My Vision
What is utopia, is it even possible in this world environment? What is practically possible?
It is very important for everyone to understand this is not necessarily a perfect state where-in everyone is free from all problems, their every desire is met and they live forever in perfect health. Maybe this is a desirable goal, but in my experience is totally unrealistic and perhaps not even in the end desirable.
Instead I am proposing seeking to optimize the well being of all our society’s inhabitants amidst all the competing components of our environment.
What is a best available situation? I think it is a society where-in each individual can genuinely say to themselves I have lived a life worth living. I am happy and satisfied where I am at.
This is a dangerous world we live in and there are forces all around us that can challenge and even destroy us. We will never be able to make ourselves perfectly safe.
In our Western Society we have demonized death to the extent that we try to avoid talking about it and keeping it out of sight. Death is part of life and we need to over come our fear of it. I am not trying to say that death is a wonderful thing, but we need to get beyond our fear. Fear keeps us in bondage and we can only truly be free when we can confront our fears and live beyond them.
Values and Beliefs
The most consequential part of this journey towards a better society lies in the values and beliefs of its inhabitants.
I will discuss this more thoroughly in a book I am presently writing, but I want to mention here that values and beliefs do not appear out of thin air. For them to truly become part of who we are we need to gain them through experience. It is one thing to have an intellectual understanding of something and quite another to have it realized at a gut level through experience.
Our youth cannot be shielded from experiencing life. Like all of us they need to be tested through experience. I see this demonstrated by the Jehovah’s witnesses when they force their young to go from door to door and hand out pamphlets or the Mormons when they have their youth go on a year’s pilgrimage. Also, in some indigenous societies the youth have to go for a spiritual search into the wilderness. They have to face their fears and get past them. In the case of the indigenous spiritual quest this can be down right dangerous. Being a better person is more important then just living a long life. We need a reason to exist. I am not advocating any one path, but more importantly that each of us needs to be tested and to overcome. How else can we have a life worth living?
People do not have a respect for things just given to them. I am from the school of “if you give someone something for nothing, you make them good for nothing”.
I admit that I am no perfect example of a citizen in a perfect society, but I can say, after having lived a long life that I have truly been blessed. It is my hope that everyone, in as perfect a society that we might create, can genuinely say the same.
