A Perfect World (would be pretty boring) · 9:23pm Oct 24th, 2013
Hey guys!
Making a blogpost here for a couple of reasons, mainly to show that I'm still not dead, having been killed in a back alley somewhere. Even though we don't have those around here. I haven't been able to write yet, but I hope I can do so in the weekend.
Anyway, first off, I found this thingamabob on Equestria Daily: A fanfic fanart contest! Make art for your favourite fic, and maybe you'll win fabulous prizes! Go give it a shot!
Secondly, a somewhat more serious subject that has been on my mind for a long, long while. Today, I watched Coraline, a really great stop-motion movie. I was absolutely amazed by it, and it made me think a little about something I haven't thought about for a while.
In the movie, Coraline and her parents move to a new place. Right off the bat, her parents are neglectful, and everyone in the neighbourhood is very strange. An East-European with a circus of mice, two fat ex-models and a weird, stalker-ish boy. Somewhat understandably, Coraline hates it. That's when she discovers a small door in the living room, through which she can crawl to reach an alternate version of her house, where everyone is a far better version of themselves and everything is generally amazing. The only weird thing is, they all have buttons for eyes.
I won't spoil anything, but as you can probably guess, everything goes downhill from there, as Coraline's perfect, alternate world isn't so perfect after all, and, in fact, pretty dang creepy. And that made me think:
What would a perfect world look like? Everything bad removed, just a haven for positivity. No catch or anything, just a perfect, happy life for everything.
So what would that be? First off, it makes sense to remove all suffering. Can't have a perfect life when there's painful stuff keeping you down! So there's no death or pain or anything. Everyone lives forever.
Obviously, this wouldn't work with our current world. We're on an uneven sphere after all, and that fills up after a while. So let's say this perfect world is an infinite, flat expanse of land. Biomes are regularly strewn about, of course. Compasses work a little bit differently too, considering there's no usable magnetic poles anymore.
This isn't a very practical world. As mankind grows, so does the area which they're spread over, and since this is infinite, it'll take someone infinite time on average to reach someone else. Not really handy for trade and stuff like that. Speaking of trade, there would need to be very clearly set standards on which to trade. No fluctuations or anything.
And how about the people? Nobody's dying, but everyone's living in different places. To make sure it's perfect, everyone will need to live in a place they like. But how about when that's not possible? Perhaps, in a perfect world, everyone likes living in every climate. And nobody'd be jealous of someone else's living conditions, either. Jealousy leads to pain, after all. So everyone also has the exact same house.
But jealousy isn't limited to possessions, it's also applicable to looks and skills. Therefore, in a perfect world where everyone's happy, everyone looks the exact same and is equally good at everything. But some people get sad when they realize they're too same-y, when they don't feel special. This causes things to clash, since you can't have everyone be the exact same, yet being different. So either everyone is completely devoid of feelings of jealousy and such, or there'd have to be a different solution. More on that one later.
Anyway, you can continue further and further down this line of reasoning, and however which way, you'd reach the same conclusion: in a world like this, where everyone would have to be 100% happy, you'd get an infinite amount of people who are the exact same. Complete and total order, nothing left to chance. No person is weaker than the other, everyone is given equal opportunity in both birth and upbringing. That sounds...
Really, really boring. I mean, a world where everyone's the same? Bleh. You'd never be surprised by what somebody thinks of, because your reaction would always be "I thought the exact same!" And you won't be the only one who says that. Everyone will. Plus, getting around on a flat, infinite expanse would be really weird.
So that's not a perfect world I'd want to see. How about some more examples? One of my favourite video game series is the Shin Megami Tensei series. Some of you may know it from the Persona series, which are pretty dang great games! However, that's just a spinoff series. The main games of the series are a lot more grim. The basic premise comes down to this: a great, calamitous event causes both angels and demons to invade the world, with humans caught in the middle. The angels, following capital-G God, want to instill complete and total order to make sure the human race continues like God intended; the demons, on the other hand, want humanity to break free of God and forgo any semblance of a social structure to return to a model of 'might makes right'.
You, as the hero, have to choose which you want to follow. Will go down the path of Law, and follow the angels, so mankind may know eternal peace under a very strict government? Or do you go down the path of Chaos and follow the demons, to wrest the reins of mankind from God's hands and allow people to run their course however they see fit? Or maybe you don't want either, and you decide on a path that is truly best for all people?
Both sides treat their ideology as perfectly right. The angels believe that mankind can only achieve happiness if they follow God's plans, while the demons believe the exact opposite. As you can probably tell, there is no good or evil here: both worldviews sound like they would give mankind a good deal of suffering, whether it's through a divine dictatorship, or constant fighting and war.
So what's the neutral option, you ask? That differs per game. It usually involves giving a big middle finger to both God and Lucifer, choosing for humanity to either remain on its current path, or fixing things for the better. However, it's always implied that humans will always make mistakes, and that it's inevitable that such a conflict will arise again at some time.
All around, you can pretty much expect humanity to get shafted in these games. The worst in that regard is Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. At the start of the game, the world ends, almost everyone dies, and the land around Tokyo just sort of folds in on itself to make an inverted sphere, which forms the game's world. Only you and a few other people survive, and you're forced to survive in a demon-infested land. Yay!
What's the deal there? Well, in that world, humans can find a Reason: their ideology of the perfect world. If they can prove their Reason is the strongest, they can recreate the world however they see fit. The main character, however, is turned into a half-demon, and thus, cannot have a Reason. This forces you to choose between multiple options, choosing to follow one (or none) of the other human characters.
One of these Reasons is the vision of a world where everyone is equal. Which'd be pretty boring. I mean, if everyone's equal, where would the competitive spirit go? Because everyone's the same, there's never any challenge. Nobody to get jealous of, or angry at. Since these things can drive us to succeed, we would lose a lot of stuff: think about the space race! All those developments wouldn't have been made, or at least would've been massively delayed. Sure, this world would reduce suffering by a lot, but would also cause the human race to stagnate like crazy.
The second of these Reasons is one where the strong rule over the weak. We've heard that one before, and it's pretty much a more extreme version of how our world currently works. I really can't see how this would make the world better, because you'd only create a bigger discrepancy in happiness between the strong and the weak. And besides, strength can be shown in more than one way. One physically strong person versus one physically weak person would end predictably, but what if the weaker person uses his stronger intellect to combine the strength of others to overpower the stronger person? Would that count? And wouldn't that just lead to the creation of groups, tribes, and ultimately, countries?
The last one is one that I haven't mentioned anything about yet. It is the vision of a world of isolation. Everyone is born in complete isolation from every other human being. Everyone resides in their own little bubble, unable to be hurt by outside influence. But, since nobody ever has outside contact, there is never any reason to develop. Nor is there any reason to be challenged. Actually, you'd just be in isolation forever, never being exposed to any outside stimuli. Humans would be born at the drop of a hat, created by a mysterious outside force, and would live until they either died of old age or committed suicide.
You know, all of these worlds sound pretty shitty. You have a choice between complete and total equality, total inequality, or absolute isolation. It's a good thing you can also choose to return the world to how it was before it ended. This'll piss off the guy in charge, though.
It's basically my conclusion in all this thinking: no matter how bad our world is, with its pain, suffering, death, war, inequality, broccoli, everything, it's the best I can come up with. Sure, it's not the best it can be, but at least it has the potential to be! It's up to us to make this world into one we can be proud of. Some outside force won't do that for us, nor will the world just spontaneously change. It's a long and arduous process, but if everyone chips in, it's more than possible.
One last thing, I guess there could be some kind of perfect, possible world out there. It's like one of my math teachers once explained: if you show our three-dimensional world to a creature from a two-dimensional world, it'd simply be impossible to comprehend for the poor thing. My teacher gave it as an example to believe in God: maybe He is some kind of four-dimensional creature. And maybe the perfect world is just so that we cannot possibly understand it. But that's all just speculation. For now, we have our wonderful, flawed world, filled with its wonderful, flawed people. But with some effort, maybe it can be a little less flawed, and a bit more wonderful.
Actually, I'm pretty sure the demons want us all to die. Just sayin'.
Friendship is Optimal. Reeeeeeead it.
If the whole point of life is to learn and grow, then pain and suffering are just as worthy teachers as joy and happiness,
Also: Buck you; broccoli is awesome,
I guess you could say our world is driven by disagreements.
Hm hm hm.
You sir, have just started a conversation on philosophy.
With me.
PREPARE YOUR BRAIN
Theres a reasonable chance that in this finite multiverse of ours, the rule of rich civilisations having fewer offspring runs to an asymptotic dynamically variable value that averages fairly constant, which seems to have a maximum of a total number of sentients of 1 followed by 5 Million zeros.
Current total human population over all time is about 1 followed by 8 zeros.
Also, if you want a useful model of a closed reality, take two klein bottles, and place them face to face. You now have a 3 dimentional spacial object, one time dimention, that exists in 5 spacial dimentions, and has no outside.
As for what I would call a perfect reality? Not a clue, sorry, the computers will be thinking more inteligently than me in the next couple years, and trying to beat them will only lead to ever escalating conflict. Id rather be a well treated pet like a dog, praised for taking out the intruder, than roaming so called free as a wolf, always hunted.
A perfect world cannot be achieved. It is simply much easier to change our perspective on "perfect".
Take the book Brave New World, which is about a future utopia/dystopia. Death still exists but people are simply conditioned to it at an early age. No one is attached to another; there are no families and few friends so if someone were to die, there would be no hurt or emotional pain. Additionally, everyone only has about forty years to live before they die, so, in theory, life is too short to get attached to.
Jealousy does not existed because everyone is created and altered to have a specific set of abilities. Laborers are mutated to lack the thinking capacity and the Alphas are born and immediately given the highest ranking jobs so that they have no motivation to strive further.
Science is banned. Discovery is banned. Literature is childish and theater/cinema is reduced to pornography. The world isn't perfect but the characters simply perceive it as or as close enough to perfect as possible.
I'd say that living in a world than is less than perfect but everyone sees it as such is worse.
To quote Bob Chipman "Peace, however comforting, is stagnation. Conflict, however messy, is progress."
Actually, I think a perfect world would be something between what you said was a perfect world, and our world. In fact, we just keep your "perfect" world, but we change the people's personality and accept minor pain (I consider as "minor pain" something that can be easily fixed).
You said that it would be pretty boring because everyone would be the same. Now if everyone is different (like us) but we just remove the worst actions. I mean, they would still be able to be angry, and things like that, but everyone would be reasonable and able to keep calm and just talk about it, without really holding a grudge against the other. (Actually, in social interaction, we would all be similar on one point: respecting the other. Not that it would prevent to joke between us, but if someone takes badly a joke, the other would naturally apologize, and everything would work out, in the end.)
Also, one's character being different from another's, we would also do different things. In the artistic field, for example, the artists would be pretty much the same, except that they are ALL able to do whatever style they want, but they would have to learn to do it, and would constantly perfect it over the years (but not necessarily in the same way). Yep, not so different from now.
by the way, about living in different places, you said everyone would like to live equally in every climate in case of someone unable to live in his favourite climate. Well, it's a perfect world, so I'll say that everyone can. It's just a matter of going there. (see below about that.)
And about the problem of trading, two words: internet and teleporters. 'Nuff said.
"So let's say this perfect world is an infinite, flat expanse of land. Biomes are regularly strewn about, of course. Compasses work a little bit differently too, considering there's no usable magnetic poles anymore."
so, basically a minecraft world on peaceful difficulty?