To This ONE it Makes a Difference

Yesterday I read a great post by @bleepcoin titled Why Steemit is Not Utopia and You Should be Happy and I wanted to touch on something about this.

Is Steemit a Utopia?

I want to start with that I absolutely agree with @bleepcoin on his position, Steemit itself is not a Utopia. In fact by the definition of Utopia being absolutely perfect, it CAN'T exist, knowing that "Perfection doesn't exists anywhere in nature." Besides, Steemit is a platform or tool we may use, but not the ideal itself. Even if Steemit scales up and becomes hugely successful, it's not the tool (while still being extremely useful) itself that moves us towards a better society, it's the people and how they use it. I don't see anybody arguing that Steemit was Utopia if it's populated solely by trolls that spew negativity or hate. Power itself isn't good or evil, but rather how power is wielded to determine this.

I view Steemit itself as an economic platform to generate and (ideally) reward discussion on what we want on a fundamental level such as life, liberty, property, happiness, meaningful relationships and work, etc. It all has to start somewhere and I am personally excited to see where this goes, especially the talked about craigslist/marketplace.

Why Utopia is Important

With all that said, I still feel the concept of Utopia to be very important to discuss because this is how we begin to self-reflect, think and communicate our individual ideals. While this may only be a mythical place (outside our own minds) it gives us the much needed metric of what I want, what am I working towards and am I going in the right direction. I'm typically not a fan of roaming around in circles just to feel like I've traveled, I search for progress.

A point I would like to touch on is that not everybody (in the general world population) is ready for the things to change. It's easier escaping through entertainment or deferring your power to someone else's judgement so you don't have to think about uncomfortable questions or complexities. While having a Utopian ideal in mind and an implementable path to create such a system are always going to be necessary, there are unspoken requirements for anybody that would wish to live in such a society. Which was discussed in a previous post called Ego Work.

Trying to think of all the intricacies of an ideal or implemented society is daunting with rabbit hole after rabbit hole of issues and what if's. So instead try to take some time furthering yourself or others so that we don't NEED to be told not to murder, steal or assault. Remember that the Non Aggression Principle is useless if we don't feel that others are going to adhere to it.

Conclusion

In conclusion I want to tell you about a part in the movie Holy Man. The main character tells a story where he walks up to a beach only to see thousands of star fish washed ashore and slowly dying. He see's a girl who is frantically going from beached starfish to starfish throwing the back into the sea.

He asks her, "Young girl, why are you trying to hard to save all these starfish? There is no possible way that you will be able to save them all." Her response was, "to this ONE it makes a difference. And to THIS one it makes a difference."

Don't underestimate the importance of working on ourselves and helping others who are doing the same. Every ONE makes a difference!