Toward Utopia
If the populace is enlightened en masse, it does not matter one bit what kind of socioeconomic arrangement there is. With most people knowing the true nature of reality, even the invisible hand of Adam Smith would be touching the markets at just the right spots in just the right way, exactly as he speculated.
In fact, I suspect that he somehow intuited all participants of the game to be enlightened to begin with because the absolute rationality of self-interest he envisioned is not achievable without it — before one knows the absolute, all actions, even the so-called altruistic ones, exhibit signs of shortsighted egoism that compromises one’s absolute self-interest. Quite a conundrum.
Then again, a fully self-realized society would certainly settle for a less contrived mode of social interaction than the blatantly inefficient transactional one which evolved into what we, in this day and age, call capitalism.
Similarly, it would not matter one bit, if a society of self-realized knowers of God would decentralized itself or formed a hierarchy, kingdom even. After all, some tasks are more efficient with clear top down structure, and some are even quite literally impossible to accomplish without it. Moreover, no one begrudges other’s individual propensities among equals. Everyone accepts that some simply like to organize (or contribute to propitious conditions in other ways) while some like to discover, craft, etc.
Therefore, a cold chill runs up my spine every time an ignorant believer starts to talk about establishing some sort of utopia or kingdom of God on Earth.
Not that the idea itself was wrong, but in the case of an adherent of a religion (by which I mean any and all ideologies starting from various forms of theism and spirituality to secular philosophies and their respective churches, i.e. activists, but also their silent enablers), the imagined outcome is always a despotic nightmare manifesting dogmas of a particular creed.
In all such cases, equality is misconstrued as unified individuality, and all nails that stick out get a hammer treatment. Either with the hammer of law (no matter if of the state, land, or jungle), or, in a “more human” way, with a squeaky hammer of some form of reeducation (eventually, sanctioned by law to boot).
To put it into perspective, in our global social agreement of humanistically theistic legalism, it leads to absurdities such as the fight over the legal status of marriage. That is, who is allowed to marry whom. All the while marriage is simply a legal contract. Thus, for legalism to be consistent, any entity with status of legal person should be able to marry any other entity with the same legal status. Case closed.
And yet, neither a secular humanist nor a staunch (mono)theist would look favorably at marriages between humans and pets, or humans (or pets) and corporations. All just because the dogma regarding marriage is in both cases informed by whom you (should be allowed to) fuck, while the two have almost nothing in common.
A similar case could be made for abortions. I’m not talking about the cases where abortion serves only as a solution to avoid responsibility. Those cases are rather clear-cut even if we talk about “kids having kids.” But individual human life evidently starts at inception.
Does, then, a child have the right to kill the mother? Has the mother right to defend herself and eventually kill her child? Has a woman right to refuse to be forced to be a mother in the first place? And if it comes to it, who should make the final decision that that unborn child will die? I’d say that all those questions have clear, unambiguous answers.
Well, and don’t get me started on outlawed plants. Sigh. As I said. Absurd, inconsistent, ignorant … simply stupid. (“Don’t laugh carrot or you’ll be next — idiots will find a way.”) Anyway.
In a self-realized society, you don’t have to regulate medicinal plants because people at large acknowledge without prejudice their benefits as well as dangers. Among equals, you don’t have to be afraid of being scammed or raped as no one steals from or rapes the ones one respects as their equals.
Being merely afraid of possible negative consequences (which may be possible to avoid) never leads to a true change of heart. So, a temptation always remains. But if you see equals, you won’t infringe on their freedom of choice to the point of choosing to limit your choices, so that you don’t rob anyone, including you, of their freedom of choice.
Moreover, in an enlightened society there would be no problem with e.g. the above-mentioned unwanted pregnancies from pure desire and “kids having kids.” Neither in economic terms, nor as a social stigma. But what’s most important, the number of such cases would rapidly decline because of ensuing rise of (not only) parental responsibility, openness to education, and absence of cultural pressures (mostly arranged marriages for social and economic reasons) that in many communities still lead to parents whom our global social consensus considers not legally adult, etc.
The whole scenario has, obviously, further (particularly economic) implications. Like, do you charge your significant other or a lifelong friend when you help them with something? Do you charge them or expect a favor for birthday gifts you give them? Do you consider those people your equals? Well, anyone can become your lifelong friend, eventually. And I leave it at that, because that’s a topic in and of itself.
In any case, the math is simple. Unless we are all self-realized, which is an individual choice and responsibility of each of one of us, we can build any social structure and it will fail. Eventually, as our technology grows more potent, one such fail will ultimately kill us all. That might be a cliché, but it’s also a (boring) fact.
Conversely, if we, as a species, evolve and self-realization becomes accepted and as common as it is currently not, it does not matter what the socioeconomic structure will be. Any will work. On top of it, we will be able to see without biases which arrangements are inefficient, harmful even. On a pretty universal scale, because there would be no question whether we can lead a healthy life when our surroundings suffer. It would be obvious to everyone that we cannot thrive when our support system doesn’t. Thus, it’s in our self-interest that it does.
On an individual level, it also entails admitting ignorance and, thus, either ignoring, or just observing, and perhaps also learning more if the topic is of interest. After all, among equals, there are absolutely no penalties for saying, “I don’t know.”
And that’s where each of us should start.
