Utopia

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Ok then, let’s make a Copenhagen 2!
Let us make a city that is clean, environment friendly, productive and poverty free. Maybe that is what Utopia actually is.
This thread is not about making a Utopia that I have in mind or you envision, it is about figuring out what Utopia is and how to make it. And also about stopping ourselves from thinking “we should stay with what we have” and start thinking “what better things we can get? What would become available to us of we replace this with that?”.
Can anyone tell me what is so bad about this? Can anyone tell me why I am getting more posts against than with? Everyone is acting as if I am insane and no one is thinking “Hay! Let’s try that. It is not like we lose anything and who knows what we may find”.

Fnord
“Then it is pointless to discuss Utopia as if it it could be made real.”
No, it is pointless to discuss it with someone whose mind refuses to consider the possibility of its existence since his mind will not allow it to.
My mind does and I can see parts of it, not the whole thing but parts; with help, I may be able to see more of it and with enough people working together (and believing in it) we may end up with a complete design that we all can see, that design would be made with the perspectives of many people and not a single person.

“Utopia has been tried. Marx's communist state was supposed to be a worker's Utopia, and look how it turned out. Same for Hitler's Aryan Utopia.”
I don’t know about Hitler since he never got to the stage of building and failed at the stage of preparing to lay the foundation. It shows that he had planning problems and I don’t expect anything good to have resulted if he succeeded. Is one failure a proof of impossibility?

As for Marx, the Soviet Union was one of the super powers of the world! Their scientists, artists and athletes were among the top (if not thee top)! They launched the first satellite and the first manned space ship ever! I don’t know about you but it looks like they were doing something right. The USSR is a proof that Utopia (or at least Copenhagen 2) can exist; their failure can tell us what we need to do to succeed.
The Soviet failed because of greed and impatience. Each country forming the union wanted to be the one to benefit from the union’s power and none had the patience to wait for their turn. Building a strong union is harder than building a country which in turn is harder than building a single city; guess what we (me so far) are trying here is the easiest which boosts the chances of success.

“The people who kept trying could look at birds in flight and see that human flight was possible; all they had to do was configure the engine and wings of a flying machine to maximize lift for the available thrust. People who try to promote Utopian ideals have no pre-existing examples to model from”
Hmm… planes from birds, boats from ducks and submarines from fish. I wonder which animal we got the rocket from, and what about the steam engine? The Helicopter? The kaleidoscope? Holography? What about all the technology out there that has no natural models? It is called invention and not a discovery because it never existed before. If some inventions were inspired, that doesn’t mean all of them are, we have enough intelligence to create (we just didn’t try hard enough).

“Okay ... assuming that this particular argument has any merit, why don't you go ahead and create your Utopia and show us all how it is done and how your faith in the possibility will make it happen? Go ahead ... we can wait ...”
It is a strong argument and I am already doing that. On the other hand, you are doing what?
I appreciate your comments, but unless you accept the possibility (which we can debate forever) and start thinking about what might become, there is nothing we can do for each other. A lot of people told me to quit and never try, none has given me a good reason to do so (aside from the usual: It is impossible!).

knowbody15
Very good questions. But why does it appear as if people think I have all the answers and never try to answer their own questions themselves? Every question has an answer, if I can find it, why can’t you?
Still, I’ll answer all these questions when the time comes for them; we are still at stage one (Actually, we are at stage zero where I try to get people to agree on going to stage one).
Ohh! And 2+2 will always be 4. Logic is the one constant you can always count on and it is the foundation of any system (including the ones in Copenhagen 2).

persian85033
Rules and regulations are like everything else in this world; too few of them are bad, too many of them are just as bad. You need to balance it.
In Copenhagen 2, there will be two golden rules from which all other regulations are derived:
1- Should benefit! Doing good (the natural opposite of doing harm) can be considered as the purpose of mankind. Ironically, our rules are, almost always, formed in the negative conjugate of this one (don’t do harm) which is mainly due to the wide spreading ignorance of what is good and what is bad.
2- Greater good > good > no harm: This is the action scale where doing something higher on that scale is enforced over doing something that is lower. Not helping that old man who collapsed on the street because you are doing the laundry (or worst, watching the game) should not happen and the law should punish for such irresponsible behavior.
As for actions that have both benefit and harm, the amount of harm and the needed effort to remedy it is weighed against the amount of benefit and its urgency.

If you study religion, you’ll find that they have the same base rules with the rest of the rules acting as regulations to help adhere to the main rules. And so will every recognized wise man tell you the same.
The only reason that rules are enforced rather than published as the regulations and guidelines they actually are is because humans are irresponsible enough to ignore regulations and guidelines and just jump in that pitfall against all good reason. In a well educated society, the rules automatically turn into guidelines as the need to enforce them is almost none existent and the public are mature enough to recognize situations where the need to break these guidelines is urgent or necessary.

As for your suggestion, which holds some good merit, I am afraid that what you are talking about is merely what we had few thousand years ago. It is true that humanity was much closer to a Utopian existence back then than they are right now (though it has nothing to do with the rules).
Many studies (and just everyday observation) show that a single human is a very good entity by nature, that it is knowledge seeking helpful and even self sacrificing being. The thing is that the more of us you put together, the worse we become. This is a fact and it is undeniable.
Now the simplest Utopian model would be a small group of humans who distribute the responsibility of maintaining the group among each other without overloading any one and at the same time searching for ways to increase the power, knowledge and survivability of the group.
That doesn’t sound very hard to achieve, granted you pick the right people for that group, but it is no longer feasible because we overpopulated the planet. Even if you create that group, its members will eventually be influenced by the huge influx of human interference resulting from this overpopulation.
The only way to reduce the population is by educating the people and enforcing birthrate controls (until education is sufficient enough) and you can’t do that without a well organized city (guess what I am trying to do).

It is so easy to say give up, but why is it so hard to say go for it? I understand that reading what I write and trying to see the problems in it takes time and effort, and I understand that actually trying to work with me by thinking of systems and solutions will take even more time and effort. Is there really no one other than me who is willing to do that? Is this really not worth thinking about? Is trying to see a better future something bad?

I thank everyone who took the time to read or comment (more so for the ones who do both) and I tell you that it helps (more than you think) and I wish that you all continue to comment.

From Hitler's point of view that was a Good World Model. A greater Germany guided and supervised by the Party for the glory of the Aryan Race. Service to the State, Glory to the Race!

In his crazy way, Hitler was trying to make a better world. Beware of people trying to make the world better.

ruveyn

Sorry I was a bit snippy.....but I was just making the point that nothing's perfect. Your idea of creating a society where all humans live reasonably well is what we should all hope for and try to achieve. But the type of control you're talking about is at best, ultimately counter productive, at worst, immoral....the ultimate question will be, who gets to run the whole thing?

Why not try to find a current system that you think works pretty well, and imagine what would be needed to make it better....