It is my considered opinion that the greatest opposition to Utopian life is conflict, and the greatest enemy of peace is humanity.
Countries. Perhaps the stupidest idea that any one ever came up with. Indeed, the human race might be radically closer to achieving our ages old goal of Utopian living if some ancient tribesman had kept his mouth shut about that bright idea. We'll call him.... Thog.
Here is where I send a silent plea to the Doctor to go back in time with a nice heavy rock.
Still, maybe it isn't Thog's fault entirely. It seems to be human nature to NEED to belong. It's a nice sentiment on the surface. You first belong to a family. You love your Mommy and Daddy and you want them around- you love your siblings even if they make you mad. Then you go outside your family and you make some friends. Nice, right? You care about all of them, you want them to be happy and safe so that you can be happy and safe with them. We love and we care. How very nice :D It makes us all warm and cuddly on the inside. Lovely!
"I love you, you love me, we're a happy family...." *Shudders*
But no matter how big this bubble of good will gets- there are always people who are the Other. The Others are threatening. They are scary. They have their own bubbles of people they care about- and they don't really care about your people very much. They want to have the best of everything, for themselves and for their own. The dark conclusion is that they will be perfectly happy to take from your people to make their own happier. And that's where fighting comes in.
Through history, the bubble has grown. Family, friends, tribes, cultures, nations and finally countries. And the unhappiness is compounded. Patriotism, the next stupidest idea ever invented is created.
USA! USA! USA! .......................... Nah.
For King and Country! Right? It's a great reason to kill each other in endless petty squabbles over chunks of land and trade rights. It's idiotic. Let's kill each other for tactical advantage based on what flag is flying over the dirt we are born on. Let's attack each other in bar fights for disrespecting each other's mighty empires of pointlessness. But in reality, is it truly pride in our patch of ground that motivates us to fight? Or is it all the money and the nice things it can bring us? We like money- even more so, we like having A LOT of money. We can care for ourselves and our own that way, right? We can buy them lots of things. We might delude ourselves into thinking that we can buy happiness and safety. Yeah, right. How is that working out for us?
"This planet has [...] a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."
-Douglas Adams
So now we have established what I think is the problem- which is the biggest step in considering the solution. How to get rid of countries then? That is a thoroughly tricky question. We all love them so much. They are so very established in our society, in our minds - in some way in our nature. It might be very stupid but we need that bubble so much. So I say, make the bubble bigger. Like, atmospheric size.
We need to stop thinking of ourselves in restricting terms. Race, location, religion, it all needs to become incidental to us like the color of our eyes. We need to think of ourselves as Human- not American or whatever else you happen to be.
Ahh, our beautiful blue marble.
We need to stop thinking of ourselves in restricting terms. Race, location, religion, it all needs to become incidental to us like the color of our eyes. We need to think of ourselves as Human- not American or whatever else you happen to be.
Unfortunately that's never going to happen freely. We will never give up our ties and ideas alone. We need there to be an Other. Peace won't come until the Other is somebody else. We need a common enemy or a common task to preform. Something that our survival as a race depends on. That is the only way that we will be able to think of ourselves as the same.
Eww.... Probes. No thank you!
So what now? Do we have to wait around for the aliens to attack so that we can have world peace and shared prosperity? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps the better answer is a common task. It might even be underway now. If we can advance technology far enough and fast enough, we might get to peace on our own. They say the world is shrinking and it's true. We can send about 50 different kinds of messages instantly across the globe, spreading ideas and making friends thousands of miles away- all from our nifty hand held devices. If our technology progresses far enough, it might eliminate want from our lives. Already we have three dimensional printers that can create essentially anything. How long before we have a printer in our house that can create anything we'd like? Food, clothes, jewels.... where is the value in these things anymore when every one has them ad infinitum? What will the benefit of war be when our economies and governments are so bound up together that damaging the infrastructure of one damages all? What will the point of separate government be when conflict comes to an end- when our interests are Earth's interests?
Is this what our gateway to Utopia will look like? Its this the vanguard of peace? Maybe. Maybe.
Hi Sarah,
ReplyDeleteThat was a very entertaining read! I do have one small question, however: are you proposing we have one global nation under Thog's distant descendant, or no nations whatsoever, a la John Lennon's song?
http://youtu.be/yRhq-yO1KN8
If the latter, how far is too far in identifying ourselves in a group? Is familial relations big enough, or do you envision a broader category?
Why are ties to country and families so bad? I believe that those ties are what make some people happy. They use those ties to identify themselves and to create their lives. However, I do understand that sometimes those ties get to be too strong and people turn against each other to "protect" them. I do like the point of getting people outside their comfort zones and creating new ties.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe humanity will ever reach a point in its growth were government and law will be unnecessary. We are too flawed and too passionate for that. But a global government that represents the interests of the world as a whole would end almost all conflict. When bound together by a common law, common economics and common interest no one would start conflicts because they would hurt their own interests along with everyone else's. With peace, we can focus on all the other things important to Utopian living- the gathering of knowledge, the nurturing of the arts and so on. We can turn our technological advances away from war and towards increasing the global quality of life.
ReplyDeleteFamily isn't bad. It wasn't my intention to claim that it is. We need that feeling of intimacy and togetherness. I just don't think we should exclude large groups of people from that feeling of unity based on their geographical location or any other reason. In my mind, there is never reason enough to start war- I just wish this were true of everyone.
If you are referring to the Barney joke, the shudder was in response to the song being stuck in my head as I wrote this >.<
ReplyDeleteWhile it would be nice if we could remove national boundaries, I think they are a necessary evil. We're all so indoctrinated with jingoism, it's almost impossible to get us to think as citizens of the world instead of citizens of ____.
ReplyDeleteWe could just start training the next generation to think differently, but out country currently has an attitude which is perfectly captured in the meme you posted, so I don't know if that could happen anytime soon.
I think technology could bring us closer (if we could find a way to get it to stop tearing us apart). As for what you say about the printer that can make anything, scientists are already looking into that: http://science.howstuffworks.com/nanotechnology.htm
A unified world government, while it's an interesting idea, may not represent the interests of everyone. Look at our country: we have many interests, and someone always gets the "short end of the stick" despite our being linked together.
Wouldn't a unified government also be a little dangerous, too? Who's to stop Big Brother from coming to power?
There are obviously still substantial problems with a global government. It might be cheesy, but I buy in to a weird combination of Grecian government and the star wars republic system XD
ReplyDeleteGrecian government dictated that large areas, what we would now call counties were self governing to a limited degree, dealing with the daily needs and smaller concerns of their people; such as the quality of the roads, local codes ect, and to prevent corruption every citizen spent a mandatory period of time in a local political office for about a year. It would then switch off to someone else- preventing any long term plans in favor of one person or group of people. The problem with this of course is that in our current state many people might be quite inept at their jobs; so education would have to be extended to greater understanding of political science instead merely learning the shape of government that we currently live under.
As to the larger government, I am in favor of the parliamentary system. People vote to choose their representative on a small scale and their leader on a large one. The leader himself would have very little power, and serve almost entirely as a mediator between a global senate. His power would be extremely chained, like the monarch of England currently.
Of course there is not a hope of my ideal being implemented any time in the near future. Loyalty to a flag and a so called set of ideals is too deeply rooted into cultures around the world, not just in America although we might have one of the worst cases. That's why I acknowledge that a huge paradigm shift is needed: Like an alien invasion or a massive leap forward in technology and economic relations.
I found your post very interesting. I agree with most of what you said about groups and their perception and enmity with "the other" being the problem. I even agree with you that having an outsider such as an alien attack or visit us might well be the best way to unite humanity.
ReplyDeleteHowever I'm skeptical of science being able to do so. Even if science could accomplish things such as 3d printers, they were free, the could supply humanity with unlimited objects as vast and varied as can be imagined...
I still don't believe that would solve the problems of groups and "the other". Physical objects only have so much power of humanity. Many serve not even for the purpose but simply as a symbol of power(whether that power is economic, political, caste, or whatever)
People have a desire to prove themselves, challenge others, improve the lives of their own, over those of them around them.
I feel like you over estimate humanity somewhat. Even as you describe it in a intertwined economic system those who feel screwed by the system and those who feel like they can gain more power by destroying the system will inevitably attempt to bring it down, even if by doing so they hurt the majority of humanity.
Ultimately I feel the problem lies in the fact that humanity is not content with just survival. We have more desires than that and those desires are limitless.
Sorry if this is overly critical. I do agree with your identification of the problem I'm just skeptical of any solution to it that wouldn't involve vast changes to human nature as a whole (whether from scientific alterations or evolving change over time)
Ha! I am usually accused of not giving humanity enough credit because I don't believe giving your best buddy a big hug every day does anything at all to make the world better. Your criticism is quite refreshing :)
ReplyDeleteI believe just that: Scientific advances and unified government are not going to be enough to come close to fixing the problem. But I think that it is an important step. With our wants and needs met, humanity would be able to turn to other matters. We have to be engaged, occupied. If none of us are required to work, we turn to the arts, philosophy and self improvement. That immense paradigm shift could well be enough to begin the evolution that you describe.