The Utopian World Championship

Seth Nowak: Bold New Worldwide Meta-Cooperation Systems and Patterns

Summary: show/hide

Summary

Summary

Seth Nowak
Wisconsin, USA

Definition of Utopia

There are five components needed for Utopia.

1. Global Scope, or Substantial Scope
Our planet is comprised of interdependent systems and patterns of events. A utopian village, metropolis, or even a utopian nation would not be sufficiently utopian surrounded by environmental problems, wars and suffering everywhere else.

2. No Impending Doom, or Less-Impending Doom
Even if land wars ceased, the hungry were fed, and the homeless were housed it would still not be utopia because we are living with multiple threats to the sustainability of life on earth.

3. Sustainable Patterns of Improvement and Mitigation
There is much good in the world, and much evil. For utopia to have truly been made manifest there will need to be something more than "more good and less bad, more pleasure and less pain". That element is the presence of major trends in the right directions that have some permanence.

4. Contradiction and Paradox
Utopia will not be tidy, symmetrical, or achieved by unanimous vote of all sentient beings. More frequent experience of pleasure may be viewed as sinful in the views of many people. An increase in wealth may mean more inequality.

5. Fun
Utopia will be extremely enjoyable.

Processes of Causing Utopia

It is axiomatic that individuals can succeed and achieve goals far, far beyond their expectations and circumstances. This is "exponentially true" when considering the potential of groups of people, and all the more so of "Groups of Groups" of people. The development of enhanced group skills such as problem solving, dispute resolution, and planning is an important part of causing utopia. Trained, coordinated groups-of-groups can literally create meaning, culture, language, and economic markets. All of this is in the context of a world that has been developing technologies and opportunities inconceivably faster than our most advanced understandings and concepts of it.

There are many chances to make utopia a reality. These chances mean nothing without initiative and understanding of implementation, resources allocated toward these very large shifts, and many campaigns and efforts on the parts of many people. We need to write business plan to get to utopia.

Out of the overwhelming complexity, simple ideas for action emerge on which we can rely with the utmost confidence.

Previous page | Next page | Page: 2 of 14 |
Jump to page:

Page 2

II. Loose Definition of Utopia

At this moment in development, there are five primary components needed for Utopia.

It is worldwide, sustainable, much better, inconceivable yet verifiable, and fun.

Global Scope, or Substantial Scope

Our planet is comprised of interdependent systems and patterns of events. A utopian village, metropolis, or even a utopian nation would not be sufficiently utopian surrounded by environmental problems, wars and suffering most everywhere else. A micro-utopia in a macro-distopia may provide a model for hope, but only that. The boundaries of utopia may not be limited to the planet Earth or even our solar system, but they certainly should not be substantially smaller than the Earth. The biosphere is a quite natural frontier for utopia.

No Impending Doom, or Less-Impending Doom

Even if land wars ceased, the hungry were fed, and the homeless were housed it would still not be utopia because we are living with multiple threats to the sustainability of life on earth. Nuclear weapons proliferation and global climate change are examples. There may be others that we do not know of that we should be on the lookout for. An "only temporary" utopia overshadowed by the expectation of end of the world would fail the test.

Sustainable Patterns of Improvement and Mitigation

For utopia to have truly been made manifest there will need to be something more than "more good and less bad, more pleasure and less pain". That element is the presence of major trends in the right directions that have some degree of permanence. A fleeting moment of utopia is not sufficient. Robust ongoing waves of change are needed.

If we assembled a brainstorming group representative of hundreds of cultures and philosophies, we could quickly draw up two lists. One would be of bad things we want to mitigate or eliminate and the other would be of good things we want to expand, enhance, or reproduce. The group would find many areas of agreement in a short time on which to focus our efforts. War, pollution, famine, torture, drug addiction, automobile accidents, rape, oppression, racism, sexism, and homophobia come to mind as an initial and unevaluated list of bad things. An organized group could, in one session, probably come up with a few hundred well-defined evils to work on stamping out.
In short order a Good List could also be written up. Civil societies, fair economies, art, beauty, bio-diversity, love of learning, cross-cultural understanding, you name it and put it on the list.

Previous page | Next page