Idea No. I

Idea No. II
Equality
Education
Creativity
Variety
Respect

Idea No. III
About Governing
About Social Structure
About Economy
About Education
About Family

Idea No. IV

Utopia Index

Main Index

Idea No. I

"Goodbye", he said.
"Goodbye", said the fox.
"Now, here is my secret, very simply, you can only see things clearly with your heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," repeated the little prince, so as to remember.

This dialog, copied from the charming description of the Little Prince's Grand Tour on other planets, should and probably will be the closing part at the very end of my effort to build a world (at least some parts of it) in which the little prince and all of the other people would like to live. Let us pretend that, as well as the little prince, we also believe in the existence of some other worlds (planets). Searching for those worlds, which are supposed to be better, then the present one would be just utopistic speculation as long as we employ only the imagination. But since we do not dispose with the racket as the little prince did, we have no other choice than rely upon our own idealistic thoughts.

Each of the planets the little prince has discovered and entered has been a planet of one single person. Each of them had his weaknesses, which perfectly matched with the negative and dark sides of human beings in general. For our purpose, we will take the other way around. Utopistic society-even if it's hard or maybe not possible to reach-should be basically good one. What good means is the matter of individual opinion and preferences. The visions of goodness as well as utopia are as numerous as the number of people. For picking up the positive sides which should take part and consequently create utopia, we will not make any extensive research or study in order to find out what goodness means for the majority. Plenty of attempts have been undertaken to describe utopian communities so far. Some of them have been admired, refused or even abused for creating an ideology. Let us invite those who have been already playing with utopistic visions and let them show us what their conceptions of goodness include. But since we are not here for simple copying and accepting the others´ thoughts, we will select what seems to be the most suitable for our own ideal picture.

Utopia is more than an ideal place where to live; it is a state of being as well. It should be a world where everybody desires to grow up children in. A world without wars, without hunger and incurable diseases or without unreasonable and absurd wasting. It should be a world where people are living in a full respect to each other while feeling happiness and satisfaction about the way they are living their lives. All of the bad things, I have sketched above, make our lives imperfect and uncomfortable, and should be eliminated as much as possible. It is needless to say that human being is imperfect but is it really an obstacle for being good and being able to prevent all of those things which we would rather get rid of in order to have happy and valuable lives?

Idea No. II

Now, when we realized, what we are searching for, we can have a look, what the universe of utopistic ideas is offering to us. Since we do not have to rely upon any means of transportation as the little prince had to, we do not need to care about the distance which is necessary to bridge as to get to the other planets and than back to The Earth, which is the place where our ideal world will be established.

Equality

The first planet we will imagine is a small round globe, looking almost the same as The Earth does. It is perfectly round; the distance from the middle to the surface seems to be the same in every single point, the colour and size of the stones covering this planet is completely the same. And there, in the middle of one of the circles made from stones, we find a person. It takes a while to recognize that he is a human being, not just a stone but when he sees something unusual he starts to talk first:


"Why do you have different colour than the rest of the stones? And what a strange size you have. Why are you not in a circle and how did you manage to move? You are not allowed to. You are not equal to us."
As the reader has correctly guessed, we found ourselves on the planet called Equality.

The person living there spent the whole life by measuring the right size of circles, rearranging them in order to be perfectly the same all the time. When asked what is positive about being the same colour as the others and being part of the same circles, he answered as follows:


"I have heard about the planet whose name I have already forgotten but I think it starts with E. It is a planet where inhabitants are not equal. That causes fights and wars because everybody wants more or something different to posses. And this possession, since he is not able to obtain it by his own effort, he wants to get from somebody else. By using violence or by betraying, cheating and so on. Well, nothing like this exists here. There has never been any dispute among inhabitants (stones) on this planet so far. Nobody has anything what could be the object of envy, jealousy or greed. All of us are friends and as one of the very enlighted philosophers from The E. planet said: "Friends possses everything in common"(Plato, 1992, p.99).

And not only I agree with this opinion. Have you ever heard about Sir Thomas More from the same planet? According to him "all men should have and enjoy equal portions of wealth and commodities. For the wise man did easily foresee this to be the one and only way to the wealth of a commonalty, if equality of all things should be brought and established" (More, 1997, p.124). My planet is a happy one because I will never let anything that is unusual and consequently not equal with my stones to stay here for a long time span. So now I must you ask to leave. The harmony and equilibrium of my circles is very fragile and it requires huge effort and restless work to keep it."

We are leaving the planet of Equality leaving plenty of questions behind us. It is not very real that such equality would be possible to realize on The Earth but there are some positive sides in the idea of this small stony man. People are not stones. They are different in many aspects but there are some basic human fundamentals, which are common, to each of us. No individual could exist without some interaction with other humans; all humans are part of the same species. All humans, does not matter if red or yellow, black or white, tall or small, need to fulfil their basic needs in order to survive? I think that all of us will agree that in the eyes of society people should be equal. We have found the first basic part of our ideal world, which we want to bring back to The Earth.

Education

Even if our minds are still wondering about how to introduce the idea of Equality on The Earth, we must continue to collect more positive aspects our society will be build on.

The second planet which appears in our imagination looks like a paper ball children are making during breaks at school. It is a very big planet and it seems to grow a bit every single second. When we come closer, we recognize the reason quite soon. Two people occupy this planet. One is a pupil and the other one is a teacher. The pupil is trying to create some very complicated scheme while throwing the used paper easily to the ground. That is the reason of the planet's growth. Teacher is never satisfied and makes the pupil try again and again. The name we give this planet is Education. When the teacher has noticed us, he does not show any sign of surprise, he simply points to the free chairs, gives us paper and waits for us to start drawing the same scheme as the unsuccessful pupil is trying to draw. Since our papers stay empty for an hour, he says very seriously:

"Don't you know that education and consequently complete knowledge is the only way how to establish the perfect world? Don't you know that wisdom can help to prevent conflicts, wars and disputes, which your planet suffers from? Have you ever heard about Plato and his call for good education? I can quote whatever from all of his brilliant books. Try to guess which book this quotation is coming from: "After music and poetry, our young people must be given physical training."(Plato, 1992, p. 80). I can see, that you have not a faint idea. Does not matter, I can teach you everything. You will be so preoccupied by learning that nothing else will ever come into your mind. And when we finish this, some physical training will be provided for you, of course. Otherwise your body would not be in the right harmony with your brain. Plato claimed that such a harmony is essential for strong human being. Are you looking for some equipment you will be using for training? As you can see, our planet is getting bigger and bigger. It is just paper but the growth is possible just to a certain extent. After you are tired from memorizing books, you will have some time to relax by picking up the used paper and recycling it. But first you must undergo a long journey to other planets to get the liquid which is needed for the recycling procedure. When the weight of the planet is remarkably reduced, you can study again. Isn't this a nice life occupation? Maybe you could ask, what is the point of all those efforts. By getting more and more knowledge we want to find more effective way of recyclation of the paper we are using so as to our planet doesn't need to suffer under such a weight of paper in future".

After learning this we should leave fast otherwise we would be employed as recycling machines soon. The idea of good education seems to be acceptable for us. Of course not in that drastic form. But since our planet is in a really miserable condition, why should we not use education and wisdom in order to arrange some more thrifty and considerate ways of our living on The Earth. Supposingly, there are many current ways; knowledge such as energy conservation, recycling, etc. can help humanity live as one with the world. Education will be definitely useful for our purpose. Let's see what else will.

Creativity

The third planet we are just about to land on seems to be very colourful even from remarkable distance; it is full of small and very loud people. On first sight their activities seem to be confused and senseless but when we come closer we recognize that people are organized into small groups. Some of them are building while the others are construing, interpreting. The air is full of words, which we cannot really understand but people sound quite happy to us. Let's call this planet Creativity. As far as we can see, there are no machines which produce goods.

Nobody is staying by assembly lines, putting pieces together - simply because there are no assembly lines at all. This colourful life is just amazing. One person seems to be less busy than the others so maybe he can explain to us, what is going on this planet.

"Welcome, comrades, what brings you to our planet?" he asks when he notices our staring looks.

"Well, what to say? We are looking for good things which could be brought back to our world, so we can create a better one."

This person seems to be a bit surprised by our statement and after a while of hesitation, he replies: "Have you just said create better world? Than you do not have to look for any other good things. Creativity is the best and basic one. It is a feature inherent in human beings from the very beginning. As you can see, people here are happy. They are creating what they want to. If the product is useful, it is used; if it isn't then other people construe it. Everybody likes his work. People are busy and consequently they have no time to think about bad things. Everybody knows everybody and all of the created things belong to all of us since we are using common ressources. You can have a look around and join a group whose occupation is the most suitable for you."

"OK, it is a nice picture you are showing to us but why are the workers demolishing the machines, which have been just fabricated? Why do you not use them so that people would not have to work all the time?"

"But they love their work, it is their pleasure. They do not feel alienated from their work and the product they are creating. As I have already told you, creativity is a gift; people should cherish it as those workers do. I do not see any positive point in machines. Well there is one - you can create them. While creating something, people feel alive and worthy."

While listening to this man, we definitely must come to the conclusion that something similar has bee already said and even written. Was it great Marx himself who has stated: "…life activity, productive life itself, appears to man only as a means for the satisfaction of a need, the need to preserve physical existence. But productive life is species-life. It is life-producing life. The whole character of a species, its species-character resides in the nature of its life activity and free conscious activity constitutes the species-character of man." With those thoughts in our minds, we are leaving the planet of Creativity. We are leaving the planet but not the idea…

Variety

The Variety planet is not possible to miss. It has the strangest shape, you can ever imagine. Actually, the strangest fact about the planet is that nobody from our research group can really say what the shape looks like. Our opinions vary diametrically. And that is the point of the idea of this planet. To describe what we see and experience here would not make any sense because of the unbelievable variety of things that are going on there. So just in sum: inhabitants of this planet live in the conviction that variety is the basis of their happiness. Each of them is different and according to that philosophy their communities are created. Each of them has a few simple rules. And since everybody can choose the community he or she wants to live in, the life is so enjoyable for them that it is not necessary to establish many rules. A happy society is not producing conflicts.

Respect

Very close to this planet (we almost could not recognize that it is not still the same one - taking into account the strange shape of Variety), there is another. For us it is the last one. The name of this planet is quite unclear for us, since the citizens say that they would respect any name we would like to give to this planet. Let's call it Respect then. To discover what is the main pattern of this small round green world we must be very careful and search for the people for quite a long time. The reason is that the whole planet is covered by wild forest and bush. People are living in small cottages. Their villages are called Neighbours. Their clothes are very simple as well as their language and the way of living in general. Those people treat each other with respect, no matter if man, woman or child. All of them have the same rights and obligations. Simplicity of their lives makes them very relaxed and very friendly not just to each other but to nature as well. All of the natural resources are used very carefully and effectively. No unreasonable wasting. Each of the Neighbours produces the exact amount of products they are able to consume. When lacking some goods, they can send a group of representatives to deal with other Neighbours so as to get the missing good for some other their community can produce by using their natural resources or special skills. That is the only secret each community has. Their educational system is based on inherited knowledge about some sort of product, which makes it special and therefore very attractive for the others. This provides a very safe way of how to exchange goods. The attractive and special good each community is able to produce can not be the subject of demand. It has to be offered in order to get some other product. And usually, the community, being offered the chance to get something special, which otherwise is some kind of luxury, never rejects that. This special good is, later on, usually during some celebrations, divided up among whole community. The attitude of adults toward children can possibly remind us of Firestone's ideas. She claimed that children should be independant of their parents, consequently families should be large and children (as well as women) should be completely integrated into society. This philosophy seems to be applied here to a full extent. Of course children have their biological parents but the dependency is eliminated by the idea that all people should help each other and this is true for raising children, too. Not just parents are responsible for their children's happy and healthy life, it is the whole community.

Our time is up. With the help of our imagination, we have recognized what our world and society should be built on. There are five basic building stones: Equality, Education, Creativity, Variability and Respect. By using our fantasy we can try to put all of those stones together and start to build our utopistic house on The Earth.

Idea No. III

Our Earth is a large interconnected ecological system. Humans are part of this system and must currently rely on it for survival, by breathing oxygen, drinking its water etc. If this system can no longer provide these life-sustaining functions, human being will no longer exist. At this very moment, our planet undergoes a process of very harmful treatment from the side of humans. The biggest paradox hidden in this human behaviour is fatal. This lack of respect of a life form for itself, can explain the lack of respect for other living forms, which includes living on The Earth. On an individual level, most people are very nice and caring.

Collectively, we should be the same. Every individual can develop a respect for his or her life. We should be able to find individual good in our collective actions. While building our ideal world on The Earth, we should have those ideas still in our mind.

A few basic questions we should pose before establishing our new social system. Here they are: How will the utopistic world be governed? What will the economical system and social structure look like? Which improvements would be suggested for educational system? What about family?
Let's have a closer look on the answers:

About Governing

I suppose that all of us would agree that some (even if just minimal) governing is necessary in each society. Our governors would not be anybody else than people who keep in respect all of our basic building stones - Equality, Education, Creativity, Variability and Respect. For each social unit (they will be discussed later), there will be a group of governors whose number will depend on the size of community. There is no age limit for governors at all. The process of choosing them will be similar to a competition where they have to show the best competences in all five basic areas we have suggested as the basic ones for our world. It will ensure huge variability of people chosen as representatives of the particular social unit. The time the governors stay in their office is not exactly defined. They can leave when they feel they are not able to fulfil their responsibilities in the best way or that there is some other occupation they would like to devote their time to. But before leaving, they must spend some time with the new governor who will replace them and to explain to him everything about their post and responsibilities in the Governors Group. Since the work in the Governors Group is very difficult and demanding, governors do not stay longer than five years. Whenever one of them leaves, a new competition is proclaimed in order to choose the best candidate for the free place. People chosen by a lottery system create the commission responsible for evaluating and choosing candidates.

About Social Structure

Since we have already stated that people vary considerably, we cannot expect that all of them would like to live in one community, having the same rules and practising the same way of life. With acceptance of our five basic rules, which should be covering the whole society, we can let people create and consequently choose the social unit which is most suitable for them. People should have a chance to leave their social unit and each social unit has the obligation to accept everybody who is interested in living in it. As the reader has probably noticed, at this place we are following the ideas of Nozick. His statement "people are different" is nothing else than pure true. Nobody can successfully argue about that. But Nozick goes on: "…there will not be one kind of community existing and one kind of life led in utopia. Utopia will consist of utopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds of lives under different institutions." We can assume that by this divergence people would be given quite huge space for their own interests and preferences. It should fulfil their natural need for creativity and variability. And more, what we are suggesting here is the idea of mutual cooperation between communities. Social units should be open so as everybody can bring in some new information and can find out how the other communities are working out.

About Economy

"Since consumption is merely a means to well human-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well being with the minimum of consumption", writes Schumacher. This should be the basic idea of our system of producing goods. Taking into consideration the complexity of impacts our activities have on our planet we certainly must come to the conclusion that multiplying of consumption is nonsense, which will have (or already has) considerably harmful consequences. To protect nature and consequently ourselves we must stop treating nature and its resources as enemies and start to behave as rational and not exploiting human beings. The means of production must be as simple as possible. And then, the time we will save on useless producing and consuming we can spend on travelling, education and other non-materialistic pleasures.

Each community can decide what its financial system should look like but we would suggest the combination of a credit system combined with the monetary one. How to put this into practice? Each of the communities would have most of the goods in public ownership. By public vote, people should decide which things they need in order to fulfil their needs and to have a happy life without suffering. For those things, the credit would be used. The credit is the same for everybody and it depends on the decision of each individual how to divide it as to purchase the common goods. Even children will have their own credits, which they can start using at the age of six after obtaining basic information about how the system works and how to divide the credit in the most effective way. Up to this age, children's parents will be getting his/her credit in order to take proper care of the child. The credit cannot be used for the next decade. The monetary system will serve more as the appreciation of the years spent by working for the community, of the level of education reached by the worker or of special hours devoted to work. But this - let´s call it money - cannot be used for materialistic things. People can buy travelling, sport activities or some extra education for it.

About education

Educational system presents very important part of our utopistic society since we have introduced our belief in wisdom and knowledge. Our education will be similar to the one introduced by Bellamy. His ideas remind us of the already mentioned ideas of Plato. To refresh our memories, Bellamy (or more precisely his character, Dr. Leete) says: "The faculty of education is held to the same responsibility for the bodies as for the minds of its charges. The highest possible physical, as well as mental, development of everyone is the double object of a curriculum which last from the age of six to that of twenty-one." The education system (as well as the other systems) can be organized in order to wishes and expectations of each particular community. But the basic education should be obligatory so as to provide children with basic information and ideas about their future occupation, about the systems which are established in different communities so they can be able to choose where and how they want to live. Nobody can be pushed into some further education he or she does not want to undergo. But the lessons should be so interesting that each child would be eager to stay at school as long as possible. And if the student finds out there is some other community with more suitable and interesting educational program, he or she is free to join this one. The lessons should be held in nature as much as the weather allows so children get acquitted with nature very easily and their relationship towards it will be friendly and positive. From the very beginning they should be taught how to treat their surroundings, consequently nature in a non-violent and respectful way.

About family

Since we consider children to be quite financial independent on their parents from the age of six, they can move around and choose which family or community to join. But as far as we could observe and learn from the historical development of families, children incline to spend as much time with their biological parents as possible. The same is true for parents. On one hand, children should be cherished, but on the other treated as equal human beings.
Families should not be only the nuclear ones. Nuclear family eliminates the child's chances to meet with other generations. The bigger the family, the more tolerant and respectful the person who will grow up there. Mothers or fathers do not have to work up to the time the child reaches the age of six and still get the full credit. The rearing and bearing of children is considered a very demanding and valuable job. Cildren are positive contributions to community.

As for parents, marriage is not requested but if two people (it does not matter which gender they belong to ) want go through a ceremony, it is possible. But since marriage has lost its previous purpose, the wedding would be more a chance to meet friends and family and let them know that he or she decided for this particular partner. Monogamy is not required but it is not forbidden either. It depends on the arrangements within the family but children should not be negatively influenced by irresponsible behaviour of their parents.

Parents will always be supported to teach their children how to treat their surroundings - nature and other people - in a non-violent and respectful way. Children should be shown at very young age that not the materialistic but the spiritual world is the more important and durable. That not multiplying of their needs and desires is the crucial aspect their life is based on.. The important things are inside of us and as long as we are trying to be good, we can live happy and healthy lives here on The Earth.

Idea No. IV

Now, we are at the very end of our journey (we called it "effort" at the beginning). Some of the basic things we have found, some are still waiting for brave discoverers. We came to the same conclusion as the fox in the story of the little prince. Did you forget? Ok, we will repeat it for you so as to remember.

"Goodbye", he said.
"Goodbye", said the fox.
"Now, here is my secret, very simply, you can only see things clearly with your heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," repeated the little prince, so as to remember.