What does your social utopia look like?
A social utopia would have to be a place that is both morally and ethically just. This means that poverty and hunger could not exist because no one would have more than anyone else. Without greed or extreme ambition people would do less for their own personal gain. If everyone had a common goal to strive for, everyone could work towards that end without causing harm to anyone else. The common goal would have to center around peace and unity. Peace and unity could be achieved by ensuring security to everyone inside the community. One way to ensure security to the community would be to provide financial security to everyone.
A utopia would have to be secluded from the rest of society. A vacant island that houses a dormant volcano would provide both security and beauty to its inhabitants. This social utopia would live off the land and its natural nourishment. Fruit and animals would be plentiful in order to eliminate hunger. Endless streams of clean water would circle the base of the mountain. Without any sense of currency there could be no poverty as long as everyone had enough food and water. People would work as hunter gathers, educators, caretakers, doctors, and farmers. There would be no social hierarchy and the people would choose whatever work they saw best fit to them. This helps create a sense of freedom and does not allow anyone to have power over anyone else.
Government would only be in place to maintain order in the community. 10 elected members would oversee that everyone is working towards the common good. This means that anyone that is openly working against the good of everyone or solely for personal gain would have to be voted off the island after a fair trial. In order to give people freedom of choice, inhabitants that would be discontent with life on the island would be allowed an opportunity to leave and return to the rest of society.
Without the need to harm anyone in society, true peace and harmony could be achieved in this community. Tolerance would be held at a very high regard. Therefore, peoples of all colors, races, religions, etc. would be valuable members of the community. This utopia would have to be set in the future so that the people of the community could learn from the past and how ambition and capitalism ultimately led to the worlds downfall. This new utopian society would then have the knowledge to steer away from the evils of personal gain that would not benefit the rest of the community. A society of this caliber is not feasible to us at the moment but perhaps in a millennia or way off into the future, someone will have been able to think of a place where everyone can retract to their bare roots and work together in an attempt to find contentment in doing the common good.
Estaban,
You have provided a good sketch of how a utopia based upon certain ideals of a just society would have to live. I appreciate your vision of a sustainable environment where everyone has enough and people don’t “need to harm anyone”. This question of needs and what is necessary to sustain a community have been address, but what about their wants? How does such a community and its elected leaders see the “common good”? How does that happen?
Dr. Watts