Challenge #02313-F123: Paradise Cracked
Our Utopia is the Dystopia of the Future.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cDeMzg31T2I -- Anon Guest
There is no such thing as a perfect world. We try to imagine them, but our present shapes the future we envision. The writer of the first such utopian fiction couldn't imagine a perfect world without slavery. Others in later eras and other cultures could only imagine rugged individualism as saving the day, instead of steadily ruining the country.
Some didn't get much further past, No hunger, no greed, and all the children know how to read.
For every perfect world, there is a downside. For every one with their head in the clouds, ten labour with their feet in the mud. Resources have to come from somewhere and there is always something that cleverly-engineered machines can not do. Even if it is fixing the cleverly-engineered machines.
The worlds we imagine to be perfection have flaws. Taxes must be paid, to support the structures that should be free for all. The rich man's paradise is the poor man's hell. The poor man's paradise is the rich man's nightmare.
There is little more threatening to a businessman than a post-scarcity world. Meanwhile, for those struggling to keep a roof over their heads and a meal in their bellies... it is nothing short of heaven.
A perfect world... never ages well. Someone dreams of a world in which every child is assigned a gender, a job, and a life's path; and less than decades later it is seen as the worst of dystopias, because the freedom of choice has been removed from the equation. Someone imagines a world that has gone back to nature, and the realities of the old ways are argued by those who have actually done their homework.
In the end, no Utopia is true. There are always the greedy, the venal, the ignorant who strive to have more, do less, or just stab some other guy in the back. All we can do is take our unsteady steps towards a dream of a better world and hope, one day, it is achievable.
In the meantime, we write them down, and hope to inspire others with our dreams. Hope, as well, that our dreams are not the nightmares of later generations.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / urfingus]
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If nothing else we’ll probably be as entertaining to future generations with our quaint ignorant little thoughts as the previous ones often appear to us 🤣
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