Imagining a better world

Imagining

Let us imagine a world where people have been educated to do what makes them feel good and when they feel like doing it. That is, a society or a human community—global—where people act on their own. Some people produce food, plant food; a few stubborn individuals are still in the food-made-of-animals activity, yet, but not for much longer.

Other individuals get together and build cars, motorcycles, airplanes, cameras, mobile phones, tools for agriculture. They do these things in groups. They get together because they all enjoy what they’re doing.

Of course, they all need materials and other individuals are organized in groups to gather materials and send them to places where they are needed. It is the whole industry thing, but things are produced because someone somewhere demands them, not because there is a profit to be made on things. There is no exchange of anything when goods and services are provided. People do what they do because they feel capable of doing it, and because they feel like doing it when they do it.

They are all connected over the Internet.

On the other side, a lot of people do from nothing to absolutely nothing. They get together, have fun. Eventually those who do things get in contact with the less active persons and take a few days off. While they are having conversations some of the inactive persons feel attracted to try those activities related to produce stuff.

The activity centers contain or are located nearby living facilities for groups. The people staying at those places might or might not be active at the nearby center. Very few persons use any other kind of vehicle other than their feet, to move around their activity centers.

Persons who drive trucks and any other vehicles—land, water, air—to deliver stuff to pick-up centers, eventually decide they want to rest and pass the vehicle on to somebody else; they do this after explaining the details of routes previously planned.

People live in groups; they are all friends and have no social boundaries, but are free to engage in sexual entertaining activities. They share everything and don’t know or need privacy for any life activity. Some women are pregnant and some have born children. The children move around freely and are taken care of, when in need, by any person available or capable of capturing the child’s momentary need.

They all move to eating places together. At these food places, there are people enjoying the art of cooking. You hardly see the same persons everyday. Some of them do go daily; others go two or three times in ten days. The thing is that anytime any group appears, there are plenty of people willing to help them get what they want.

Eating is a freedom process. You get what you see around, eat, wash your utensils and help clean the place if you feel it needs it. Some persons carry with them raw or processed foods and deliver them to the cooking staff. It’s probably something they made earlier.

People are covered with simple clothes depending on the weather. It’s common to see persons in the nude everywhere. No parts in the human body are considered as needed to be covered or concealed from the sight of others. During hot days, hardly anybody wears anything. Because they eat a lot less than in the times of hurries and schedules, they have lighter figures; however, the chubby ones get as much of everyone’s share of sexual entertainment as anybody else.

There are public places to take showers. They are also attended by volunteers who find their activities highly valuable for the community.

As one walks around, it is possible to find groups of young persons together listening to another person—adult or young—very much versed in the piece of knowledge that is now being passed on to the attending group. The talking persons are challenged by others; it’s possible to notice shifts of persons as the podiums are occupied by the challengers in endless, very intelligent debates taking place all the time. Very seldom are these debates left without registering: they can all be watched over the Internet, live or later on.

Most people do nothing most of the time. A minority keep themselves busy in cyclical terms. Cooperation is free for anybody who feels like committing for a given number of days or weeks or months. The commitment is never final and can easily be dropped. Some people hardly ever abandon their activity centers. They are usually concentrated on getting something done or a discovery refined. Everybody is connected over the Internet and whatever is being investigated here is also being investigated there; stages and results are constantly being compared.

Nothing stops; when anything is needed, it is advertised over the Internet and immediately—or progressively, depending on the complexity of the needed items—offers arrive and other centers of activity in other parts of the world start working to deliver whatever has been defined by the research center.

People know about the new products and eventually subscribe their regions as zones where they will be welcome.

The new system works only because every single person knows that there is absolutely nothing that anybody must do in order to gain the right to take from what is being produced, anything needed to live. Money has completely disappeared from the scene of human existence. People work because and when they want to; they don’t do things to earn some money for later exchange for food or other goods. Most people, thus, don’t need to work. These people do nothing most of the time, or engage themselves in groups to do art and entertainment—movies, theater, writing, TV—for those who may want to watch.

Only first high quality movie and picture cameras are circulating. A person uses equipment that is needed at the moment. Then the equipment—highly refined, always the highest quality—is then safely and carefully returned to pick up centers. Sometimes it is cleaned—by lovers of the quality of these gadgets—and left to be taken when needed. All pick up centers have literally hundreds of these high quality equipments. They are massively produced by those who used, in the past, to produce lower quality gear—so it could be “sold” at lower prices.

All challenges are met by those involved in developing products that might or might not be necessary for some people. Competition is for the satisfaction of getting results, not money, since this commodity no longer exists.

Luxury yachts and private jet planes? Yes, what about them? You would have needed to be a millionaire to own one of those. But who needs to own one? You might enjoy a few days on board of one, and you’re going to, but not all by yourself—which would be boring—but accompanied by those willing to have the same fun experience. People who produce the luxury yachts will continue to work on them simply because of the sheer pleasure of seeing them, enjoying them and sharing them. Of course, production turns shifting will be constant. A lot of people who might have wanted to work in the production of such beautiful machines, will now be able to do it.

Contrary to what might have been predicted, you don’t see long lines of people waiting for their turn to enjoy a yacht ride. People wander around, sometimes sleep in yachts, but they move on to other activities. Fishing has been banned. Humans have finally understood that eating fish is not only unnecessary for their well being, but it is actually harmful. So, you will find a lot of underwater observation equipment in these yachts, with quite a number of individuals concentrated in helping others use and enjoy the activity.

Also, without the money game—profit making—soon scientists will find the perfect energy solution, which won’t need to be covered up due to monetary interests.

Basically, in this new world, the only one element that changed is the total disappearance of money as a commodity to use for exchange of goods and services. Humans have learned in a rather short time, to forget the concept of exchanging. They have learned that life is a lot easier for everybody if things are done by those who know how to do them, when they feel like doing them. Life is easier for everybody if everybody takes what they need at the time they need it. If it isn’t to be consumed, they simply return it to places where others will be able to find it and use it in the same terms.

Nobody needs to guard from thieves or acts of robbery. Jewels are there to be enjoyed and shared. Some people are busy working on jewelry and it abounds more than ever. They do it because they like it and they can occupy themselves without risks in doing it.

Sex? Well, humans were never really monogamous. Women and men have always loved variation and they used to find themselves stuck with one partner “for life”. Of course, most of the time it didn’t work and when it seemed to work, the cheating was being done behind their backs. The absence of money in the scene has managed to fix the problem of forced monogamy. Women and men entertain themselves sexually all the time, in total lack of worry. Women let themselves get pregnant if they feel like doing it. They know that the offspring will be everybody’s responsibility and not only hers—as things used to be with the money game around. Nobody seems to have problems finding sexual opportunities; since encounters might only be one-time events, nobody really cares about the quality frame—or Hollywood Model Image—of males or females.

Since no medical laboratories exist with the sole purpose to make huge profits, no sexual calamities need to be taken care of, or expensive medications need to be bought. No false positives to elaborated stories like HIV exist anymore. People are definitely healthy, physically as well as mentally.

Serial sexual events can be seen taking place everywhere and mostly unexpected. One female feels like having sexual pleasure; she takes the position to receive males and yells a little, or a lot. Males come and penetrate her, respecting her wishes concerning ejaculating inside them or with protection. In either way, the female continues to feel like calling another male, and then another, and another. In the meantime, everybody around is having fun and getting aroused for their own sexual pleasure, which is all performed in public.

Yes, humans are living a constant orgy. They are finally enjoying in groups—and with zero moral hangover, thus, no need for evasive drugs—what they had always longed for, but were afraid to manifest in the open.

Love? Yes, what about it? The concept is no longer hidden in mysterious disguised cultural arrangements. Instead, the feeling is floating in the environment, everywhere, with everybody for everybody.

Utopia?

This Utopian scene is only possible if humans decide to completely ban money from their lives.

There’s nothing Utopian as long as no magic or esoteric, intangible beings are needed to make things happen. Our human cultures are responses given by human groups to the needs and/or challenges posed by the environment for human life to be possible, for survival to be achieved.

As such, those human responses are neither the only ones that could have been given nor the best ones. As a matter of fact, history—and today’s human condition in general—are more than enough to demonstrate that we need to work on ways to improve what we have.

In 2013 the global production of human food—not necessarily the best quality for the species—has reached levels never, ever before achieved. Today’s daily production of human food is good and enough for 4 times the amount of people on the planet. At the time of the Roman Empire, the production of food was barely to satisfy between 80 and 90% of the existing population.

So, the drawbacks of the human condition are not the result of lack of food. Hunger is due to lack of money to buy food, not lack of food for everybody. Then, is the problem money? “Oh, mine! How can such a thing be possible?”

The argument for money is so simple that we swallow it easily, without any counter arguments. But, is it so definitive that it is unbeatable? Some of us are beginning to see the big picture, making some of us not so easily gullible for the money argument.

The pro- money argument states that a mechanism is needed to certify the amount of goods and services that any individual is entitled to at any given time. Theoretically, if you have with you 300 units of money, you are entitled to whatever those 300 units can buy in goods produced, and services provided, by others.

The problem is that the value of those 300 units changes without your control. If your government, for instance, requires money, it will proceed to print it. As more of it is printed, the 300 units in “our hands” diminish in value, that is, you will be able to buy less and less as your government prints more and more.

Enterprises are organized to capture and accumulate as much money as possible. They aren’t organized to provide goods and services with value, but with the magnetism—commercial, marketing games—to make the consumer go ahead and spend it on things and services they most certainly do not need.

We aren’t buying the dresses and blouses and shirts and pants we need, or good enough to move around, but those clothes with strong marketing campaigns to convince everybody that they need it. The game aims at grabbing more of your units of money for less than the real value they have, either for you or by the materials they are manufactured with.

So, the money in the hands or accounts of the outstanding majority of individuals loses value either if they use it or if they keep it—save it. The name of the game is Do Business; but this game doesn’t mean to generate more goods and services that provide value, but simply make things to attract from consumers the most units of money for the least possible value given back to them.

“But the idea was a good one”, is a possible and probably valuable argument. “The idea of money isn’t bad in itself; what is not so good is what it has become…” And this brings us back to what we call a response of the human mind… which was probably OK at the moment of its introduction in the scene of human life, but which has actually become a drawback for the healthy development and enjoyment of the event of living.

The problem with the idea of money was at fault from the very beginning. Yes, it was! Sorry, but we need to see further than the end of our noses. So, allow me! Every single human group observable in an environment where things to survive are there to be taken—if needed—by anybody, and thus, no concept of “property”—private or public—exists, the idea of measuring how much each individual has contributed was ever absent. Nobody needed to prove that he/she had contributed enough to have a right to the group’s collection of assets of the day.

Oh, yes! If you’re thinking right now that the losers in a world without money will be those that today hold millions to their names, of course you’re right! And unfortunately those persons are also the individuals closest to the power elites, the ones that have direct lines to the military generals and weapons of mass destruction responsible ones. What can we do about this? This is certainly what might cause delays in the construction of the New Model (without money).

A person that doesn’t have millions to his/her name, will probably tend to understand and accept much more easily the New Model, than the person who has amassed fortunes—represented in money and/or properties. So, the problem of the laymen might become one of confrontation with the Power Elites. The time is now ripe to look for ways to diminish destructive confrontations. The coup must be executed in such a way that not one drop of blood will be wasted, and not one single human life will be lost. Will the millionaires give in so easily?

No, they won’t. But they should know that their money—not their properties—will lose all its value. This is unavoidable. There is no way to stop this. It’s unavoidable simply because the value given to money is highly subjective and linked to social and cultural attachments. The people in general can be freed from such attachments if they are—at the same time and unequivocally—freed from activities they need to perform that they only commit to doing because of the need to earn money. Since this need will be banned, wiped out from the scenario of society and culture, it’s easy to foresee a rather smooth transition from the public’s attraction to money and the end of such attitude.

Today, a job is a rather serious concept. People cling to their jobs even if they don’t like them. They don’t risk trying to get jobs that would be more attractive to them, simply because they don’t want to go through the uncertain moments of transition from one job to another. Changing jobs is usually a process that evolves in secrecy. The present employers need to be kept uninformed of the intentions of the employee. However, the new employer needs data that can only be obtained by inquiring about the employee to the HR department of the present employer. Thus, it’s never a safe or an easy process.

Could a World Without Money cause shortages of production? Certainly, it could! That’s why the transition must be made with the utmost carefulness. People must be progressively taught that some persons will do nothing, and yet will have the same rights to that which the rest of the people are producing. The stupidity of 8–hour work shifts will be immediately modified. A lot of people will have nothing to do, simply because all those jobs that today exist only to “count money” will have no reason to be! All those people will be set free to offer themselves—when and if they want—to do other activities.

If all this sounds subversive it’s because it is subversive. However, banning the value of money can never be considered an act of robbery, corruption, treason, or similar. In other words, the properties that the millionaires own today will continue to be “theirs”, except that the money they used to use in order to make other people work on them and for them, will no longer have any value. The point of having a property—of being the owner—of a factory, land, huge houses or buildings—which used to be to amass more and more money— will no longer have any sense.

Today it is us—those who don’t have enormous amounts of money—the ones who give those huge properties and money the value they are supposed to have. In themselves, the properties and the money to the name of those who own enormous amounts of it, only have value inasmuch as we—the people in general—give them value.

The process of change requires people to be massively conscious of the concepts commented here. Our species will continue to need a lot of people to do tasks with output that will not go to the hands or control of those who did the tasks. Instead, the output of any task will be yielded to the global species, with immediate beneficiaries being those persons closer to where the goods will be produced.

The Real Needs

People will learn to need what really helps them live a healthy life. They will start to avoid goodies that used to be offered as bail to attract spending towards the producers of absolutely unneeded goods and services. The shift to a life of minimal effort and maximal enjoyment here and now will present itself as the logical step for humankind.

Today, people eat too much, thus too many are obese. Food is produced in order to be attractive—addictive—, so people love to spend in it. Casein—the addictive substance from dairy, milk and cheese—will need to be effectively banned. It has generated a substantial toll of death and illness. So have all sorts of meats—including fish and chicken—done to the health of the human individual.

We aren’t a species evolved to eat a lot every certain amount of hours and nothing in between. It simply doesn’t work. We evolved to eat all day long, but not food intensively loaded with carbohydrates, protein and fat; no sir, not ever! We evolved to eat all sorts of light vegetables all day long; just as we evolved to go to sleep when the sun sets, and probably engage in social interaction for sexual pleasure at all times—day and night. Of course, things needed to be changed when sex became part of a contract of exclusivity, instead of an open, socially enriching pleasurable activity.

We’ve missed so much, have we not?

But the human target has been, apparently, that of reaching enormous amounts of individuals simultaneously alive, without any interest in the happiness achieved by the masses. Statisticians have only recently—and as a rather peculiar interest—started to suggest that instead of measuring the richness of countries by the amount of goods and services they have, they should focus on measuring the levels of happiness achieved by their populations.

More and more individuals are pushed to live in conditions of absolute uncertainty. Can there be a more effective way to cause unhappiness in the human individual, than that of generating rules of life filled with uncertainty? The formula is one of cynicism: “Accept that this is the way life is”. Is it? Really?

Some come up and order you to “think positive”. They tell you that you’re responsible for anything that happens to you, because simply “you weren’t positive enough…” I suppose that’s a lot easier than to make serious statistical analysis of failures Vs. successes in the general population. Millions are thinking positively, a few have become real cynics and see life with eyes of realism. Of those millions thinking positively, millions fail and a few succeed. Of course, the “positive think” pushers only see the successes, ignoring the millions that failed at the same time.

Usually, the think positive statement is related to money. “You must love money and it will come to you! You don’t have money because you don’t love it!” What!? How could anybody in the culture of money not love money crazily? If a rite existed to adore money every single morning as the Sun rises, with proven success, every single person in the culture of money would be performing the Money Adoring rite at sunrise! Wouldn’t you?

Some people definitely focus only on making money. To make money means to accumulate as much money from the others, by giving them as little value as possible, or nothing at all, as the perfect exchange. They have begun using the expression Win-Win as the desirable balance in all transactions. However, for the large corporations to amass fortunes, Win-Win doesn’t seem to work. They need Win-Lose, being the side that loses, always, the little person in the street or “consumer”.

In all transactions, some of it must go to governments. It would be OK if only governments were really acting on behalf of the people. But we know this isn’t the way things work. Governments are run by corporations and these are only interested in their profits. So, even the taxes the small people in the street pay, go to entities that will use them against their benefit.

That’s how sick and sickening the Money Model works. But you know it; you feel it daily along with your “loved” ones, except that you don’t see the big picture, because the system simply requires people to be blind to the underlying reality of it all.

Oh, yes, you don’t have to say or think it again! A model Without Money would contain a lot of people who would be doing exactly nothing. So what? Today, there are myriads of persons doing exactly nothing for the benefit of the general population, and yet they’re getting paid and with those coins they justify their right to that which is being produced, which is really necessary for survival. I’m referring here to the millions occupied in banks and accounting who generate no richness at all, but need to push papers where the story of the movements of money is registered. Society—us—pay them for doing nothing in our benefit.

So, the model without money will not be the only one generating millions doing exactly nothing for the benefit of the rest. The money model is already doing that, except that today, the occupation of those people counting money and pushing papers, provides those involved in it, little or no real enjoyment of life.

Those who will be doing something will most certainly be the best ones at the tasks they will be involved in, and not as the result of a commitment to make money, but as the result of a commitment with themselves to be useful in the things they feel themselves capable.

Instead of hiring and contracting—with the obstacles involved in the processes—people will freely move from activity to activity, from production center to production center. Productivity in general will gain with this mechanism, since most of the time persons with full commitment to their activities will be in charge of important tasks.

Free time will be the regular way of life for some, whereas for others—probably selected minorities—busy time—strictly by choice—will be their regular life. Since sex fun will not be a commitment for life, no search for the perfect partner will steal time from those committed to creativity and production. What we call today sexual harassment will have no reason to be or exist. Both genders will participate in high value activities for the same reasons: personal commitment to things of their liking and personal skills. And sex among peers at work will be just as normal as sex among unknown people at social gatherings and what have you.

Finally, an open recognition of sex being an element of fun for our species—and not solely a reproductive process—will have become the norm, universally accepted by all individuals and in all societies.

Reproduction will finally become a responsibility and total freedom of the woman. However, upbringing of the offspring will become part of the community, where all men could have been “the father”—but nobody really cares—and all women could have taken care of the kid. Love? A general feeling, flowing naturally all over the environment.

What is more Utopian, 1) the banning of money or 2) the transformation of our sexual attitudes?

And yet, none of the above are biological traits of our species! Of course not! They are cultural, social constructs, which become traits, so universally spread, that we fall in the trap of thinking of them as biological determinations. False!

We Need a Change

We hear that statement several times weekly. Some of us daily. People are looking for the secret of life, how to be happy and stay happy. A very popular saying states that “if you change, the world changes”. In other words, it is an effort targeted at the happiness of the individual. The idea forgets the social essence of the individual and recommends to forget it all, to ignore it all, or to avoid having feelings towards things that make life difficult.

It is intended to work as if the cultural environment of the individual were something of choice. But the cultural surroundings of us all, become part of our inner conceptions of existence. Very few individuals are capable of overcoming their personal socialization. For the human species to function as a social species, mechanisms must be taken advantage of that convince the individual that the logic of things—the best edition—is the one embedded in “your” particular culture.

The “normal” human comes equipped to internalize in her/his personality, the collection of values and definitions of what is good or bad, what is convenient for her/his life. The set of social rules and the laws become embedded in the mentality of all individuals, with varying degrees of adaptation, from total acceptance of the rules and values, to total rejection of them.

However, we need to observe carefully important differences within those who do accept all social rules. They need to be divided into two important groups: those who observe the rules and those who cheat, or violate the rules when “nobody is watching”—until they are caught.

The cheaters are not to be confused with the rebels, that is, those who openly reject the rules, but still obey them. For the cheaters, the rules should be obeyed—they don’t question the rules—, but they find it difficult or impossible to live according to them.

Rebels object to rules and promote changes. Their objections are usually based upon the proportion of cheaters in the social group. Rebels reason that if the proportion of cheaters grows to significant statistical levels, something must be wrong with the rules themselves—and not with the individuals. The issue is, what proportion of cheaters should be considered statistically significant?

Some rebels respond: zero. If a system—culture, society, laws—exists that can not be obeyed naturally by 100% of the population, then such system is at fault and needs improvement.

During the last ten thousand years, our species, the humans, using this incredibly large brain that we possess—a gift from the process of evolution—, we have arranged to create the most varied collection of cultures. The norm or constant element in all of them, has been a higher or lower degree of suffering that the rules and structures exert on the individual humans living within them.

Our brains give us, the humans, the enormous capacity of almost immediate adaptation to environment challenges. Where other species need to experiment with physical—genetic—changes in order to reach species capable of surviving in the changing environments—taking from hundreds of thousands to millions of years—us, the humans, in only 220,000 years have managed, without genetic changes, to elaborate cultural responses—that is, brain elaborations—that have been incredibly successful—compared to other species of similar proportions—in making of humans the most successful species of its proportions in conquering the planet.

This “success” needs to be measured in the light of the enormous amount of human individuals populating the planet today. In the last 200 years, humans grew in population from less than 1 billion—a level maintained for at least 10 thousand years—to 7.3 billion—August, 2013.

Species that have been on the planet for millions of years have not been able to adapt to challenging environments with the speed and efficiency with which us, humans, have been able to do it. Why? Because of the enormously complex brain we possess! Do not look for the answer on anything else. You will find that no matter what you mention, in one way or another is related to the size of our brain in proportion to our total size and weight.

But those adaptations—mostly cultural, being culture just one form of technology, that is, social technology—have come at a price, a cost that has had to be paid in the form of suffering by billions of individuals.

And today, in 2013, that’s where we are. Some rebels believe that it’s possible to improve the human condition, especially because the present state is the result of a culture, and all cultures are nothing but human creations. So, anything that humans have designed, humans can modify and improve.

Things complicate themselves for everybody when elements of the esoteric type are introduced in the dialog. Some people tend to believe that our cultures are not human elaborations, but instructions from the “gods”. So, we need permission from the deities in order to change the rules promoted by our cultures. Such permissions are—for obvious reasons—quite difficult to obtain.

And that’s how a situation already complicated in itself, gets even more complicated when elements resulting from sheer imagination, pretend to be included as arguments with equivalent validity as conclusions sustainable by observations made under the discipline of the scientific method.

The Secret

Let’s analyze the following situation. It’s about two possible outcomes, or two possible wishes. Which one would you choose?

1. You to be happy, with lots of money in a guaranteed way, while the rest of the people in the world—with the few exceptions like yourself—continue to live in the same uncertainty they are right now—and in which you were before the “transformation”.
2. Everybody to live with certainty, with not ever a hint of shortage or uncertainty about the things that humans can solve by themselves in total solidarity.

OK. Let’s visualize what fills your mind. When you wish for yourself a situation of privilege, you must make some sort of negotiation within yourself. You must find a way, a reasoning process that will settle your mind in peace about the uncertainty of millions of people. Your condition of bliss will constantly be in danger, because it will depend on privileges—like having a lot of money—that in turn depend on other things being maintained—that the Money Model will continue to be accepted by everybody else.

But then, the second alternative—the Money Model is banned—will provide a human environment safe for everybody; freedom will be a matter of natural existence. Your happiness will really depend on yourself, since your possibilities of interaction with the rest of the people will be open and, for all practical purposes, really limitless.

In the second alternative, the limit is set only by natural causes, today out of humans' control already. Your level of enjoyment will depend on your own capacity to be free, being the boundary of your freedom only where the freedom of the others begins.

So, isn’t the image formed in a human condition where uncertainty is not part of the scenario a better one? Let’s visualize a situation in which we will always be able to do that in which we are good. When we perform our activity, we will generate the best possible results, since others will be there to back us. The flow of actions will always be an accepted automatic sequence of events, expected by everybody around us.