fabreeze
Unemphatic
fabreeze
I agree with Seraphor opening post.
Personally, this notion was expressed most clearly to me by John Lennon's song "Imagine"
Quote:
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try...
We've discussed why this didn't work in the past: It's a pretty song, but it's nothing more than a song and should not be strived after. The Republic, a text depicting a "perfect society", is good evidence against this particular song.
I'm in the middle of reading the republic and I'm very much aware about the difficulties in cultivating a just society.
This is a Utopian song and I see no reason why we shouldn't strive for this ideal.
"We've discussed why this didn't work in the past"
- Elaborate, everything has been discussed in the past at some point. This is not a very helpful statement. Present your argument.
The arguement is one which is simple; you cannot control the mind's of all men. Someone will always, somewhere, step out of this proverbial box of perfection, and it only takes one mishapen gear to break an entire machine.
What then of the mentally ill, of the genetically disabled and the invalid? What do we do with these people in this perfect society? Surely, even if we take care of them, we have no driving force to bother taking care of them.
A world without passion, or the will to strive, since everyone is on one singular accord in which there is no reason to strive for anything outside of one particular project, becomes a world in which the many factors which must be watched become unwatchable.
How will you manage children? If people are encouraged to have sex, which they are if they live just for today seeing as there is no reason to bother with the repurcussions of their actions, and contraceptives don't matter, which they don't because pregnancy is natural and their child won't go hungry due to the socio-economic ladder being absent, how will we manage the population?
How will we give our verdict on things? In order to make sure everyone lives in peace conflicts must be kept to a minimum so the law loses incredible amounts of power, morals and ethics must disappear, and overall we collapse into a dream state of lawless order which is not possible in this world.
How do we enforce anything? If nothing belongs to anyone how do we make sure that we are able to keep what we hold dear without someone else simply taking it? Obviously we know that resources are limited, so that computer on your desk could be mine without second thought as I could take it, and you'd willingly share, and I would as well possibly with someone miles and miles away. You assume that you could take someone elses, yes, but somewhere down the line there cannot possibly be enough for everyone.
Then what of language? Not only would we have to create a new one, but instill it into the people, which would take an eternity as there are plenty of small tribes out there.
Then what of the deviant? How ever would we deal with any group of people who decided otherwise?
Then what of the mind, or the construct that is, of such a creation? Must we too dismiss this and take up a hivemind type society in which no one does anything which harms another, deprives another, or destroys another? If so then how do we enforce this with lawless order, and if worse comes to worst how do we deal with the defective humans who oppose the apathy which sweeps the planet?
Also, then enters emotions; how do we control them? How do we deal with depression, or institute orders when we cannot contain or violate the idea of all living in peace? Living in peace incorporates doing as you please without causing another displeasure, but often due to the fact that space and resources are limited living in peace is impossible.
So striving after such foolish things is pointless, and you can give an optimistic view, but not a realistic view which contradicts the ideals given, if anything definitely not the last.
