Mind's Eye Re: Modern Utopia

Ohh Archy ever the discontent.  I think the issue is that the world is full of different voices and different opinions.  Last night I watched the new Dawkins show on TV, 'Sex, death and the meaning of life'.  I only managed to shout at the TV twice.  What I saw was interesting of course, but also coloured by Dawkins own views(of course).

I am as you know no great fan of Dawkins, but my personality is such that I ever give people another chance.  For those interested what made me shout at him last night was the way he introduced an experiment that showed children being fooled into believing that there existed a machine capable of duplicating anything put into one half of it.

So a gerbil goes into one half, the scientist presses a button, a beep is heard and the other half is opened, vola!  A duplicate gerbil.  The kids were then asked a series of questions about the second gerbil.  The point being to show that even as children we believe that gerbil number one has different memories than it's duplicate gerbil two.  Dawkins findings were that this shows clearly that we humans seem to have a built in idea of the soul.  Myself I would have said that even as children it seems we have an idea of Self.

The point?

Well we all claim to know what's best, but of course we differ on our ideas.  So what do I believe is best?  I guess it all comes back to the golden rule, and if you will allow me I'll express it the Neo Pagan way, 'If it harm none, then do as thou will'.  Does this make me Liberterian I wonder?  Hehe hardly, because of course the logical flip of the golden rule says that I would like to be helped by society when I need the help, thus I must believe that Society must help those who need it.

On Wednesday, 12 September 2012 01:10:49 UTC+1, archytas wrote:

Utopia means something like 'the ideal that is nowhere' - the word is
sprung with irony.  Many decent ideas are derided as Utopian, much as
whistle-blowers soon become incompetent malcontents.  I don't believe
there is a modern world - we are still largely dark age.  Most people
can't offer much explanation why science is more rational than
godswank or a sales pitch.  Even I see little difference between the
physics pornography of the big bang and the origins of our main
religions.  Doing science was always liberation from dogma for me,
with the end of getting to what works.

A modern world would be scientific, but there's a catch.  Most people
can't do it (at least as we teach and practice it) and the Frakenstein
fear probably dominates in the majority.  Say Einstein and most will
trot out E = MC2 - his work isn't about this.  Most people don't know
about the pollen grains, let alone the tensor equations and his
reconciliation of the great work of Maxwell and apparently
contradictory experimental evidence.

A modern society would organise around scientific estimates of what
work we need to do.  My own guess is this would be about 6 hours/2
days a week/9 months a year/40 year span.  One has to wonder why we
don't have a proper estimate of this that takes modern technology into
account.  My guess is based on agriculture being 7% of world GDP and
75% being 'services'.  I suspect essential work is about 30% of what
we call work.

This leads me, with other matters, to think we have not established a
welfare state at all.  A real one would be about us all contributing
equally towards creating decent living conditions for all and doing
this essential work as a duty to each other and the planet.  The rest
of my Utopia follows from this and the rest of the economy would be
based on producing/doing what interests us.

Pie in the sky?

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