A world of difference

Imagine what life would be like in a best case scenario.

I spend so much time being unhappy with the way things are and the way they appear to be going that I usually forget to visualize an alternative.  Any impulse that I have on my own to dream about a better future usually times out on the question of how to get there.  It has finally dawned on me that it doesn't always have to matter.  Suppose the pathology of capitalist neoliberalism has been exposed and died in the sunlight. Suppose the problem of billionaires and the tyranny of elites is solved.  Suppose in the weakening of the walls of our current prison, revolution breaks out and the good guys drop their numerous petty differences, combine forces and prevail as one powered purely by a mighty and righteous fury.  Maybe Marxist socialism is the outcome; maybe anarcho-syndicalism; maybe government of by and for the people.  These are but trivial details in the best case.

I have some ideas about how things could be different.

For starters, no one profits from someone else's disadvantage.  That is considered a wrong.  Never mind how in this new world the attitude that most people have always had that people ought to be decent to each other has become the one subscribed to-- just rest assured that in the best case scenario, the edge seekers, the thieves of the commons, the billionaire free-loaders on the backs of others are not given oxygen to survive.  One gigantic headache and eyesore on the cultural landscape vanished-- poof!

As for material comforts, we are motivated not by want but by need.  This is how we are all fed, clothed and sheltered.  It is how children, the old and those who can't care for themselves are cared for and how sickness is cured.  This is how we start to heal our planet. The details aren't important.  This is my fantasy and I have the luxury to declare that. What matters is that we work hard enough to ensure we all have what we need and then the rest of the time we are free to lead enriching lives pursuing what we want-- and what we want is not limited to what we can buy.  Work is the least interesting part of the best case scenario, but it happens because we must work to fulfill needs.  There are no bosses. Work is done when work is done (as much as possible by human guided machinery).  Most time is spent living.

Our representatives want for us what we want for ourselves.  This is because they are selected from the entire population at random by lottery to serve single, relatively short terms at every level of whatever "government" there is, including the executive and the judiciary.  They are us.  For that matter, sortition might be useful for any number of critical functions -- we could all benefit from having a truly randomly selected periodically purged and replenished constabulary, emergency response force and defense, for instance.  

People still make mistakes in this new world.  Mistakes are more naturally forgiven and forgotten.  People still disagree and annoy each other, but in the absence of competition for basic needs, the stakes of everything are scaled back to their appropriate proportions.  Maybe opinions are less tailored to antagonize.

Wrongs still occur-- at worst, isolated outbursts of civilizational recidivism are attempted periodically for instance and have to be dispatched with a decisive communal rejection-- but the day-to-day transgressions of one party against another are not punished, they are to whatever extent possible forgiven,  and if they are unforgiveable, they are righted.  Eventually, the impulse to conquer  is seen for what it is: a sickness that in its most pathological, incurable state nevertheless requires the patient to be cared for in well tended sanitariums that keep us safe from them and them safe from themselves.

This leaves time for us to be as deep, as curious, as creative, as passionate, as industrious, as empty of thought, as transgressive, as energetic, as hedonistic, as individual, as ridiculous, as wise or as stupid as the occasion calls for.  And no one is going to harsh the occasion with intrusive presumptuous cultural shaming nonsense.  My best case may vary from yours but the two of them can and do co-exist.  And it's beautiful.

Dreaming of better ways is vital.  And for the moment, it's still legal and it's still free.