Your ‘ideal world’ would inevitably be a totalitarian autocracy. Why? Because it’s based on one person’s ideal, and assumes that all would agree; there’s no mechanism for meaningful dissent, which is exactly what democratic systems, despite their many and obvious faults, are intended to allow.

Humpty Dumpty.

So what's your ideal world? — MountainDwarf

Unending contact with and contemplation of the good, the true, and the beautiful, which is not possible to achieve through human effort or in this lifetime. Your scenario sounds rather nightmarish.

Can I repeat my standard answer on this subject?:

P.T. Barnum said that there's a sucker born every minute.

W.C. Fields said, "Never give a sucker an even break."

Those two great social-scientists have explained why this societal world is the way it is and will always remain so.

You may have noticed how the sheep are perfectly suited and fitted for their masters, like the way a glove fits a hand. Maybe it isn't coincidence. The situation is eerily reminiscent of Huxley's Brave New World, except that there's nothing new about it, and that. where, in the novel it's done by drugging, in our world it's just the result of evolution.

Evidently, during a significant period in our prehistory, gullibility and complete obedience to perceived leaders was an attribute that was survival-adaptive, and selected for by natural selection.

Anyone who wants change for the better is up against a million years of evolution.

... we would never solve the worlds problems and mysteries if all that we did was meditate all day.

But otherwise we might? See above.

Everyone would speak the same language on the planet but in various dialects. This way there is diversity in unity

With the understanding that we're talking about unattainable ideals, that's an interesting one.

Of course, more and more, English is the nearest thing to an International language. But not many people who weren't born to it speak it well enough for it to be very useful to them. English isn't an easy language for non-native-speakers. So it isn't really an international language, and isn't well-suited to be one.

Esperanto is a constructed language, constructed for the purpose of making an international auxiliary language. Esperanto is incomparably easier than English, or any natural language. Esperanto is logical, minimal, regular and consistent, and easy, in comparison to English and other natural languages.

No one claims that Esperanto is perfect. Maybe its biggest criticism is that its vocabulary is Pan-European, instead of truly International. Latin, English, French, German, Italian, with some Greek and East-European.

But Esperanto has a start, with roughly a million or so speakers, worldwide. Unfortunately that isn't enough to guarantee that you can talk to everyone everywhere, but it's a start.

I've suggested that Esperanto would be more successful, and actually fairer, if it adopted an all-English vocabulary, because English is one of the most widely-spoken languages, and the nearest thing to an international language, and is the language that many people already want to learn, and have economic incentive to learn. But Esperanto would also be a big improvement, as-is.

Esperanto was designed by a Polish doctor, named Zamenhof, in 1887 (if I remember correctly). In those days, Pan-European was considered international. But in the slightly more than a century since its introduction, Esperanto has maybe roughly a million speakers, and a large literature.

Esperanto, like many other languages, uses grammatical endings. English has them too, though not as much as its ancestors. Our Indo-European languages are inflective. Each grammatical ending tells a complete meaning, a complete set of grammatical variable-values. So there has to be a separate ending for each possible combination of grammatical variable-values.

But Esperanto, like some other languages, is agglutinative instead of inflective. That means that a word has a series of endings, each of which tells about only one particular grammatical variable.

An agglutinative language is easier than an inflective language,because there are fewer endings, because they're used in combination.at the end of a word. ...instead of having a different ending for every possible combination of grammatical variable-values.

Esperanto dictionaries are much thinner than those of other language, because of Esperanto's derivation. ...the deriving of words from other words. Esperanto does that incomparably consistently and extensively, thereby allowing a much thinner dictionary.

Michael Ossipoff

I've suggested that Esperanto would be more successful, and actually fairer, if it adopted an all-English vocabulary, — Michael Ossipoff

I like Esperanto but English speakers shouldn't get it too easy. Besides it would clash with English itself - better to have a clean break if Esperanto were to be adopted.

So what's your ideal world? — MountainDwarf

I think it's better to ask "what is the most practical way to organize the world to maximize happiness", or something similar. Then, hopefully, with the help of freedom, the diverse ways that people seek to be happy (their own little "ideal world") could be largely achievable.

I like Esperanto but English speakers shouldn't get it too easy. Besides it would clash with English itself - better to have a clean break if Esperanto were to be adopted. — Jake Tarragon

That's all true.

But i emphasize that, not only would Angla-Esperanto be easier for English native-speakers, but it would also be easier for people studying English. Lots of people want to learn English. What if, by studying Angla-Esperanto, they'd be learning all English words, helping their study of English?

And if they're more interested in studying English itself, then the English words that they learn would give them, with no extra study, the Angla-Esperanto words. Since many fewer words are needed (due to better derivation), and because of the much more logical and consistent grammar, anyone studying English (and that's a lot of people) would have Angla-Esperanto. it would just come with English.

I just felt that, because it's been over a century, and Eo (Esperanto) still only has maybe a million speakers. ...1/7000 of the world population...then there'd be nothing to lose, and maybe something to gain by trying another vocabulary.

Yes, the Eo traditionalists would reject it. But what percentage of the world population are they? What if a whole different new population of Eo-ists started, and it began to take off big?

Michael Ossipoff

I've added this edit to my previous post:

And if they're more interested in studying English itself, then the English words that they learn would give them, with no extra study, the Angla-Esperanto words. Since many fewer words are needed (due to better derivation), and because of the much more logical and consistent grammar, anyone studying English (and that's a lot of people) would have Angla-Esperanto. it would just come with English.

...besides, making it easier for English native-speakers is a good thing, for propagating a language. After all, there are economic reasons why English is the nearest thing to an international language now. If the same people who speak English, had Esperanto particularly easy for them, by using an all-English vocabulary, and if that encouraged lots of them to study Angla-Esperanto, then that would propagate and popularize Angla-Esperanto, just as it has popularized and propagated English.

...but better, because it would be a lot easier.

Michael Ossipoff

Vote NO on MoutainDwarf Utopia.

You have all these grand ideas, but when it gets down to details, you're going to set the minimum wage at $12/hr??? Why not $9/hr? Or $99/hr? Or do away with wages altogether?

Is the world really broken? Actually the world is working the way it is supposed to work--which doesn't mean that everything is just peachy keen, of course. The world can be quite unpleasant, but its unpleasantness is quite explainable, and given the assholes that are running things, its really amazing that things aren't much worse. Give it time...

Vote NO on MoutainDwarf Utopia.

You have all these grand ideas, but when it gets down to details, you're going to set the minimum wage at $12/hr??? Why not $9/hr? Or $99/hr? Or do away with wages altogether?

Is the world really broken? Actually the world is working the way it is supposed to work--which doesn't mean that everything is just peachy keen, of course. The world can be quite unpleasant, but its unpleasantness is quite explainable, and given the assholes that are running things, its really amazing that things aren't much worse. Give it time... — Bitter Crank

Alright, I basically just threw this one together because I thought I had thought it through. I didn't write it at all to be political or to try and force it upon anyone, I just wrote it cause I thought it would be a nice place to live.

I'm sorry if I have crossed the line in any way, I kind of thought that was what Philosophy was about.

Esperanto is a constructed language, constructed for the purpose of making an international auxiliary language. Esperanto is incomparably easier than English, or any natural language. Esperanto is logical, minimal, regular and consistent, and easy, in comparison to English and other natural languages. — Michael Ossipoff

Quite interesting. I learned something today from you. Thanks

Your ‘ideal world’ would inevitably be a totalitarian autocracy. Why? Because it’s based on one person’s ideal, and assumes that all would agree; there’s no mechanism for meaningful dissent, which is exactly what democratic systems, despite their many and obvious faults, are intended to allow. — Wayfarer

Well I'm not saying that the world must be this way, there's undoubtedly a better ideal somewhere out there in another person's mind. This is a model of what I would do if I was... well... God.:D It's obviously not reality, I'm just getting my philosophical wheels turning.

Your scenario sounds rather nightmarish. — Thorongil

Sorry to hear. I guess one man's nightmare is another man's paradise. *shrugs* What is ideal to you? Like, if you had to redo the whole planet, what would you do?

Alright, I basically just threw this one together because I thought I had thought it through. I didn't write it at all to be political or to try and force it upon anyone, I just wrote it cause I thought it would be a nice place to live.

I'm sorry if I have crossed the line in any way, I kind of thought that was what Philosophy was about.
2 hours ago ReplyShare — MountainDwarf

No, you didn't cross the line in any way. As you said, this was kind of thrown together. The thing is, designing Utopia is tricky business. For instance, one might say "Everyone will be content and there will be no conflict." Well, that sounds OK at first, until one realizes what it means: the world would have to be static, people could not change, and nothing new could come alone which might upset the apple cart of conflict-free contentment.

Life as it is can be very unsatisfactory, so sure, we would like a better world. Better worlds are hard to come by.

So what's your ideal world? — MountainDwarf

If you are going to imagine a fantastic alternative world that is not "broken," as you say, then why fiddle with all these little details like minimum wages? Why not go for the essence of what you think is broken in this world and eliminate that? That is, imagine a world without suffering?

There, done.

Don't see much food for thought here though.

Alright, thanks.

What seems to make a utopia is convergence by everyone on what is good for people.

Take Star Trek for example. Particularly in The Second Generation, the world seems pretty utopian. Never mind what Captain Picard and the Enterprise crew are doing, buzzing around the galaxy solving interstellar problems left and right. It's in the occasional glimpses of life back on earth that seem pretty much perfected. No poverty, no war, lots of contentment, blah, blah, blah.

I liked Ursula Le Guin's utopian society in The Dispossessed. There it was a radically anarchist society where (as described separately in a short story) even possessive pronouns had been eliminated. It wasn't a huge society, it's economic circumstances were straitened, but people all worked together fairly happily.

Then the anarchist society's prize physicist came up with a radical theory which won fame in the nearby world which wasn't anarchist, and this upset the anarchists, and there was some unraveling among the utopians.

I like the Shakers' utopian communities. Unfortunately for the shakers, or maybe not -- hard to tell - they believed in celibacy, so... they aren't around anymore. Monastic orders are sort of utopian, if they can make it work. The Benedictines, for instance, have been reasonably successful at that -- 1500 years worth of experience. (Of course, those who can't hack monastic life leave, so... it doesn't work for many.)

A real utopia, one that had a chance of actually existing, would probably be a rather messy, contradictory affair -- sort of like life itself.