The Trials & Errors Towards Utopia

One of the things that we notice throughout life, even more, when we reach adulthood, is that the world is imperfect. Many issues are caused by people if that’s not obvious. Whether it’s an existential crisis like warming up the planet, social issues such as economic inequalities, or individual when we conjure it up in our minds (ex. “first world problems”). Many of us are aware of these existential threats and may feel a sense of hopelessness like there’s nothing that we, or I can do about it.

I will be the one to say that is simply not true and will keep sounding the alarm to tell you that these existential threats have to be solved because if we ignore them we will die! Your child, your mother, father, brother, sister, friends, and all of mankind will die and go extinct. Yet, how does one go about solving these issues? It’s a tall task or so it seems… How can we as a nation, let alone a world come together to solve them? Are we really going to ignore it and leave it up to just a few people to solve it? Some of us may think it’s already too late to start. Or is the possibility that it matters little or there’s not enough urgency for people to care enough about it? How do we reply to someone who warns us to leave everything alone and do nothing? We are just going to make it much worse than it already is! I can imagine hearing Milton Friedman’s voice saying to me, as it comes across as a forewarning: 

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

What I’ll say back is, 

“Well, the hell has been paved already! And if we continue to do good intentions, let’s at least make it a livable hell! Because even with bad intentions or no intentions at all (at this point in time at least), I doubt it will ever result in paradise. I’ll take my chances and have revised good intentional actions through a process of trial and error. And if the actions cannot be reverted back then we are indeed screwed.”

I understand why past philosophers like Alan Watts would say just do nothing because it seems like the wisest choice since many of us just end up screwing up things even more. But I will still be stubborn and believe that it does not apply when it’s a matter of human existence. But I have faith in the good intentions of people tackling these issues and will put my trust in humanity if they use a process of trial and error, hopefully, reversible errors. In the same way, it is used in the scientific community (a division of intellectual labor), testing one’s hypothesis and others or oneself proving it wrong. Honest revision is key for ourselves and our peers to tackle the existential crisis. I will stay optimistic for now and refuse to believe that we will screw it up even more or be stuck in the process of trying to dig ourselves out of the hole we put ourselves inside in the first place. There are brilliant minds out there and there are many different creative ways to find a way out of this goddamn hole! 

I had an epiphany moment when reading and analyzing an article for a class assignment, if I may add. Combined with this article, watching many economic debates and different perspectives on YouTube, and from my own observations/historical knowledge, I realized that our society may be the only society capable of going through this singular path to something close to what is called a utopia. We may not ever reach a perfect society, I’m not going to be as naive and think that is possible but it may very well get closer to it one day. Meaning, that we are in a period in history where there may be none to fewer cycles of history repeating itself thus disproving the comparison of our civilization with the fall of Rome.

Don’t misjudge and think this is a self-centered belief, I’m not implying that we are the best or even better than past civilizations (we definitely made ethical/moral strides). What I am saying rather, is that our time period is unique, not only because we can learn from past civilizations’ mistakes, but that we also have made tremendous technological strides. For example, the processing speed of computers and holding more information increase in smaller and smaller storage devices. We have the capabilities to learn and analyze past historical mistakes to either revert and see what worked for them or adjust along the way as we have been doing since the beginning of civilization. But this time we can learn and adjust from them much more quickly than ever before as we consume a large amount of data. There is more speed and efficiency in our technology which seems to be getting faster and more efficient as time goes by. We also have information more readily accessible. I am aware of misinformation spreading, but If we allow the internet to debate itself, I bet my money on the truth coming to light. If we compare these advancements in our lives to those of Ancient Rome or ancient Athens, the world of antiquity has relatively slower or inefficient technological tools and much slower access to information readily available to their people. 

We have all of this processing power and the vastness of information in the touch of our hands and yet we don’t know what the future holds. The internet has become sort of like a self-adjusting centralized thinking mind that evolves and grows through the process of trial and error. So much information put out there by people with all of their creativity and personal opinions is put inside this giant hub mind called the internet, which is constantly self-adjusting, auto-correcting, auto-learning from all of these ideas that may finally lead to a free righteous utopian world. (The petty Twitter debates, the fake Instagram life, the memes on Facebook, and the angry comment sections on YouTube, etc.) may all have a purpose towards a larger plan. But we have to put them aside at least for a bit not to mention the movie streaming sites, video games, etc, all of these distractions can only last for so long.

People will soon wake up and realize that the world is collapsing under their noses and the virtual life that they plug themselves into to escape their harsh realities and numb the pains won’t continue if reality is destroyed. Many of us as well as myself is to blame for being distracted as we constantly let ourselves get sucked into this matrix. It’s time to wake up and unplug to change the paradigm. We can come together in these virtual hubs but at the same time, we also have to make a real change outside of it. Any small change and fix to a problem in your house or local area is one step more to reaching the goal of solving the bigger issues. But the real issues will only be solved when we take collective action to heal the world from the pain we’ve inflicted on her, by giving her the proper love and care that she so desperately needs. Let’s be honest, Mother Earth was here billions of years before humans came about, stepped foot on her, and evolved. It does not matter if we happen to destroy ourselves in a nuclear war, climate change, or any other way. The earth will most likely be here billions of years after today until that fateful day the sun explodes. In the end, what will we do about it, and can we do anything about it, to prevent the doomsday clock from hitting midnight?