What would make you most happy? What is your individual utopia? What is currently preventing your from achieving your maximum happiness?

in #peace6 years ago (edited)

I do not believe a collective utopia exists nor could possibly exist. I don't believe there could exist an equality of outcome. If one were too, we would essentially all be required to be the exact same and mandates would necessity the stifling of any innovation or creativity. Either that, or the manner in which society was laid out would remove the need for any of the aforementioned guiding principles. I personally can't fathom a scenario that would fit that description. In describing my own personal utopia, I imagine working very closely with my best friends and family, absorbing any like minded, positively driven individuals to solving real problems. One such problem in existence today would be the fact that our economic system benefits those in a most general sense that have found ways to take advantage of it, and that leaves multitudes of people with barely enough money for food. I don't think socialism (and admittedly am very ignorant on socialism and need to do more research - but we've SEEN IN HISTORY what can happen with communism based regimes (death tolls nearing 100,000,000) reign over countries for any extended amount of time. Also, I'm not sure what exact forms of government were in place under Hitler's, Stalin, Mao (the bad one) or Mussolini. One could say that under our capitalistic society, at least we don't have to worry about whether or not we're going to be abducted from our homes in the middle of the night at gunpoint and dragged into a concentration camp because of some arbitrary factor beyond our control such as the color of our skin or the things we truly believe to be true without fact. Nor should those things be considered in any kind of punishment, ESPECIALLY by the government. In my ideal society, the government would be responsible only for ensuring that the masses were protected from outside threat of those with which we can not reach peaceful negotiations, the government would build defense systems that only defended those lucky enough to already be located within its borders and would also have in place systems that could allow certain number of peoples in that could somehow prove they were nonviolent, cooperative members of society. That's not an easy problem to solve but I believe it to be true. If someone has a history of violence, perhaps they would subjugated to a very rigorous psychological analysis while under confinement and could be judged to be fit and sane by the masses. Problems exist in that solution as well but at least that provides opportunity for those that have made mistakes, as it is without doubt that mental health can cause one to become pathological. I don't know what the research shows on the proportions of the cases where that is true, but again is certainly worth considering. Essentially all of that is to say that we should not assert our power too far outward in the interest of monetary gain for the minutia who would benefit from foreign invasions. Your neighbor down the street, nor do you nor your boss or your mother in law or anyone you know benefit from war. When asked the question if you benefit from us invading foreign lands, perhaps you recite the words you were taught brainwashed with by mass media - "When we invade foreign countries, the government is protecting our freedom." This claim is a brilliant claim, however it came about. September 11th was a tragic time. September 11th resulted in death of (I believe) over 4,000 people. I'm going to check that because I don't want to be insensitive to the facts here...

According to a google search on Jan 15, 2018, 7:01 AM, nearly 3,000 people died as a result of September 11, 2001.
Image of google search of "September 11 death toll"

I've linked the image as I've found that embedding images in text on my note taking app slows things down too much. Would be fun to diagnose if it was open source and I absolutely would! I'll get back to that later.

Before September 11, I recall anthrax being claimed to have been sent by terrorists to the government. I just have one question for you to allow your evil side to consider. If you were a terrorist and you were attempting to actually cause any harm, would you send packages of poison to people and tell them there was poison in your package? Wouldn't you do something that wouldn't be detected? Or wouldn't you send in letters explaining the terrible crimes you've just committed after it had been reported that important government officials were dying or becoming very sick in large numbers? It makes me sick to my stomach to think of causing any harm to any human. Or animal for that matter but in the latter I am a hypocrite and eat meat. I'm going to not go into that subject for now. That said, it is necessary to imagine what acting evil would be like in order to critique our enemies. I haven't read Art of War, but can imagine that would be covered in that book. I also would like to explicitly state again that I would never cause harm to a human being. My utopia is an open, transparent, thriving, creative, abundant and healthy world where you are free to chose your endeavors. You are free to benefit society in any way you see fit, so long as you can create or do something that is judged by some general population to make a positive impact, no matter how small.

Not only do we have the technology, resources, and collective drive to make my utopia a reality, I have written down a step by step plan to actually make it a reality. The funny thing is none of the steps are very complicated. I would also need to go into more depth about how control would remain in a most general populations hands rather than in my own or of those that I am in cahoots with, as Nietzsche pointed out would happen upon the proposal of a new value structure. The thinking makes sense. Why would anyone propose a value structure under which they would not benefit more greatly than under the current value structure. And admittedly, that is true. I would certainly benefit, as would anyone in their own proposed utopia. However, the stipulation that sets my utopia or my proposed value system apart from others is this: "If I benefit at your suffering (not this nonsense thought suffering that is accepted by some today, but TRUE, painful suffering - physical harm, inability to eat, inability to shelter your family, inability to clothe your family, inability or pursue interests you are passionate about and are positively oriented, etc), the change or action which drove the increase in my benefit must necessarily be reversed and the reason for which your suffering increased MUST be documented, archived, researched, and linked to the action or accepted proposal that caused my benefit and your harm and we must never, under the conditions with which that action or agreement was agreed upon, agree to that ever again. Not only that but there would be in place fail safes for each proposal for change if some individual believes that there can be an improvement anywhere and to what scale of the population that proposal would benefit. Rankings of accuracy in claims after the fact would be in place comparing estimated outcomes to realized outcomes and the more accurate one was with their claim, the more voting influence they would have in the future. The failsafes I've mentioned previously would be in place with any proposal as to what should happen if what I say will happen doesn't happen. More thought will have to be put into all of these mechanisms, but it cannot be claimed that this would not improve our process and our society. It cannot be claimed that this would decrease peace. It cannot be claimed that this would benefit any one positively aiming member of society over another. If you feel it can you must make your case and have a long enough conversation with anyone willing to have an honest debate with you. Simply claiming "this won't work" is akin to not saying anything at all. Be useful!! Improve ideas seeking to improve ideas. Contribute solutions to the things you claim don't or won't work.

If you think this idea is not good in any way, please say why. Let's begin a discussion. I would love to hear your ideas and improve. I would love to make this idea "watertight" if you will. I truly feel it is close enough to start the discussion or I wouldn't be taking the time to write this down and share it.

If, on the other hand, you find this idea positive and interesting, please see my article on the concrete proposal for a set of technological systems that would begin to bring about my proposed utopia. The same sentiments apply there is well. If you think this post is a good idea and that one ridiculous, be useful and explain in detail why and then propose solutions. Because in he end, "how useful is it to be able to say something won't work / isn't working without also proposing a solution. You might as well not say anything at all." The only exception to that rule is if you truly believe something is impossible. However, if that is your claim, you better do a very good job explaining why you think that is the case. It has been shown over time that humans can be terrible monsters. That much is obviously true. We have also observed in the history of our most recent generations the likes of Ghandi and Martin Luther King and others whom I have not heard or can not think of right now due to bad memory.


WOW , I just got goosebumps. I never realize what day it is when I'm waking up. I'm just waking up now, went to Google Search similar figures to Ghandi and Martin Luther King and accidentally clicked the Google Doodle, which links you to a search of that particular drawing's purpose, and it told me today is Martin Luther King day.How absolutely beautiful, poignant, and fitting.


Along with these peaceful bringers of positive change, we have also seen, much more noticeably the heinous murder of tens of millions of humans under the guidance of a mere handful of evil masterminds. It is easy to perform mass evil and much, much harder to bring about mass peace, but the latter is possible with the appropriate effort, and I truly believe that we have advanced JUST enough in terms of our technological capabilities and abundance of information to able to begin taking the steps towards a slow, methodical, positively influenced law abiding revolution for peace.

Here is the link to how that can begin to happen. I would love to engage in a conversation with anyone and everyone who has ideas as to how to improve both our collective selves as well as this idea. Thank you so much for spending your time reading this. I truly look forward to hearing your thoughts - positive or negative - as long as they are fair, honest, and at least somewhat constructive.

https://steemit.com/life/@halfjew22/proposal-for-extracting-value-from-positive-behaviors-and-its-imagined-societal-impact

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Well, I understand what you are saying. You are talking about the extremes of evil, the moral measure of it and all but the truth remains that there is no absolute extreme in life . We are all just in between and that is all it will ever be.

Nevertheless, we can only try to shift towards the best , I mean that part that best that leans towards UTOPIA . Steem is a place that tries to lean towards that but, to be sincere, STEEM is not perfect either.

There are wars going on here too. it's just that it's a war of votes being thrown at each other in a UP or DOWN direction.

The whales believe they own this place and they want all of use to think that same way which is a really good idea becuase if you don't exhibit a sense of ownershuip, your contribution will lack the right motivation or inspiration. That is a "utopian" philosophy.

But then, some people think it is wrong to upvote yourself , so they retaliate by downvoting you. So , it's a war of freedom to vote. That is not utopian.

So in the real sense of it, there is no perfection anywhere, we can only try to create perfect systems but it will never happen. NEVER!!

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