With great power comes great responsibility

What would you do if you were in charge? There comes a time in everyone's life when we fantasize a little. It may be about a president, premier, or even an emperor as long as we were the ones calling the shots and ruling how others would live. We have a feeling that our way of looking at things is the proper one, the correct and genuine one. All should follow our way. Hm... Objectively, that has a suspicious resemblance to dictatorship by I will let that slide for a moment. What would I do if I had the power to govern a certain country?

@eco-alex made yet another interesting question as a weekly contemplation task in @ecotrain about the first executive orders and it served as an inspiration for this post. There is a lot to think about here, especially when you consider that presidents and prime ministers have different positions, duties, and responsibilities. They have different powers. You should also consider that most countries have other components in government and that not even being a president or a prime minister means that you can just make an order without that order passing the "ok" from other people involved in the government. It is not as simple as most people think. There is actually almost no possibility that you could make an executive order that would be immediately accepted or accepted at all. It would only be doable in a dictatorship and we do not want that. Do we?

Welcome to my mind, a place where utopian fantasies are born. Let's start by explaining some things. I would not necessarily be the ruler of my fantasy country but I would like to live there. That fantasy utopia country could be born from a democratic election where people who create it would be elected but I am not holding my breath on that. It is not because I do not believe that kind of capable people exist, I just do not believe there are enough of smart people who would vote for them.

Some people are stupid and the terrible thing is that they do not even realize it. A lot of them blame the government for everything. Let me make something perfectly clear, that government was not elected by aliens, it was elected by people. The sad part is that every nation gets the government it deserves, the government it elects. You may not want it, but the people around you obviously do. Why? Because they are naive, stupid, and easily manipulated. The power is always in numbers. It is illogical to say that things can not change. They can but people do not want them to change. It is like that story with a moaning dog where the dog was lying down and moaning and when a person came and asked the owner what is up with that dog the owner said how it was lying on the nail. The person asked why doesn't the dog move and the owner responded how it does not hurt enough the dog to move but it hurts just enough for it to moan. Most people are like that. They are not ready for a change and will not give their vote away from the nail because they are addicted to moaning. That is why I am not holding my breath that people will elect someone smart, intelligent, and capable to power. It would remove the reason for moaning and honestly, improvement is too scary for most people anyway. It is much easier to moan.

Since I did make a pretty strong claim there about people being stupid, let me explain why that is. It is because of a little thing called emotional reasoning. It is a phenomenon where our brains cause us to believe something is true because we feel it is true with no regard to the evidence. The brain is structured so that mere repetition (no evidence needed), causes us to believe a certain claim. The more often we are exposed to that claim, the more comfortable it seems. When we hear a statement, the first thing that happens is our autopilot system of thinking that is composed of emotions and intuitions. It used to protect us in the ancestral environment against dangerous threats and drew us toward what we needed to survive such as food and shelter. Unfortunately, the autopilot is not well calibrated for the modern environment and when we hear statements that go against our current beliefs, the system perceives them as threats and causes us to feel bad about them. This is the reason why many of us get the news mainly or only from within our own "personalized social media filter bubble". That bubble excludes information that differs from our own beliefs and they are then reinforced. It seems that everyone shares the same beliefs as us. You can check the survey from 2016 by Pew Research Center and read more about what I am talking about:

What is more concerning is the study from 2018 conducted at Stanford University. Results say that over 80 percent of students, who are generally experienced social media users, did not distinguish a news story that was shared by a friend from a sponsored advertisement. They did not recognize the advertisement. Rational factors such as the credibility of the news source outlet or evidence backing the claims had almost nothing to do with their decisions. You can read the entire study here:

Ok, you have somehow magically landed in ZEN-utopia. The first thing you will notice that education is in the center of attention. The biggest paychecks are those from teachers. The educational system is absolutely free for everyone and every educator is of top-quality.

You must realize by now that right oriented political parties do not really encourage you to be educated, right? Educated people are harder to manipulate. If you look at statistics from any country in the world, people from rural areas and those with less education vote right for traditional values, dogmas, strong manipulative personalities, and religious propaganda while educated people and most of them from cities vote left and tend to move towards technology, science, philanthropy, improvement, and liberal standpoints with no discrimination and hate. The first thing that right oriented politics does when it comes to power is screw up the educational system and makes it harder for people to become smarter and more intelligent. In ZEN-utopia, the educational system would be perfect. That means that educators would be high-quality professionals with a background in not only their field but psychology too. They would know how to teach and be paid A LOT. Education is the MOST IMPORTANT THING in every society. Religions leaders and gurus will not change the world, scientists will. This type of quality educational system would provide more of them and not only that, it would provide knowledge to every individual making it more capable to do anything.

Education is not only important when it comes to knowledge, it also has other benefits. There is a major wellbeing effect that it creates. Our level of education has become an important indicator of the social status in contemporary Western societies. Salary, job status, and even health are increasingly based on the level of education. The forming of our social identity is influenced by what and how we learn and an overall well-being and positive social attitudes are formed. Our health is impacted too. Evidence shows how education positively impacts cognitive ability and how it delays the cognitive decline in later life. You can read one of the studies here:

Yup, that is right. Churches and banks would have to pay the highest taxes and that would bring a pretty decent amount of money. The other way of gathering some money is from punishments. Drunk drivers or abusers would have to pay A LOOOOOOT of money as a part of their punishment. When I say "a lot", I mean the amount that that car is worth, their house is worth etc.

Anything that is considered a basic human need would have ZERO taxes. That includes food, water, basic building material, and clothes. It does not include all food and all clothes, only those that are in the certain price range so the label owners would not exploit the situation and health professionals and nutritionists would make a list of healthy and basic foods that fall into this category. It must be affordable and easy to buy things that are needed for every human being to survive and live a healthy life. Soda drinks, alcohol, and junk food are not your basic needs.

Are doughnuts a luxury? Yes, yes they are and so is Coca-Cola, cigarets, alcohol, designer shoes, and video games. You can live a healthy life without those things. You will not have to give them up, you would just need to pay more. Culture is not a luxury so theaters, music, and art do not fall into this category since they have been proven to benefit human psychological development. Gym membership is also not a luxury. Think of it this way, if it makes you a healthy, cultural, educated individual, it is not a luxury. If it is junk food or something damaging your health, it is a luxury and it would cost A LOT. We all need those simple pleasures (a doughnut junkie over here) but they should remain pleasures and seen as treats while healthy food needs to be cheap and available to everyone.

Our health is pretty much affected with the food we put into our bodies. The right amount of nutrients like vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats etc. is necessary for our normal functioning. I have found a great number of studies and research that show what we eat is important so I suggest you read the following:

One of the things that ZEN-utopia would have is a set maximum payment level. Illogically huge paychecks would not exist. What am I talking about? A certain (very real) soccer player has a salary of $84 M where that M stands for MILION. That is not realistic. I am well aware that some people work hard for their money and am not saying that this dude does not but that number is simply NOT realistic. Every field would have a set maximum level for salary and it would be based on how much that field is contributing to society.

Everyone thinks that what they do is the most important and some can get pretty offended when someone disagrees with them. I am sure that if you like and enjoy what you do, there is some logic behind your reasoning that it is important too. There is nothing wrong with that BUT you have to admit that doctors benefit society more than managers, scientists help more than professional sportsmen. The number of people your work impacts and the way it impacts them would play a role in setting that salary maximum level. That means that scientific discoveries and technological advancements will make you the richest. There would still be high salaries for those that excel at anything that they do but those salaries would be more realistic. You could be the best soccer player in the world but I think that you would live just fine with earning 5 million and not 84. Five million is still more than you need and will be enough for your luxury cravings.

I did say how this was going to be a post about a utopian fantasy land, didn't I? What did you expect, of course that some things would be almost impossible to achieve. I would like to point your attention to that word "almost". I used it for a reason. As a species, we are still evolving. Our behavior is evolving as are our accomplishments. Think about how the world looked like and how people acted some 1000 years ago and compare it with today. Differences are huge. Let us just hope that we do not need another 1000 years to recognize how some things are more important than others and how quality life is a direct consequence of quality education. Would you like to live in ZEN-utopia? Help create it by using rational logical thinking and be more critical to things you hear or read. Fact check the information you come across, it will go a long way and help this utopia come true. Thank you.