Utopia for our Children

[Tao_Equus]

I dont have much time at moment but as a result of a post on another thread I wish to explore how to build a utopian society. What laws would we need. What national boundaries, if any, and recognition. What social standards and respect for peoples would be required. How would education effect its potential. ?????

Only one precondition!! No religion!! All ideas must function completely independently of faith.

Tao

[Snoopy]

Utopian. Now there's a word.

Does a utopia need laws? When laws are broken we call these crimes, the perpetrators criminals. What happens to criminals in a utopia?

Are we retricting this to atheist societies? Depending on what you mean by "religion" I think this would arise naturally in any society so I think the precondition might be a difficult one.

s.

[wil]

oh anarchy chaos already in our utopia....

and rules....no religion...first law is to outlaw faith....

respect required....how enforced??

Where do we go from here? Which is the way that is clear? Still lookin for...

Utopia...

Could their even be a thread that was developed on brainstorming principles....first only ideas of utopia and then we'll weed it out and discuss...

if not...how could we ever hope for utopia...

what you don't have much time for utopia...me neither.

[flowperson]

I used to "listen" to Utopia with Todd Rundgren in the 70's. Does that count in this discussion ?

And wil, I am assuming that blame will be excluded from our utopian society of the future. Just think of that...no lawyers ! No news media talking heads !

Sounds like the mid-19th century all over again when utopian efforts were established around America by disgruntled citizens such as we. Fourierists, Harmonists, Shakers, Oneida Community, etc. Most of these communities didn't survive into the 20th century. But they left some neat historical buildings to visit on weekend getaways.

And Snoopy...no laws would be necessary when on-call pre-frontal lobotomies are made freely available to all.
flow....

[China Cat Sunflower]

"Hello it's me. I thought about us for a long, long time."

Yeah, I just want to bang on the drum all day too.

I think Utopias are do-able, but they have to be small like a micro culture. Like minded individuals and families, though, can easily band together and have a nice utopian community. And people are actually doing it all over if you take a closer look. All you'd need would be a couple of families with some land. I don't think I'd ban religion, but ideology needs to be tempered with a heavy dose of practicality. Does it have to be the ultimate in ideologically pure utopianism, or would a close facsimile be OK? We need gardeners and artisans, and some artists but not too many.

Chris

[flowperson]

Hi Chris...I agree with you up to a point. We all still must live in some sort of nation-state arrangement in today's world, unless you could get Warren Buffet or someboydy to buy you an unclaimed island somewhere. But I'll bet even those don't exist anymore these days, and when there is a national governing structure, there are laws to be adhered to. There may be a few 60's era communes back in the hills somewhere, but they usually go bad somehow like the guys behind the Oklahome City bombing and the Waco fiasco.

Some of the groups I mentioned had the same sort of parameters that you cite, but they didn't last as the society around them became more complex over time, and the next generations mixed with the "outside" world. We had a contemporary case in the news here not too long ago.

A fundamentalist Mormon denomination separate from the LDS Church in Salt Lake has had several active communities in S.Utah and N. Arizona for sometime now. These are the people that allow and encourage multiple wife marriages and such things as that which are illegal under the law. The men of the community do construction and remodeling work in the Las Vegas valley and take/send the income to their extended families up north.

Well, Warren Jeffs was pulled over on I-15 last year, and the authorities tried him on rape charges because, as the head of the denomination, he was promoting and mandating the marriage of teen aged girls, down to age 12, to older men in accordance with the groups' beliefs. He was looked upon by his flock as the supreme authority. Now the supreme authority is looking at lots of years in the slammer.

flow....

[wil]

We called'em communes...today they are intentional communities, co-ops and other modern names...but they operate the same...some sort of problem solving process, some sort of combined thought...religion, earth, green, etc., some sort of combined space, shared meals, shared work etc. Many work with folks going outside for income, some are self sufficient....thousands of them...some in cities...

[Tao_Equus]

........................I'm still thinking.

[flowperson]

Careful Tao...over here if you think too much you are labeled an "extremist", and if that isn't sufficient to kill your curiosity, well then you're automatically labeled "terrorist" by some. But me...I think that you should just keep on...thinking .

flow....

[Tao_Equus]

Thanks for your encouragement Flow

I am less inclined than some here (duh!) to believe that religion has to be a part of humanities collective inheritance. Though of course it will be because the breadth and strength of social conditioning is such that mankind is not going to go down that route. But I do not believe it is because mankind to be incapable of living in a world of realism where he and he alone is responsible and answerable for his actions, nor because he cannot cope with the psychological fact that life is restricted to life and there is no ever after. One thing mankind does really well is adapt to change.

If a huge great planet sized spaceship parked itself by us and its occupants gave us all their billion years of science to prove there was no God, made it so clear and incontrovertible to us that there was no denying that all religion was as a result of psychological yearning and political manipulation then religion would become a loony fringe. So why wait? Our own science can already determine that all so called religious works are works of man not God. "But they are divinely inspired" I hear someone shout from the 3rd row. Well so are the murders of how many psychopaths? If this is the best we can do to support an otherwise unsubstantiated claim surely it is time to abandon it altogether.

But the purpose of this thread is not to perform an atheistic rant. As I was kindly asked by Chris (on the "stupidity" thread over on Belief and Spirituality) to provide a model for how a society would work without religion, I started this thread to that aim. It does seem impossible today to create a religion free society and to be honest I do not exclude religion from existing in where I am going with this. Only that it has no cultural/political significance in a future model of an international Utopia. It should be laws free from religious persuasion that govern humanity. So in stating any ideas I will endeavour, and hope others do too, to make all ideas completely independent of any religion.

I am still working on the framework and principles so am not yet ready to post my ideas but please feel free to chime in with any comments and ideas of your own, (yeh you guessed it....I need help!!).

Tao

[cyberpi]

One person's utopia is another person's hell.

[wil]

Originally Posted by cyberpi

One person's utopia is another person's hell.

Then we'll just have to have multutopias then.

Reminds me of the story about the guy leaving one utopia and headed down the road...he encounters another walking...

Hey there...how are things in the next utopia?

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by cyberpi

One person's utopia is another person's hell.

You are right and perhaps I should have chosen another word than Utopia. But saying how do we make a global law that respects everybody's rights, eradicates poverty, injustice, racism, war etc etc etc...well thats just a bit of a mouthful for a thread heading. So do you think you could get into the spirit of what I am trying to say or do you just want to flood utopia too?

Tao

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by cyberpi

One person's utopia is another person's hell.

Bugger me, I was going to say that. Only in the spirit of avoiding religion I was going to use the word "dystopia."

s.

[wil]

imo despite what the masses think all religions at their root are designed to establish exactly what you are discussing....a set of rules and laws to maintain society in an orderly manner...and yes answer those questions of why are we here and how did we get here...

So for your questions about rules, regulations, I suggest that you don't just toss the baby out with the bath water...much of what is in the texts of various religions are great jumping off points for creating same.

I think I've pointed to my buddies vision previously....it also has some jumping off points...http://teaminfinity.com/ he believes the time of recreation, re-creation is upon us...a laborless robotic economy is around the corner...his eight pillars...currently

• Computer Mediated Communication and memetic technology to convert disabling, limiting notions to true win-win thought, i.e. no more lies to control the masses.
• No more lies will allow us to utilize everyone's full "eyes-wide-open" potential versus the waste of talent under current lie based de-humanizing system
• Space Colonization and Commercialization
• Allow the Earth to overgrow with vegetation and animals, moving dangerous, polluting industries into space
• Robotics and A/I to do ALL "work" humans currently do, freeing humans to "work" on personal physical, mental and spiritual health
• GeoThermal Energy, with no more "artificial middle man"
• Nanotechnology, genomics, biotechnology, Bioinformatics
• Decouple Humans from Machinery of Economy via their elevation above the "consumption <-> production"cycle currently implemented via "money", in its current sense.