Can you describe your 'better world'?
Posted: Tue May 19, 2015 8:17 am
Once basic healthy survival is assured (far from an achieved goal for most of humanity), we have wildly different interests in life.
Paul Erdos, the Hungarian mathematical genius, lived out of his suitcase. He never owned property, never married, wandered around the planet and stayed with fellow mathematicians, often uninvited, sometime for months. “Better” for him meant a better, cleaner, simpler proof of a theorem in number theory.
Mahatma Gandhi died with all his possession fitting into a shoebox. For him better meant purer, simpler, closer to the ground and to his people.
For me better means to be more and more independent of the corporate world we all depend on. I already have a solar power system and I finished building my year-around greenhouse last summer and am looking forward to fresh tomatoes in February. Being vegetarian it will be a big step in self sufficiency.
My brother calls himself the gadget-man – for him better means more and more electronic gizmo, automating every aspect of his life that he can possibly replace with some kind of machine. My 'better' is his nightmare – his 'better' is mine.
I have a friend who is the most intelligent person I have ever known. For her better means intellectual stimulation that comes near her IQ – a rare event. She does not care what she wears, what people think about her, as long as they leave her alone to think and read.
Another person I know would be petrified if she did not have the latest in fashion and her social status is the foundation of her existence.
Yet another lives for music, he is immersed in it with the exclusion of almost everything else.
Several of my friends are political activists and they are passionate about their stand and fight against social injustice.
Another one is a corporate CEO who would like to throw them all in jail and throw away the key.
Another of my friends fantasizes about living on Planet Pandora (of Avatar), as close to magnificent nature: plants, animals, innocent savages as possible.
So the question is: what kind of world would allow people to be who they want to be? Where does social conformity and responsibility end and where does individual liberty begin?
Framing the question in another way: what do we owe to society as opposed to what we owe ourselves? I have another thread somewhere about "Resolving conflicting loyalties" where I tried to address this issue in a logical and systematic way.
Here I just would like people to describe their "perfect world" that would allow themselves maximum freedom, while still being responsible parts of the community that sustains them.
Paul Erdos, the Hungarian mathematical genius, lived out of his suitcase. He never owned property, never married, wandered around the planet and stayed with fellow mathematicians, often uninvited, sometime for months. “Better” for him meant a better, cleaner, simpler proof of a theorem in number theory.
Mahatma Gandhi died with all his possession fitting into a shoebox. For him better meant purer, simpler, closer to the ground and to his people.
For me better means to be more and more independent of the corporate world we all depend on. I already have a solar power system and I finished building my year-around greenhouse last summer and am looking forward to fresh tomatoes in February. Being vegetarian it will be a big step in self sufficiency.
My brother calls himself the gadget-man – for him better means more and more electronic gizmo, automating every aspect of his life that he can possibly replace with some kind of machine. My 'better' is his nightmare – his 'better' is mine.
I have a friend who is the most intelligent person I have ever known. For her better means intellectual stimulation that comes near her IQ – a rare event. She does not care what she wears, what people think about her, as long as they leave her alone to think and read.
Another person I know would be petrified if she did not have the latest in fashion and her social status is the foundation of her existence.
Yet another lives for music, he is immersed in it with the exclusion of almost everything else.
Several of my friends are political activists and they are passionate about their stand and fight against social injustice.
Another one is a corporate CEO who would like to throw them all in jail and throw away the key.
Another of my friends fantasizes about living on Planet Pandora (of Avatar), as close to magnificent nature: plants, animals, innocent savages as possible.
So the question is: what kind of world would allow people to be who they want to be? Where does social conformity and responsibility end and where does individual liberty begin?
Framing the question in another way: what do we owe to society as opposed to what we owe ourselves? I have another thread somewhere about "Resolving conflicting loyalties" where I tried to address this issue in a logical and systematic way.
Here I just would like people to describe their "perfect world" that would allow themselves maximum freedom, while still being responsible parts of the community that sustains them.
