Remember when Jesus said, “Utopia is impossible! Don’t even try!” Whenever someone says let’s make society better someone always pops up and says, “Utopia is a fantasy.”
The TLDR:
Utopia is possible because we already have natural Utopias and we already have made man-made Utopias. There are archaic reasons why people argue against it that are no longer valid. It’s affordable and in reach and to make it happen we need to prioritize it above other goals in cities, states and countries.
What is Utopia?
Utopia has come to mean the idea of paradise. It is a place mentioned in the eponymous book Utopia by Thomas Paine. It is a play on words that at the time meant everywhere and no where at once.
In this society in the book, Paine describes society as a place where people are happy or content and fair as possible. Everyone has freedom, opportunity and time to enjoy life. A summary of Utopia is here.
Presently, Utopia has come to mean a fair paradise like society. Like other works it is partially based on the Garden of Eden mentioned in the Bible:
John Milton, a 17th-century English poet, is known for his poem Paradise Lost, based on the Genesis account of Adam’s sin and expulsion from Eden. In it he highlighted the promised restoration of everlasting life on earth for humans, declaring: “For then the earth shall all be paradise.”
In the original story in Genesis when man was created he was given an Earthly paradise and a heavenly paradise. This was access to nature and the fruits of nature and access to the heavens. It was communion with the universe. Man had a commons and relationship with nature and the spiritual world.
According the Bible, the purpose of man was not to work but to enjoy life. No matter what your religious beliefs that sounds like a good and fair idea for everyone.
Of course things went wrong and man lost access to nature and their creator. Man was in sin debt, and could not access paradise because of it.
According to the biblical “New Deal”, Jesus restored what was lost. We no longer had to toil away endlessly and meaninglessly. That is, Jesus restored the natural commons and access to the spiritual world.
By restoring the commons we are able to restore the soul. One might say, it is through seeing and being in nature that we find that access to spiritual paradise.
How many times have you seen the stars and felt a connection? Or when you’ve seen the ocean and felt the universe? Or visit a waterfall or some other natural wonder and been inspired. Even seeing photos invokes something more. But that’s not all of the story.
When people say, “Utopia isn’t possible” they are saying, “it’s not possible to include you. You’re excluded.” Often they already have it. If it wasn’t possible they wouldn’t say, “work your way up the ladder.” Up the ladder to what? They wouldn’t improve their skill set and network and make connections.
There are beautiful places all over the world — available to those that live in those places or have the money to travel to them.
Utopias already exist!
People will say, “Utopia is impossible” and then drive home to a gated community with perfectly manicured landscapes, lake in the center with a fountain, pool in the backyard, hot tubs, 5 bedroom granite fill home with any food you want or can cook or order.
Have you seen these places? I have.
People have already created heaven on Earth but they don’t want you to know about it or have access to it.
Why?
- Classism — the people believe what their class believes like there are positions in life like royalty and peasants
- Elitism — this is a group of people who believe they are better than others and that they deserve everything good and people who are not good enough deserve nothing
- Insecurity — these are people who believe having more things makes them better than those who have less
- Ignorance — they think if someone else gets something that it costs them personally. it’s zero sum thinking
- Racism — the conflict that conflicted from slavery or war over resources created a set of emotions that influence people sharing with others not like them
- Envy, Jealously, human evolutionary flaws — scarcity mindset that says resources are scarce and not abundant so you must hoard things and not share
- Societal flaws and shortcomings — man has made 1000s of different types of societies. As with every thing there are good parts and bad parts. Pros and cons. What we have now works for people with money but for everyone else they bear the cost. (see Metropolis the 1927 film)
In the past the US had a money system based on the gold standard. That meant that you could exchange money and gold. You couldn’t create money because if you did someone could buy gold supposedly and there was nothing backing it.
Then the US switched to fiat currency. That is you print money or type money into a computer. It’s created by political will. You have some general set of rules but it’s created out of thin air.
That’s what the stimulus packages and the regular corporate “bail outs” are about. The US creates whatever money it needs. There are reasons why you don’t want to create money whenever you want but it doesn’t matter.
The point is, it’s not about money.
People think that there are fixed amount of money and that if you do something for someone else that you are paying for it. You aren’t. That’s zero sum thinking. That’s the Tax Payer Money Myth. Your taxes don’t make things work. Not on the national level. Maybe a bit on the local level.
If you have land (Earth) you have resources (raw materials — food, water).
You can have a subsistence economy. That’s what Hawaii did. People in the beaches traded with people in the hills. There wasn’t a money system.
We already have plenty of man made Utopias here and there and natural Utopias.
People don’t object to those for some reason.
What they object to is when you say let’s make a utopia -that includes everyone. That includes your neighbor.
“But if you create a Utopia it will not be fair to the people who didn’t have a Utopia!”
“If you make the trolly not run over people in the future it’s unfair to the people it has already run over!”
You right now are benefiting from the work of people that came before you. You have some things better now than people in the past had and people in the future will have some things better than you have now. That’s a good thing.
People in the future may not have to go through some of the horrible things you did just like you didn’t have to go through some of the horrible things your ancestors did.
There are a few things people are afraid of when you say let’s make a better world for everyone:
- Fixed payment no matter what you do. You pick a job and your neighbor picks a job and you are both paid the same. There’s no upward mobility. No wealth creation. You have to go to work and there isn’t a way to be free of work. This is what some people fear. Although, people from those places have said they life was better before they were converted to capitalism.
- They also think that if Utopia happens they won’t have any personal property. That they won’t have their own space of their own. This is the same as the American Dream. That you’ll have your own place. The promised land is the idea that you will one day have a place to call your own.
- They also think if you free people of work (in their mind no one works in utopia because why would they?) then they themselves will have to do work or that no one will work and then society will collapse.
- They think why should someone get something for free while they had to work for it. That’s not fair in their mind. They usually tend to ignore the privileges they have had in their own life and that they are getting things for free that others have to work for.
These are all man made limited thinking. They are all false and aren’t part of making a better world.
When Polynesians first arrived on Hawaii they quickly found that the island could not sustain everyone if they didn’t do a little bit of planning.
After some discussion they created a subsistence economy. They had no need of money. Yet they were rich. Yet they had a paradise. Yet they had what they needed and led fruitful lives.
It doesn’t cost money to create a paradise. Just planning.
In the US we have social programs like Medicare for people who don’t have health insurance. But it’s conditional. Only if you meet certain conditions do you receive it. It excludes many people who need it because of man made racist, sexist and classist biases. It’s withdrawn if you try to better yourself.
We have Food Stamps programs for people who don’t have the money for food. But it’s conditional. Only if you meet certain conditions do you receive it. It excludes many people who need it because of man made racist, sexist and classist biases. It’s withdrawn if you try to better yourself.
We have Housing programs for people who don’t have the money for housing. But it’s conditional. Only if you meet certain conditions do you receive it. It excludes many people who need it because of man made racist, sexist and classist biases. It’s withdrawn if you try to better yourself.
We have a Basic Income programs for some people but it’s conditional. Only if you meet certain conditions do you receive it. Only if you are over a certain age do you receive it or if you have a qualifying disability. It excludes many people who need it because of man made racist, sexist and classist biases. It’s withdrawn if you try to better yourself.
The system of government we are in has many man made flaws. It is broken in many places and it’s rigged in many places. This is not me saying this. It’s people in government who say this. The people in government right now and in the past have literally said, “This is messed up. This is broken. This is racist. this is sexist. This is unfair. This cruel. This is callous.” They have said it. They have said we need something better. Note: they recognized the problem.
We are aware of things now that we used to not be aware of.
We know now, as we’ve grown, as we’ve learned, as we’ve experienced more of life that there are some things that were done in ignorance, somethings that were done out of primal fear of the other, out of lack of understanding of the way of life.
We can say now, hey, what if, instead of using squares underneath our carriages we use round wheels?
Hey that’s an improvement. That’s an upgrade. We all enjoy technological progress. Why do people repeat what wealthy people on the news say?
The old systems, that were created by minimally educated people and often slave owners, might have worked for a while but they no longer work in a globally connected world.
With globalism, outsourcing and automation work is not a reliable solution for anything.
How hard is it to do?
Not hard at all.
Remove conditionality.
Take all of the existing programs and make it “…for all”.
Take Medicare and expand it to all.
Take Food Stamps and expand it to all.
Take Housing assistance and expand it to all.
Take Social Security and expand it to all.
People have no right to choose who lives or who dies, who gets medicine and who doesn’t, who gets housing and who doesn’t. But that’s what we do now all over the world. We have conditionality. We have eugenics. We have wage slavery.
We already have Utopias. We already know how to create them. We already have programs setup ready to go to make it happen.
Part of the problem is we have two visions. One is the constitutional one based in solidarity, “We the people form a union… to promote the general welfare. United we stand and divided we fall.”
In other words, to make a better world for all of the people.
But at the same time you have corporate vision “To make profit at all costs in as short a term as possible.” Why? Because of the first problem. Because we exclude people from life without money.
When you have two visions at the same time you have “division”. The word division comes from the words “di” and “vision” where “di” means “two”. If you have two visions at the same time you have division. You’re splitting the resources, you’re splitting the goals, you’re causing fighting, you’re causing tension and strife.
Your vision cannot come at the cost of life. Have one prioritized vision, of making the goal, Heaven like existence on Earth or a Utopia or a General Welfare and Wellbeing or a land free of want and fear.
Doing that is about saying,
“I have no right to choose who lives or dies. It’s not up to me.
I can choose to exclude other people from my own life but I cannot chose to exclude people from life itself. They have as much right to exist as I do. They have as much right to nature as I do whether they have money or not, whether I like them or their life style or not.
All life is valuable whether I ever meet this life or not or whether it meets me or not.
Whether I can help make more Utopias or not the least I can do is be supportive and an ally to those trying to.”
