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: 4 of 14 |
Jump to page:

Page 4

Population Growth Rates in Mexico.

I have intentionally omitted many specific examples in this paper because we have not had utopia before. Examples sometimes obscure the ideas they are meant to illustrate. There is one that might be helpful here. This is because I’m writing about an illogical abstract idea in a possible world and claiming that it is valuable, possible, and actionable. But it is not farfetched at all.

The historical facts are approximate, yet they are robust enough for demonstration purposes.

For decades during the twentieth century, population growth rates in Mexico were too high and not sustainable. Mexico is predominantly a Catholic country. Approximately ninety percent of the population is Catholic. The government is a federal republic and is more democratic than many nations in the world, and many legislators and executives are Catholic.

The federal government implemented a massive nationwide population control program including free or reduced cost birth control pills, surgery, condoms, and methods that many would see as being against the teachings of the Church. This was sustained for many years.

The program has been very successful. Population growth is far, far lower than it had been. There are still adverse social impacts due to overpopulation such as economic and employment issues and crowding, chaos, and air pollution in Mexico City. This implies how bad things might have been if there had been less success or no success in reducing the rate of population growth.

This was an excellent choice for the country and captures several of the aspects of utopia. The decision slowed the onset of doom, alleviated severe social and economic problems, and at the level of analysis we are at, simply made no sense! Mexicans are not hypocrites or unfaithful people much more or less than anyone else in the world, and in this respect we should take this as a model of how to move forward toward utopia.

More clarification is in order. To make a much better world we should NOT simply ignore our values and faiths when it is convenient and let authoritarian government bureaucrats implement programs that are bound to work from a scientific standpoint. There will in many instances be essentially inevitable tradeoffs to be chosen that are subject to varying interpretations from all over the ideological and theological spectra. There will be contradiction and paradoxes that may remain unresolved as we build the world into a more sustainable, better, happier place. Some of them may appear to be, or actually be, overwhelmed by an apparently secular approach to the issues, but it does not ultimately mean anything.

Previous page | Next page