place where everyone is happy. This is what everyone seems to believe and that is why we are not one.

Humanity as it is and nature as it is cannot coexist for much longer. In the path that we are on, it is likely that we will destroy ourselves and everything else. Would it not be a pity if the only life known to us fallible humans, a veritable gem in the rough, were to disappear for naught? But then, the same logic would apply to us as well. We are the only ones we know of that have attempted to unravel the forces of the universe (and we are wasting it). Why should we lose that too? Because, the trouble is that those desires are not compatible. Unless something drastic happens.

As an engineer, I think that utopia is possible. Under certain conditions. Utopia is not a system that has to satisfy all of its customers. It works for the greater good of itself and its environment. The harmonious merging of technology and ecology is (probably) attainable. The transition, of course, would not be immediate. We would have to burn fossils fuels on the way there. We would pollute. But the ends could justify the means.

Money is a very strange thing. In an ideal society, I think that money would not be used. Even the barter system would be mostly diminished. Instead, an iron mine/smelting/recycling center would produce some amount of steel. Instead of selling it to the highest bidder, a separate committee would decide who gets the steel based on what would benefit utopia the most. This goes for anything.

But that sounds a lot like communism, doesn’t it? The problem with such a socialistic model of utopia is that it is against human nature, against the basic principles of life. Evolution is based on capitalistic natural selection. This is what we were programmed for. While in theory socialism sounds good, it does not work in practice. In the past, communist states became dictatorships because of greedy people abusing the system. No one else has any goals. Goals are very important to us. With no class system and equal paying jobs, no one has anything to strive for (except being dictator).

Democracy does not work either. It is inefficient at electing the candidate that the people want, and is by no means at all efficient at electing the best leader. Democracy assumes that the people know best when they don’t. People are stupid. More importantly, everyone acts in their own self interest. When they do this, we get the problems in the US today. Like communism, it looks good on paper but in practice it does not do so good.

What, then, would work? I propose monarchy. Constitutional monarchy with some modifications. Suppose that you have multiple ruling families in Nation X. One is in charge, the others are in charge of the various states. All of them are motivated to economic success, and this leads to ecological success. They are motivated because, if the ruling monarch does a bad job, he will be promptly overthrown, and the most successful state comes into power, and the ruling family moves to the back of the pecking order to the rule of none. The test was ruling a small patch, the payoff is being top dog. The function of the parliament is to decide on the pecking order and when it gets shuffled. I use families because it allows this system to breed good leaders.

Furthermore, and perhaps above all, this nation would have balls. We can’t even ban plastic bags in our cities. Monsanto is causing problems. Nation X would have the guts to tell them to FOAD. This is capitalism at its heart. People might worry that this is unfair, but that brings up communism again. I did not propose ecological harmony as the objective, but economic. There is still room for many jobs. So it’s not necessarily a system designed to be easy to win by the people who invented it. Also, ecological harmony would be necessary for the continued existence of economy. Which is lost on today’s leaders.

But, as is said often, it’s not the government that counts, it’s the people. Democracy worked okay while it was new and people were inspired by the glow. But my proposal has its cons too, and slimy lawyers could defeat the objective. But then, does this mean we are hopeless? I never said we could achieve sustainability without a complete overhaul of humanity. Perhaps a good apocalypse would whip us into shape. It’s important to realize that there is no need for us to live, we must take our own initiative.

This article is intended to be a thought provoker, not a complete analysis.

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  1. kamen - October 27, 2010 at 5:28 am

    Honestly, humans can not coexist with each-other, with the planet, or even one with ones self has difficulty. Anyways, stop speaking for humanity as a general. It is not humans that want to learn about the universe, and unravel is secrets, its one to a few humans. Individual humans may be genius, wise, strong, and creative, but the masses are proven again and again to be weak, stupid, apathetic zombies. Utopia can only be made with those that think alike, so you really can’t have disagreements on the foundation if it is going to be a utopia. That’s why My society will let everyone who disagrees, leave. A Focused, uncorrectable, and smart dictator to focuses the civilization ,and give Eveline goals as a society is whats needed. To focuses the energy. And threw technology, humans can be modified to work better in such a situation. The Leader will have a council of advisers that he/she respects and will deeply listen to each and everyone one. And This leader must abide by the goals, and focus of the civilization. And with an economic system that support innovation, invention, high quality work, and knowledge, the personal goals will be there. America was built upon pre-Darwin scientific knowledge. They believe in natural laws, and such non-scene. My creation will be built around science.

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