this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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What does an ideal world look like to you? (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Instead of focusing too much on all of the things that are currently wrong, could you please help paint a picture of what a future utopian society could look like?

My vision is heavily inspired by Terence McKenna. I imagine a world as it might have existed during prehistoric times. Lush forests teeming with exotic wildlife, clean air, and crystal clear water. No highways full of billboards, no parking lots, no shopping malls, and no cars. Just safe grounds and paths for humans embedded deep within all of this nature.

At a birds-eye view, it may look as if humanity has completely abandoned technology and regressed back into its childhood. Yet if you were to look out through the eyes of one of these utopian people, you would see the most wonderful augmented reality display.

Information, communication, entertainment, education, global economies… almost everything has been de-materialized. Humanity’s ceaseless pursuit of technology has been mostly divorced from our physical environment and mother earth is bustling with life again.

The only technologies that remain in the real world are those that help all of us live happy and healthy lives (modern medicine, delicious food, solar power, etc) all the while the shared virtual reality in our eyes is limited only by our collective imaginations.

We are finally living in accord with nature without having to forsake our innate desire for knowledge and progress.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I'm deeply skeptical of any and all utopian ideas. They have this mysterious tendency to wander down paths to authoritarianism because we, as a species, are more defined by our ideas of who and what we are than by anything else in our existence.

When an idea becomes an ideal, people become willing to kill or die in attempts to bring that ideal to fruition, no matter how vain.

In fact, this is how I self-edit my own beliefs about the world and myself. "If the cards were all really on the table, would I be willing to proudly die in defense of this idea?" If the answer is yes, then I cling to that as an ideal that I strive toward.

All human lives matter equally.
It is important to lift up those who have less than I do.
Any small effort to alleviate the suffering of my fellow humans is meaningful.
There is always hope.

That is the utopia I choose to live in deliberately every day, and what I appreciate most is that it is resilient to the whims and chaos of this world that I can't control.