Once again I violate my embargo for a Burning Zeppelin topic. You should start a journal or a blog, so that I can interact with you someplace else.
* What is your Utopia like?
* What would need to be altered to achieve it?
* Is your Utopia good for everyone equally, or just you?
* Is it possible to achieve in this world?
I spent a good deal of creative energy over the years rassling with the question of paradise. My thought is that paradise derives from one’s state of mind more so than from any physical place. In fact I define it in terms of human experience:
Paradise is to be able to say of one’s own life, “I could not have asked for better.”
Just so I make myself clear: Paradise must satisfy our creature comforts, but it must also leave room for our restless urges. For human beings to be happy, we must have adversity in our lives, and we must be able to conceive of ways to triumph over that adversity. True satisfaction mustn’t simply pamper the body. It must delight the mind, too.
Therefore: What paradise is
not is a land of undiminished luxuries. What paradise is
not is a state of continuing happiness. Luxury alone does not placate the mighty human mind, and happiness is hardly the limit of our emotional power—for no single emotion, even if applied constantly, can make up for the permanent absence of all the others.
Of course, the prospect of a paradise that is even briefly devoid of luxuries and happiness raises some interesting questions about the nature of satisfaction, which I leave for another time, while the notion of what exactly some of us might get in our heads to ask for before reaching the point of “I could not have asked for better” raises the possibility that, in a world of finite resources and time—not to mention the sometimes contradictory human mind—not everyone can achieve paradise…for not all of our desires can be realized.
As these desires change with time, along with our judgments as to what is satisfying, so too does the condition of paradise. This is consistent with the idea that paradise depends heavily on one’s state of mind, and is not tied to any specific material situation.
By subordinating the condition of paradise to the subjective judgment of a single human mind, it deserves mention that one person’s paradise is not necessarily another’s. That brings us to the larger issue of Utopia, a society where everybody lives in a state of paradise.
At first it might seem that a utopia would be impossible to build, because of the problem of contradictory paradises. For instance, my paradise would have no Christianity or Islam in it. However, the problem is not quite that intractable. From a societal perspective, people can be changed. In particular, they can be formed, shaped, from a young age, so that some desires never arise. A utopia in this generation would be impossible, but the next generation is full of potential—as children always are. To go with my religious example, if parents were not to teach their kids about the mighty skygod, and instead gave them an education that emphasizes critical thought, free of faith-based interruptions, then religion would be reduced to the fringes of society and many of the problems that come with it would simply disappear.
My thinking is that a utopia must be preceded by three social pillars:
1) Education
2) Liberty
3) Justice
And then a fourth pillar, separate but just as important:
4) Environmental stewardship
Which speaks for itself.
Education will help to direct all human passion into the arts and sciences, and away from the social games that have plagued our civilization since its inception. Liberty gives us the means to carry out our passions. Justice protects us from the undue influence of others. With all three pillars in place, we shall have educated citizens who are free to pursue their enlightened interests in peace, on a lush and vibrant world.
In this way, the work of building Utopia is the work of getting humanity to a point in its evolution where many of history’s longstanding ills, and their enablers, are gone. Utopia, like Rome, will not be built in a day, and construction may never be entirely finished. But it is a goal worthy of our pursuit.
How can society be tinkered with to produce and ideal setting? How can the human condition be manipulated to bring about the end of destructive passions? I don’t have those answers—or, rather, the answers I do have are so long and complicated that I wouldn’t dare write them down here, and in any case they are a work in progress. In fact, they are the basis of my Imperial model. Needless to say, the work of building a golden civilization is neither simple nor swift.
So it is that most of us are closer to paradise than we know, while Utopia is distant as it seems. What we should do is work toward satisfaction in our own lives, using these considerations as the basis for intelligently advocating key social progress. The good news is that, as a utopia flourishes, paradise for all of us becomes that much easier, because in a greater society we are all given better opportunities right from the beginning.
Or, as ZeaLitY put it, “Paradise is just four pips away.”
