Nothing, Page 2

  In the back corner of the library there was a book resting in a glass case on a low pedestal. I had not noticed it before, and now that I had seen it, it seemed strange that I had missed it on my previous two trips. Perhaps someone had only recently put it there, but that would be even stranger. The book was open at the middle, revealing letters in complex typography that looked impractical, but delightful. I read the open page of the book, and instantly knew that I needed to read the rest. It seemed that an explanation of my world sat in its pages. It was my Theory and Practise of Oligarchical Collectivism. As such, I began working at removing the book from its case. I tried to lift the case, to shake it, to find some opening through the pedestal. Nothing. It seemed I had to shatter it. I swung at it from the top with my elbow. Intact glass and a numbing pain that seared through me alerted me to the fact that this was not the right tactic. Eventually, and ingeniously, I found that I could run my thumbnail along the right-angle intersection of two pieces of glass and slowly cut through the adhesive binding the glass together. I proceeded to work my way along the top in this manner until the top piece was no longer attached and then I lifted it up. I pulled it out, turned the pages until I found the beginning and began to read.

  On Utopia: a look into the future

  Introduction

  The state of our world has become increasingly volatile. The '26 and '41 crises have plunged a majority of countries into economic ruin and recession, and wellbeing for people everywhere has begun a decline. Russia and China both look to be on the brink of civil war. America has lost its grasp on international relevance as its domestic issues loom large.

  What is the cause of this devastation? At the very core, the problem is with the socio-economic system that runs our world. At the very core, the problem is with capitalism. This system, where wealth, which is relative, more or less equates with success, is essentially a zero-sum game in which everyone plays against everyone else. The consequence of this is that only a select number of people can be successful. The rest can only be left unsatisfied. This inherent problem is compounded by a variety of other factors that reveal the system that govern our world to be completely untenable.

  First and foremost is the instability in our markets. This is an instability that has resulted in the destroyed livelihoods of billions. 130 years ago, it was the Great Depression that bankrupted countries and caused the rise to power of dictators. Today it is the Global Collapse that has triggered the renaissance of warlords in Africa and Asia, drug lords in South America, and seen 21 changes of heads of state in the Western Hemisphere over the past 18 months. We've been waiting for a Great Moderation to happen in our markets for a whole century; it's become clear it will never happen. The instabilities are here to stay.

  Another symptom of the poor state of our society is our population levels, which have been constantly increasing. The vast majority of predictions of an optimum population have fallen around 2 billion people; our population will be a whole order of magnitude larger than that within the turn of the century. This is self-evidently unsustainable in the long term. We've already seen food crises. In the past, our improvement of farming technologies has kept pace with the growth in population and the decline in growing conditions. But now it's become increasingly obvious that this cannot continue forever; the famines occurring worldwide go a long way to illustrate this. Water shortages are also affecting more areas than ever; droughts are widespread thanks to human-induced climate change. Maintaining our current population will result in a steadily diminishing quality of living; maintaining our population trajectory can only precipitate a catastrophe. In the search for continued capitalistic growth, we have put ourselves in this position. The economists in the past argued that technological improvements would today be the main driver of economic progress. We can now see that they are plainly wrong, and our recent growth has been driven almost exclusively by unsustainable population increase.

  Pointless costs are also emblematic of our current system. A world that fosters a throw-away mentality and a focus on the next shiny toy will inevitably produce large amounts of waste products. Amazon has released six domestic robot models within the past four years. Over sixty million of these have already found their way to the dump. Jobs such as advertising are another pointless cost. Tens of thousands of people work on a task that would be obsolete if our system were planned. Tens of thousands of people, needing to be sustained by food, water and shelter, but don't add anything.

  It's clear our society has finally outgrown the monstrosity of capitalism. But, having recognised this fact, what should replace it? Many have pointed to the total failures of socialism in multiple countries as evidence that though capitalism has many flaws, it is the best option available. In reality, it is through a want of trying that has led to this conclusion. It's already been sixty-five years since the fall of socialism, yet a design for a new society, one that is egalitarian, sustainable and values happiness and utilitarian good over the individual acquisition of wealth has not even been suggested, even though almost everyone would consider it to be far superior to our current society. But the time has come, something has got to give. The problems clearly cannot be solved by maintaining the status quo. There must be a reset, a re-evaluation and ultimately a new world.

  As a civilisation that prides itself on its logical and rational thinking, it has come time for an application of these virtues into the running of our society. A recent Zoch paper has managed to reduce the underlying structure governing our physical world to an irreducible indeterminism that manifests itself in probabilistic behaviour of subatomic particles. This indeterminism, when applied to sentient beings suggests that though actions are not pre-determined, they are also not the result of free will. Instead, since behaviour and action is governed by chemical processes in the brain, and these are in turn governed by the movements of atoms and subatomic particles which have been shown to be probabilistic, a model of incompatibilist indeterminism has now become standard. This allows us to rid ourselves of the notion that freedom is inherently good. It doesn't even exist. Our society should therefore be run in a way that reflects our newfound knowledge.

  Utopias are reliant on control. Without control humans are free in the sense they are physically able to do things that would stop the society being utopian. Atavistic and selfish impulses drive humans to take advantage and advance goals, goals which in our capitalist society, are the acquisition of wealth and power by any means possible. Murders, thefts, assault, manipulation and deceit exist across human society currently, even if great effort has been taken to condition them away. Even in countries of extremely high social-economic status and where wellbeing is extremely high, these actions still occur on a regular basis. These problems prevent us from reaching the next level; they prevent us from transitioning into a utopia. It has often been noted that a lack of free will would destroy any notion of ethics. If humans couldn't choose their actions, they need not be condemned for them. Thus, it is often argued that if this is taken to account in the running of society, chaos would ensue. Justice would seem to be redundant. This is a ridiculous response. Our realisation that freedom is unnecessary should instead allow us to create a utopic society with the state having full, unadulterated control. In the past, this has been near impossible. Even in literature, the existence of a society with absolute control has been non-existent. However, we now have the technology and the intellectual capability to realise this society. We must act.

  My vision for the practical aspects of this state is detailed in the following chapters.

  The New World

  General

  The institutions of nations and states that have governed our world have become farcical. Each protecting their own interests at the cost of lives and the greater good for humanity. Each playing out a soap opera of "international relations" that are characterised by childish one-upping disguised in expensive suits and long titles. It's a travesty. Instead, the world should be run as thousands of sma
ll communes, united by a single leader, monitored by a central body, and made to be virtually independent of each other but with standardised rules and laws.

  The advantages of these small communes are numerous. Firstly, they limit bureaucracy and problems associated with managing large amounts of people and resources. The co-ordination of people; their education, production and consumption can all be made easier in these communes only 10,000 strong. Also, if strife breaks out, it is much easier to contain when it occurs in an independent commune as opposed to a world state with billions in population freely travelling. Disease, for example will only have a real impact on the commune it first affects. If it kills off all members of the commune, it has nowhere else to spread since the communes are physically separated. The central control would only spring into action if a disaster of this magnitude occurred and would be tasked with "restarting" and repopulating the affected commune. Another clear advantage of having small communes is that the produce and production of the people of the commune can be adapted to the environment the commune is situated in. This includes growing only crops suitable to the biome, such as growing oats and wheat in communes located in more arid environments, while growing rice in communes located in wetter environments. Each commune will have the benefit of coherence and consistency with the greater whole, while being able to be customised based on its individual circumstances. Unlike countries, the system is not based on arbitrary geopolitical relations, and thus doesn't suffer from the drawbacks of the state system. Its borders are not drawn based on the word of those with the pointiest sticks and the best negotiators. Instead, it is characterised by trust, peace and co-operation. It's based on function, not history.

  These communes will be perfectly efficient in every sense of the word. It starts with education. Only practical skills like farming, mining, construction, manufacturing and operation of specific technologies will be taught. These are the only skills that are necessary. In our current world, we value creative talents and inventiveness highly, even more than skills that are more practical in nature, blindly following a belief that artistry and technological progress ad infinitum is good. It is not. The aforementioned must be married with a maturity and unity that focuses progress into producing positive effects. And that has not been happening. Some innovations, nukes and giant death robots come to mind, are used to destroy and ruin; others, such as disposable holograms, are an unadulterated waste of time and money. The industrial revolution was largely hailed as a great leap forward for mankind. Ultimately, future humans living in a ravaged world will see it as the beginning of the end of the earths' habitability if nothing is done. In a similar vein, when mankind stepped on the moon, many viewed it as the greatest achievement of humanity. Taken objectively it was really money badly spent. The twenty-four and a half billion dollars that it costed then could have rescued millions from poverty and starvation. The technological improvements the program achieved, while admirable, could have been made at a fraction of the cost if the context of going to the moon was taken out. The point is, while we almost universally admire artistic and technological feats, they do not provide any tangible benefits compared to their sunk costs, other than a "feel good" effect or a temporary feeling of novelty. Efficiency can only be achieved through doing what is necessary, and doing that well. And that is why the skills taught in the new world are only practical in nature. This practicality means that the skills are significantly easier to teach. Requisite knowledge of the required disciplines can be easily and deeply imprinted in the minds of the citizens of the new world through simple rote learning: Listening to a recording, followed by intense repetition, then by practical work. This can be scaled to any and every situation necessary. Easy and efficient.

  Another aspect of education in the new world is conditioning. Much like in Brave New World, a good, yet imperfect basis for any attempt at utopia, conditioning will form a large part of childhood development. Every aspect of good citizenship will be deeply imbedded into the minds of everyone. What this will mean is that from a young age, those in the new world will absolutely love every single part of their life. For them, the food they eat will be utterly sublime, their home, perfectly suitable, their work, fun and rewarding, their peers, genuinely amiable and agreeable. This lays important groundwork in constructing a permanent happiness in the population. Similarly, there will be things that the youth will be conditioned to dislike. They will hate the outside of their commune and will detest the thought of ever venturing outside. They will also be hesitant to venture into places that they are not be allowed go in, such as the residence of the leader. The mere thought of rebelling, of doing anything outside the norm would be odious and detestable. They would not think to steal, to murder or even hurt one another. This is the great power of conditioning. It serves two purposes of the utmost importance; first, as a positive influence on one's happiness and second, as a preventative for anti-societal behaviour. However, conditioning has long been the target of moral complaints. Being able to engineer and manipulate the thoughts and feelings of humans seems evil to some. They are able to accept a worse evil, the state of our current society over this perfectly benign process. What they don't understand is that even in our current world, conditioning still occurs. Deliberately or not, our parents, our schools, our friends and their actions as well as random events all have a conditioning effect on our lives. We take after our parents, modelling much of our actions on them. Schools restrict us and imbue in us the norms of society, while our friends, through peer pressure, forces further homogenisation. Every event influences our psyche and forces us into patterns of behaviour. We are not free in ourselves. It is externalities that shape how we feel and what we feel and what we think and how we think. In our current society, this semi-random conditioning produces widespread unhappiness and negative thoughts and feelings on a regular basis. It espouses contradictions and paradoxes. Parts of us will be conditioned to wish to do one sort of thing, and another part will be conditioned to do another. It is damaging and dystopic, causing us to feel uncomfortable, detached and unbelonging. The conditioning I propose here is just a more structured version of the conditioning that already exists. Its structured basis allows for it to be focused, instead of contradictory and thus allows the greater purposes I have elucidated to be achieved.

  Also important to the stability and efficiency of the new world are the combined elements of genetic modification and so called "hard test-tube babies." Genetic modification has long been seen as an innovation that would finally free us of the shackles of natural selection and allow us to improve our human selves. The only reason this has not already happened is because of some superficial issues. These "issues" stem from a few beliefs. Some people believe that genetic modification is unsafe, some think it will affect genetic diversity while others decry the "ethics" of genetic modification. Firstly, on the safety issue, it has become established through multiple recent studies that genetic modification is perfectly safe to be done on humans if done correctly. We have genetically modified plants and animals for decades, allowing them to better survive and taste better, with no apparent drawbacks. There were fears over the safety of IVF, a treatment that became mainstream and almost universally accepted only a few decades after the first procedure. Our fear of genetic modification of humans being unsafe is really a fear of the new and bold, a fear of progress. The issue of genetic diversity is certainly a much more pertinent one. And in a society of humans with homogenous genetic makeups, it may pose problems, when disease is factored in. A single disease could target a specific gene and wipe out vast quantities of humans. However, as I have discussed earlier, the existence of separate communes is a preventative of mass extinction. A superbug realistically could only appear in one commune at a time. And then, even if the bug was so effective that it killed all those living in the commune, because there is no method of transmission from inside the commune to outside the commune, the bug would eventually die out with no host. The commune can then be slo
wly repopulated. The last critique left of genetic modification is that it is in some way unethical or immoral. The argument of religion is the most common one. Genetic engineering apparently contradicts God's will and means humans are playing God. This argument falls flat for a number of reasons. First, what even is God's will? How do people know what it is? And why would a God will against something if there are no independent reasons to, other than the people claiming that he does? The other part of the argument is that humans would be playing God. That's just plain wrong. It is nature that determines our genes through selection, not God. So then we have the next most popular argument, the appeal to nature. Genetic modification is unethical because it is unnatural. Another argument that's just totally invalid. It is based on the premise that only what is natural is ethical; an opinion, not a fact. So the only barriers to genetic modification are muddled and illogical people. We should ignore them and press on. Genetic engineering of humans and other life forms will only further increase efficiencies. We can make ourselves faster and stronger, with a lessened need of sleep, food and water. Humans can also be adapted to their physical environment through modification. As mentioned earlier, we can have increased cold tolerance in colder climates and increased heat tolerance in hotter climates. But it's not just pure physical improvements that can result from genetic modification. Humans can also be improved mentally; to be more accepting of authority, to have a more stringent body clock and to be able to learn faster. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and there is so much good that genetic modification can do that this short treatise cannot do it justice.

  So we move on to hard test tube babies. First described as "decanting" in the 20th century novel, Brave New World, the technology has only recently caught up to the fiction. But what awesome technology this is. For those uninitiated, hard test tube babies are babies created completely independent of parents or any other humans. A single piece of DNA, some technological wizardry and an incubation period of 9 months is all that's required for a newly minted human being. What this means is that the potential for mistakes and errors is significantly reduced, approaching zero. When human conception and pregnancy is taken out of the equation, ridiculous mishaps like miscarriages, genetic abnormalities and other defects that often occur in procreation also disappear. The technology in the creation of hard test tube babies can be perfectly calibrated so that the babies that are created will have exactly the right genetics for their future roles. Hard test tube babies allow for an unparalleled level of control, a control that is required for the ubiquity of uniformity in mankind that precipitates utopia. What it also does, along with genetic modification, is allow a world without biological gender, an unnecessary and detrimental blight on our world. Gender only exists as a product of nature's obsession with evolution. Its function is in its forcing of competition, allowing only the fittest to procreate. That was before our modern societies developed; when humans were still struggling to live past fifty years. Back then, natural selection was a necessary evil for the improvement of humankind. Now, we have genetic modification and hard test tube babies. Gender only acts as a barrier to equality and acts as a distinct differentiating force that creates divisions in humankind. Rather than the dichotomy that exists today, a dichotomy that has endured even when it has lost its utility, we should aim for pure unity, a genderless world. This is the way of the future.