An Ideal World

I think an ideal world is not just an image but people who live in the universe can make an ideal world themselves by doing positive things and building a better life everyday; by adding a brick to the building called ideal world

I think an ideal world comes firstly from our thoughts and minds. Looking at things positively and being able to see and devide good and bad. You may say that people have different morality and different understanding of good and bad but I think people all can experience pain and happiness. So may be that's the starting point. Do things that will bring happiness to you and others. If not, at least do things which will not bring pain to others. How is it possible? Answer is caring. We don't want to give pain to ourselves; we like ourswelves, we care about ourselves. If we could only care about others the same way. I think then we could have built our own ideal world in cooperation, agreement and love

Yes! Well said Ruzana, that's the sort of thing I'm trying to get at. And lone voice, ebrown did make some points about morality coming before national security and such, which weren't directly related to the racial profiling issue, that's what I was refering to.

I don't think war is necessarilly human nature. Maybe aspects of it are, but whereas I think if a person attacks you you might instinctively try and defend yourself by fighting back, I don't think there's anything instinctive about deciding to send troops into a country which may possibly become a threat to the united states, and signing the necessary papers or whatever to do that - I can't see what's evolutionary about ordering troops to invade Iraq, for example. I can see why conflict and violence and such may be evolutionary phenomena, but war is so unaturally organised, I don't think it is largely determined by our evolution.

And I don't think your country is as righteous as you think it is. You have a hell of a lot of money, and you don't share it - that's why people want to take your privilages (spelt wrong?) away, that's why terrorists want to destroy you. You've locked yourself in your beautifully furnished bedoom and you're not coming down for tea. The status quo which Jack Webb refers to is the USA living in a bubble and making sure nobody else enters, or something like that.

And what kind of an evolutionary student talks about good and evil? Make your mind up, is war evolutionary, which implies that it is to do with the survival of particular genes, or is it the righteous defending themselves from the non-righteous?

Agrote, if war is evolusionary then I would say that as a result we would get only mutants; and mutants are a bad point of evalusion. I don't prove any reason of war if as as a result we destroy human lifes. For me war is a result of damaged human mind, selfishness and greedyness(may be spelt wrong). Ask different people what is war and what would make them go into war and you'd get several different answers. So what makes people go into war, what makes people destroy instead of building, give pain instead of giving pleasure. For me its our weak nature which can get easily influenced by a leader. Sometimes we easily forget about good and bad blindly following others with aims quite apposing ours. Magandi said: an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind. Don't you think there is truth in it. So may be its time when we should start valuing the light we are still able to see until we are in complete darkness.

Are youy the same ruzana as before? Your spelling suddenly got much worse

I may have said this before (a couple of million times) but the conflicts associated with life on earth are all the result of evolutionary brain hardwiring; salmon swim up the streams where they were born to perpetuate their species, not because they want to, but because their brains are hardwired to do so, and they 'have' to.
Humans defend territory (possesions and ideas) to the death, not because it is wise to do so, but because over millions of years this has been programmed into their brains as 'the way to survive'.
In the distant past, it assured the survivors of such conflicts a place to procreate, and continue the species.

The difference between 'salmon', and 'humans' is that we have overlaid on that primitive 'old brain' that dictates our visceral reactions, a highly sophisticated thinking apparatus, that can be used to enhance the carnage and destruction with which we act out our mindless instructions;
OR
which allows us to assess these ridiculous automatic responses to perceived threats, and deal with them in a manner that brings peace and co-operation to the people of this planet.

We have a choice.

[our responsibility as human beings is to make our preferences in this choice clear, to those that we choose to make the big decisions for us.]

An Ideal World

Zeno's day was like every other day, and just like the day that every other person on the planet. He had a wonderful and nutritious breakfast before leaving his luxurious home for work. His automobile could go 100 miles on each gallon of water that it converted to steam. There hadn't been an automobile accident in the last 260 years, but even then the damage was repaired in less than an hour with a spot of paint. Zeno's car was green, one of the most popular of the 20 colors available. In ten minutes Zeno was pulling into his assigned parking spot without even the five-minute traffic delay that sometimes happened. Zeno joined the laughing crowd as they filed into the building, where un-crowded elevators whisked them to their individual offices, all with a wonderful view of the surrounding mountains.

Zeno sat in his comfortable chair and turned his computer on. Instantly, he was connected with every other person and organization on the planet. As usual, Zeno started his day by scanning the news reports. A terrible fire had burned a house down in Celyon, but it had already been replaced with an exact duplicate. The biggest news was the election campaign for World President. Each candidate was given free and equal time to ask the whole world's population for their votes. The candidate speeches did tend to be a bit boring since they all said approximately the same thing, but sometimes one would hear a really great joke. If anyone had ever suggested that a politician might tell a lie, no one would have understood the concept. No one in the whole world had told even a little lie in ever so long.

Of course, the post of World President was largely ceremonial. Since there were no nations, and every person on the planet had the exact degree of plentitude, there weren't any real issues to upset people. In fact, the idea that one might upset someone else would send a person scurrying to the nearest mental health clinic. Since everyone was well adjusted and happy, the mental health clinics were almost always deserted. Last year the burning question was whether the World Work Week should be further shortened from 12 to 10 hours per week. This year one candidate wanted to increase the number of television comedies, and present fewer cartoons. That just might get Ms. Shawalitango elected. Her primary competition in the World Plebiscite seemed to be Mr. Hong, a fifteen year old from Queens whose platform was to increase the number of world-touring chamber orchestras. That too, might prove popular since almost everyone played some instrument, and World interest in the ancient music of Beethoven was very keen.

With a long sigh at the need to make such important choices, Zeno switched to the network where his actual work was preformed. He was presented with a screen displaying six choices, all with very detailed descriptions and clear cost-benefits analysis for each. Zeno studied the choices, and then decided that it could wait until after his morning coffee. He walked to the Lounge and found his coworkers in earnest discussion about the relative merits of Epicurean and Hedonistic philosophy. Since everyone in the world had at least a Master's level education, at no expense, such discussions were not uncommon and were almost always interesting. His friends greeted Zeno and solicited his views. When he inadvertently referred to how the almost forgotten religions of ancient times had viewed the two philosophical schools, everyone fidgeted uncomfortably. Only War was a more taboo topic than Religion, and both had been extinct for almost a thousand years. It was clear that Zeno was not advocating a return to such an unpleasant topics, and so the discussion was again totally pleasant.

Two hours later, Zeno returned to his office, after flirting with Ms. Keating and that handsome young athlete Mr. Cranston. Maybe the three of them could get together later in the week for lunch, or something. While Zeno was visiting his friends, his sub-conscious had been processing information and he had made his work decisions. It only took a moment for him to select Option D. He smiled with great satisfaction that his work would result in everyone in the world getting a two-week vacation cruise in the coming year. Far better, he thought, than providing everyone with vacations to places like Machu Pichu. It had been a strenuous day, but Zeno really had a feeling of accomplishment, marred only by that slightly risqué reference to religion.

Zeno left the workplace to pick-up groceries. He sometimes wondered how the ancients could bring themselves to eat meat. As if that weren't enough, they actually had to pay for their food! The very idea of famine had almost vanished from human consciousness, and, thanks to a little pill, no one ever deviated from their perfect weight by more than 2%. Anyone could gorge themselves on nutritious and delicious manufactured foods, and never increase their health risks. Medicine had so far advanced that no one ever got really sick, much less died from any health problem. People might live as long as they wished, and then die when and however they pleased. It was also thanks to medical science that the range between the brightest and dullest intellects in the world was very, very narrow. Fertility rates were in perfect balance with mortality rates, so the population was stable. Children were available to be raised, if that was a person's, couple's, or triad's desire. Zeno preferrred to change his sexual partners on a regular basis, and hadn't any real desire to raise a child at any time during the sixty years since he became an adult.

Returning to the grocery store parking lot, Zeno had a brief moment of confusion finding his own Personal Auto among all the identical ones. Then he saw the little polka-dot ribbon he had tied to the radio antenna, and the moments consternation was gone. As he started the car, he thought perhaps this evening would be a good time to re-read the popular 8,000 page modern novel, On Folly. On the other hand, perhaps it might be nice to go out clubbing. He could smoke a little Jane, drop a tab of Pepsi, and dance the night away to the latest dance craze, The Minuet. Of course, if he went out then he would need to pick up some more "Restore" so that he would be in tip-top shape to go to work in the morning.

Zeno drove around for a little while admiring the clean, well-kept houses that everyone lived in. He was glad he had chosen the West facing "Malibu" model with the chartreuse trim; it was so much better than the "Tonga" model. Why would anyone choose a different trim color, or to have their house facing East? Oh well, no accounting for some people's taste. Zeno was happy to be himself, and happy that everyone in the world had the same fulsome life that he did. No competition was ever so involving that anyone could become angry or jealous of others.

As night fell, and the sun sank into the ocean, Zeno stood on his deck with a tall glass of un-intoxicating Single-Malt Scotch. It had been a long day, filled with pleasant thoughts and only slightly marred by that religious thing. Zeno realized that he had almost made a social blunder there. Was his satisfaction with his life unseemly? Perhaps he felt too much pride in his home, and that might lead to arrogance. He wondered if perhaps he should go in to see the Mental Health people rather than risk falling into unhealthy ways of thinking. Well, to bed. He hung his cloths (identical for everyone) in his closet. Tomorrow would be another wonderful day for Zeno, and every other person living on Earth.

Why, do you think that the suicide rate in the Ideal World never seemed to drop and isn't even of enough interest that anyone should note it?

Point taken.

Of those that continued to commit suicide, there must be something that is not satisfied with such an Ideal World. What is that something? Could we truly handle an Ideal World, even if we kept the good things and allowed for individualism, got rid of the cookie-cutter houses & cars, etc.?

The world that Asherman describes is not ideal because some of its people are driven to commit suicide, which presumably means that they are unhappy or unsatisfied with life. Ideally, that would never happen, and therefore in an ideal world there would be no need for suicide. So Asherman has described an un-ideal world.

I don't think a single "ideal" world could exist given the different expectations of individuals.

Yes, maybe not, maybe an ideal world is impossible. But perhaps each person's concept of an ideal world would have certain aspects in common. Or perhaps not. Who knows. I'm starting to regret calling this thread 'an ideal world' because really I was just responding to people who see it as being too idealistic to, for example, decide not to join the army on the grounds that war is wrong and shouldn't be encouraged. These people say, "but this is not an ideal world!" and I say, "no! and it's all your fault!"

War isn't the only relevent issue though, I'm thinking generally about whether or not it's too idealistic to put moral principles before everything else - I don't think it is.

Exactly. One problem right off the bat is scarcity of resources and individual expectations.

The options basically are: We largely get rid of our individual expectations, or we keep them. If we get rid of them, are we still human? We end up with A's world where everbody needs to be happy driving the same car, same house, etc. Is that a human? Probably not.

So, we keep our individual expectations. And we get about 6 billion people, at least 2 billion of them who basically, deep down, if the truth be known, "want it all." They all want to be wealthy and own 5000 acres and a couple mansions and have jet skis and worldwide luxury vacations, etc. Except there's only room for maybe 1 million people to do this, so everybody starts competing & fighting for limited resources, blah blah blah.
***

Its like we're stuck in this physical existence where an Ideal World is not really possible. Yes, we can certainly work to improve things, but there are limits.

Some people say, "we cause our own problems, look at the animals, we should live next to nature like them." Okay, there's a grain of truth there. But lets examine that: In the animal kingdom, animals fight over territory. The strong devour the weak. Few animals wake up and have an ideal life for very long. Its a struggle to survive. Fighting off attackers. Struggling to find food. Plenty of death via sickness, predators, old age.

Its great to have Ideals, but we also need to face the fact that we are living on this place called Earth. It appears that the nature of the place that we're in allows us to point ourselves in the direction of Ideals, but never really quite reach them. As someone once said, its like you are in a rowboat, using the north star as guidance. We point toward that north star, but we'll probably never quite reach it in this rowboat.

I think it's probably true that we can't reach the north star in a dinky little rowboat, but I don't think that means we shouldn't spend our whole lives rowing in that direction. I mean, what else is there to do?

From The Third Man film noir:
Harry Lime: "In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare,
terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

AND the Swiss Army knife!!

This is a companion piece to "AN Ideal World"

The Ideal World

Zeno's days were all different, all challenging but sometimes painful. This morning, he had a cup of re-heated coffee left from the day before, and a stale donut for his breakfast. Some days he had nothing at all, and left his third floor walk-up still buttoning his dress shirt from the Salvation Army. He was always a bit anxious that someone might have stolen his 1989 Dart from the back of the mall parking lot. The car was dented from a thousand forgotten collisions, leaked oil, and seldom passed a filling station without wanting to stop. Not much of a chariot, but Zeno loved his car that he had worked and saved buy. The old Dart wasn't a luxury, but a necessity. Zeno's job was across town, and the Dart was the only practical way to and from work. While Zeno loved his car, he hated the daily traffic jams. Sitting for sometimes a whole hour hemmed in by other cars spewing out clouds of noxious fumes, was not fun.

This morning Zeno was lucky and arrived at the factory with plenty of time to spare. His luck was compounded when he saw an empty parking space just outside the entry. He clocked in, and went up to the employee's lounge for a decent cup of coffee from the machine. He joined a brisk discussion over the relative merits of the LA Lakers and the Boston Celtics. Joey came in and handed out cigars to the gang in celebration of the birth of his new 8 lb. son. Zeno tucked the cellophane wrapped cigar in a pocket; maybe he would smoke it later outside the No Smoking building. Someone told a joke that insulted and belittled the political candidates, and that set off a round of joking. Just a year ago a couple of workers were fired when a joke got out of hand. Since Hannah had come to work as a drill-press operator the jokes had suddenly gotten much milder. A loud bell sounded and the lounge emptied quickly as the workers hurried to their machines.

On the factory floor the noise made any conversation less than a shout unheard. Workers had to be continually alert since steel bins of greasy parts were stacked everywhere. The machines themselves could take off a finger faster than an eye could blink. There were rumors that the plant was about to change, and that made the workers nervous. Some said that the owners had begun purchasing automated machines from Japan, and that a layoff was sure to follow. The more pessimistic feared that the whole factory would be closed and moved to Pakistan, or Mexico. The Union tried to reassure its members, but most of them thought the Union leadership weren't all that different from the owners. Who could believe any of those guys anyway? They don't even have to clean their nails but have some sexy beautician do it for them.

Zeno had started as a stamping machine apprentice, but now had worked his way up to Master Toolmaker. He spent his day in a wire cage checking out specialty tools, and repairing damaged tools. For the last year plant productivity had insured that Zeno got at least four hours overtime every week. The extra money was welcome, because Zeno was half way through the local college's evening program leading to a Bachelor's degree. Zeno needed that degree to fully develop an idea he had for improving the Universal Widget Wankler. The degree and his skill should secure his future. Often he worked through the coffee breaks. At lunch he did his homework assignment. Other workers spent their lunches in Bible Study, or went outside for a smoke with others who ignored all the health warnings against tobacco. It was amazing how fast Zeno's eight-hour shift passed. Today, the foreman announced that Zeno wouldn't be needed for overtime, so he had to fight the flood of workers trying to get home just a few minutes earlier.

Having a bit of extra time, Zeno stopped off to see his parents. Dad was getting on, and his Mom was always worried over something or another. Zeno's visits were always looked forward to, and he liked the macaroni and cheese casserole that his Mom had been making since he was in grade school. He usually slipped a twenty into his mother's "secret savings account" in the old cookie jar to help out. Social Security and Medicare just barely covered his parent's expenses, and his Dad's pension wasn't much help. Dad once loved to tinker in his shop, that was where Zeno had first fallen in love with the idea of making and fixing things. Now Dad seemed to prefer sitting in front of their large screen television watching reality shows. The one thing that seemed to cheer both his parents up was to hear Zeno talk about his life during his visits. "Have you met a nice young girl yet" was the first question he always had to answer. Zeno worried about the future for his parents. Their small savings must be getting low, and what if one of them should break a hip.

After leaving his parents apartment, Zeno stopped in to see his old high school chum. Ablonski was part owner of Tavrena Trevoli, and would usually spot Zeno a free beer when he came in. They compared notes, and Zeno dutifully asked how Lorraine was doing. Lorraine was a hairdresser but might have to quit work soon as her pregnancy neared term. This evening the television over the bar was filled with the usual murder and mayhem, but there was a funny little inspirational story of a woman who contributed her entire collection of mittens to the poor children of Finland to keep them from frostbitten fingers. The Presidential candidates exchanged sneering references to one another's pet policies. There was a story about another bombing in Israel, and another about the problems encountered by the new Iraqi government. "Hey Ski, change that over to Jeopardy will you?" Half the bar patrons focused on Alex and the rest resumed their conversations and foamy drinks. "Well Ski, I've got to be going. Got two chapters to read, a short paper to write, and a test this Friday."

Zeno found his favorite parking spot unoccupied, so he locked up his Dart and went into buy his groceries. The price of milk was up, but there was a real deal on lettuce and carrots. Zeno lingered over the bin filled with steaks and assorted cuts of beef, but ended up selecting a package of extra-lean hamburger. "A loaf of bread, and thou" he thought as he tossed a day-old loaf into his shopping cart. A couple of cans of soup, and a quart of vanilla ice cream for later, joined his selection. Zeno almost danced to the Muzak as he went up to the checkout counter. He was careful to get into Alice's line, even though it was the longest. Alice was pure pleasure to be around. She was gorgeous, but even more important they seemed to "click" on a deeper level. "Once the mid-terms are over, maybe she'll go out with me", he thought. He scanned the front page of the National Inquirer whose lead story was a girl in Alabama who claimed her pregnancy was due to a visit by an alien with golden wings.

"Hello, sailor." Zeno had been daydreaming and had not noticed that Alice was ready to run up his bill. He blushed, and she gave a little smile, which caused the blush to deepen. "Zeno, are you ever going to ask me out? That'll be $12.85, puleez." Alice gave a little laugh that made Zeno's heart hop. As he went from the air-conditioned store out into the parking lot, he gave in and did a little two-step jig.

You are a talented writer, Asherman. I'm mighty curious however, what an universal Widget Wankler may be. Very curious ;-)

As far as the stories go, in my opinion your second Zeno is a happier person. The first Zeno lives in a perfect world, but there is no stimulation, no drive to do something, no hope for something better to happen. The second one has a purpose to his life, and he can hope things will get better for him.

Naj.

Ash; that's fabulous - about as good as it gets!

[riveting, 'had' to read it; well done.]

While i have every respect for Leonardo, and none for 'Mike'; i will gladly scrap them both for another 500 years of the same; and even buy a cuckoo clock! [and a bunch of Swiss chocolate!]

Ideal, I raise, I fold
An ideal world implies a Utopia and since a Utopia implies perfection that in turn carries with it the concepts of stagnancy and rigid unchanging sameness day in and day out I submit that even in a Utopian ideal world people would still commit suicide. The most perfect world possible could not make every person happy because the human mind is quite possibly more complex than anything else on this planet. Now we can have a pretty close approximation to an ideal world as long as the society itself is capable of continuing to grow, adapt, and evolve and strive to make things even better. Thinking that it can't get any better could be depressing in and of itself.

I bet if you ask 5 educated people from 5 different countries what they think a perfect world is you would get 5 different answers. Ask 10 people from every country on the planet and you would get a whole lot of different concepts of an ideal world with a lot of similarities. Ask 100 people from every city on this planet and we would find that there would exist a general consensus of a perfect society with a single world government that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people without any possibility of political corruption or closed door decisions. That I would see as a starting point and the list would go on and on and on.

The above is rambling. Here is the reason for my post. Is there anyone in this forum that truly believes that the diverse powers that run the world's governments and the societies being governed (ie the population of our planet) has the strength and courage to eventually work together to end all boundaries and prejudices and eventually create a close approximation to an ideal world if not an ideal world? No matter how many different scenarios I try to play out in my mind I just don't see our species recognizing our true insignificance and getting it together to try to be here in another thousand years. At the rate we are using up our resources I don't have a very optimistic outlook that even 500 years from now we are going to be anywhere closer to an ideal world than we are now and most likely we will be much further away.

That's my 2 cents
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