Striving for Utopia…or the next best thing!

Since there is no precedence to be found in history, there is no reason to believe any society would ever be perfect. Human nature have continuously corrupted and brought down even the most well thought out systems of control, no matter how good and mutually beneficial they initially were. This was the opinion of Thomas Hobbes, who believed that humans needed to be controlled to control their inherent potentially evil nature. As much as I would like to disagree, history has proven him right again and again, whenever a society has been brought down and humans have roamed without check. Thomas More famously thought up a perfect society, Utopia, where everyone would co-exist in peace and harmony perpetually. Seeing history since his time, I think More’s Utopia is just that though, a utopian concept. Yet with that said, I believe there is sufficient proof in the collective consciousness of all our ancestors, to believe that a society infused by knowledge and reason at the micro-level would be more long lasting than any that has gone before. And if that is the case, then at its ultimate inevitable collapse, it will have created a foundation to build on to progress on even higher, no matter what kind of timeline we are moving on. This has after all been the case so far. Otherwise, we would still be living in the dark ages or in a cave. 

A lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, including David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, believe that if our modern society collapses, humanity would regress to a more primitive state in evolution. This may be true temporarily. But I believe the patterns of recognition would kick in and humans would progress once more, only this time there might be enough remnants of the highest level of civilization yet, such as perpetual and sustainable energy, to make the jump back up the ladder quicker and easier. The human need to evolve will always prevail. It is a rule as old as time itself inherent in our very ontological core. As a species, we will always strive to exit the cave we inhabit, to explore new horizons and make new discoveries. Once we ate from the Tree of Knowledge there was no going back. A historic equivalent to this Biblical reference would be the cognitive revolution which occurred around 70,000 BC, when humans first managed to create concepts that existed only in their minds and outside the physical world.

 

It is this very quest for knowledge that since then has brought us to where we are today. By trying to quench that fire through prohibitive control, you will only build up the pressure leading to an inevitable explosion. Maybe this is exactly why all the societies of the past have eventually collapsed proving Thomas Hobbes right. But like his contemporary John Locke, I have enough faith in the capacity for learning in each human and thus humanity in general, to believe that we can achieve a higher standard of society if not perfect like Utopia. Maybe a reason-fueled one, made up of citizens rather than mere slaves, a Festival of Existence, would ensure enough outlet so that the pressure would never build to catastrophic levels. That is why it is something worth striving for. It could be the next big leap forward in evolution, from a Type 0 to a Type I civilization. And once we are there it will be hard to regress back once more because we will have sustainable energy stemming from nature itself. So even when you take the grim human nature into consideration, which would seemingly suggest that no society is built to last forever, a global society driven by a shared reason-fueled consciousness might just be long lasting enough to take us another step up the evolutionary ladder. Thus it should be in our immediate interest to strive for exactly such a society, especially now when it is seemingly within our reach for the first time in our existence. 

The Festival of Existence

A global consciousness would not only significantly further our evolution, it would also help visualize our interconnectivity as sentient beings. The accumulative effects of our existence would suddenly be made extrovert, not only visible to the observing transcenders, but to the dancers of the Dancefloor of Existence as well. In a sense, it would be like turning on the light in the club and moving the party outside in the daylight, where suddenly everyone can clearly see each other and how many of us there truly are. The music would keep playing, because even though all information would be available, does not mean that people would automatically want to seek it out. Human nature will always be human nature after all and most people need a purpose and guidance on the Infinite Freeway. But rather the music would start to get personalized, everyone would hear it differently so that it sounded pleasing to their ear. Many would perhaps start making their own music. At the same time the music would still follow the same beat, but it would be a beat that was very basic and generic, one that everyone could join in on and sing along. In a society driven by reason, all humans think alike because all our thoughts come from the same global consciousness. We see the achievements of our ancestors as natural steps towards our stage, we see the lessons learned from the use of religion, society and culture as sources of control and the long term futility of such efforts. Instead, everyone thinks for themselves, of course some more than others, but because our source of information is the same, everyone will move in the same direction and eventually dance to the same beat.

This was the utopia that Baruch de Spinoza, the godfather of pantheism, and many later transcenders dreamt of. Like me, Spinoza believed that if a society was fueled by information and reason it would be infinitely more long-lasting than a society based on control. As such, when I speak of society in this context, I mean the Trinity of Control, i.e. using society as an excuse to exercise control over the masses, in a Machiavellian sense. However, as history has repeatedly shown as well, due to the presence of pretenders and human/animal nature, our animalistic slumbering dark side inherent in all of us, humans will always need some framework of rules to maintain stable living conditions. Like everything else, the Trinity of Control is still subject to the laws of nature as well because it is being acted out by animals, namely us. Thus even in this utopian global society, we still need laws and protection from pretenders. The point is that if the dancers, i.e. the masses, are all part of a global consciousness then they will have a better understanding for the working of society and the need to preserve it. They will be aware that they are dancing to a well thought out beat, but still have the power to enjoy the music in their own way, and potentially contribute and embellish it. And while the dancing is now taking place outside they also have a full view of who is playing the music, and the choice to move on to other areas, should they so desire. Thus it would no longer be a Dancefloor of Existence but more like a Festival of Existence. An outdoor concert spread out in a large natural stage where people are free to come and go as they please, bringing their family and friends along with them and bringing their own food and drinks. Then the difference between the dancers on the Dancefloor and the ones in the Festival is essentially the difference between slaves and citizens. Slaves just pound away to the beat with no full knowledge of their surroundings, like the slaves onboard Roman ships of war, while citizens dance to the music by choice, because they enjoy it and share this joy with the people around them. They are dancing together, while slaves are simply droning away by themselves. They never acknowledge the people around them because they themselves are not thinking as individuals in a larger context. Thus they would never consider a greater good, because their world begins and ends with themselves. This is the side effect of playing music that turns citizens into slaves. By controlling them through strength as suggested by Machiavelli, who otherwise was a great transcender with great insight into human nature, you are only creating a temporary solution and such societies will and have continuously done so, collapse unto themselves.