Imagine you could travel back in time and find some great great great …. great grandparents of yours from 200 years ago who are in their 30’s with a family.
You want to tell them all about your life and the things that our modern society has.
You tell them about the overall wealth, how so many have houses that are big, have running water – cold and hot! – have heat and cooking devices that don’t use wood and there is no smoke in the house, air conditioning/cooling devices, refrigerators, lights that don’t smoke and can be on or off instantly, paint for the outside of the house and the inside available in many, many colors.
You tell them about cars, motorcycles, trains, airplanes. And about radio, TV, Internet, telephones, cell phones, video chatting. You can talk and even see people from nearly anywhere around the world. Every day you talk with your sister who lives a thousand miles away, and you get pictures of her kids all the time.
You tell them that all kids go to school, with free school from 5 years to 18 years of age. Then there are 100’s of colleges where young adults can study a huge range of subjects. And jobs, hardly anyone has to work at farming since there are amazing machines that do most of the work. There are so many job opportunities other than farming it’s hard for anyone to know them all.
You tell them about medical care. Pills to take to help or cure many problems. The ability to defeat nearly all infections, allowing surgeons to fix internal parts of the bodies. Medical care is so good that once you have lived to be in your 30’s, you can expect to live to be in your 80’s. Many people live into their 90’s and some beyond 100. Of courses eye glasses are common, but so are alterations of the eyes so vision is perfect without eye glasses. You don’t mention things like artificial hearts or robotic prosthetics because, well, that just seems like too much to take in.
You tell them about the markets where people can buy, cheaply, food of unbelievable variety. You can get grapes and lettuce and tomatoes even in the middle of winter. Meats are cut up into sizes for cooking for a family meal, no need to ever kill or butcher an animal again. Beef, chicken, pork, sausages, milk, cheeses, the list is huge, all available at the market.
You tell them about the clothing, so many colors, so many fabrics, so many styles, all in any size to fit anyone. Hats, shoes, coats, clothing for winter, summer, spring, and fall, all different.
You tell them for leisure time entertainment there are books on every subject of every type, magazines, movies, so many that no one could partake of more than a tiny percentage of what is available.
Once your ancestral relatives have a chance to absort even a little bit of what you have told them, they will believe that you live in utopia.
They will expect you to tell them next that everyone is happy. No one ever goes hungry. Nobody ever has to sleep outside or in the hay in a barn with the animals. And if something unfortunate does happen to someone, there are so many people to help and provide resources so no one suffers more than they have to.
They will expect you to tell them there is almost no crime, little need for legal counsel or courts. Almost no sheriffs, no need for prisons. They expect to hear, of course, there are no more wars, no violence. They grasped some of what you said about the ability to communicate quickly and to many so if someone was acting violently, or wronged someone else, people would know about it and take care of the problem very quickly.
As your words sink in, they understand that no one has to work sunrise to sunset. The basic needs are so easily met by the vast wealth of resources of the future that all people have lots of leisure time. And everyone must have so much time for family and friends. And art! And music! My goodness, people must be able to pursue their dreams, able to see other parts of the world without dangers. You said people could travel hundreds, even thousands, of miles in a day? That must make anything possible!
How do you explain that you don’t live in utopia?
StoppedThoughts 