Ideals and dreams

Discourse Society
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i asked myself what has to be achieved, so that i could consider a society as advanced and futuristic.

impulsively i found 4 aspects :

  • a society has to abolish violence in every form of appearance caused by humans
  • a society has to abolish poverty and the fear of death because of financial
    hardships and all the coercion concerning money
  • medical research should exclusively be scientific concerning motivation and
    funding. that means that no profiteering at the patients cost is allowed anymore.
  • there should be more alternatives of transportation. i would prefer a kind
    of aircraft instead of a car.

i know there is more, if i would take more time to think about. but i want to find something that i could call the minimum for my personal utopia. what is your personal minimum- utopia ?

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Good size bed. Bathroom kit including good size bath that keeps the water heated for as long as I tell it to and a compact shower cubicle. Nice food + kitchen kit. Internet and a decent computer + consumer electronics that are also fully modular. A chair and desk that are both 3D printed exactly the way I want them setting up. Somewhere I can kip (snooze) in the sunshine that’s adequately private. All packed into a micro-home environment. One of those climate control thingy’s you get in hotels that make everything sound like you’re on board the Enterprise.

  • This is my ‘Very-PMU’ as it only applies to myself if other people want less or more, within reason, they should be able to get that. I suppose this all comes under: ‘no one in poverty’ or ‘none abandoned’.

As for my PMU, what you said and I agree that as well as purely fast forms of transport there need to be scenic forms for personal enjoyment for example something with the freedom of jet mans jet pack but that you can also land with or one of these airbike things or cruise hybrid-airships and also cars, bikes, ships/boats, snail rail etc.

I’d also add the ability to go to a university/academy like environment in order to educate ourselves and do research or start our own/help other people with their endeavors. This is as opposed to the way things are set up now, people should be able to learn what they want, when they want and in their own way rather than being herded towards getting a grade and a job in Poundland.

I’d also add being to be able to know that progress is still being made by society, I don’t think many people want to be stuck in an objectiveless ‘dark green’ world heading nowhere where everything is put aside in favor of stability.

Endless quality ‘content’ and things to work on to keep people amused each day.

The ability to travel and send things quickly.

Lots of interesting places and communities to visit and things to try and the ability to do so.

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it sounds like one of those typical star trek quarters …although they are often bigger than micro-homes and without a kitchen. this should be definitely minimum-standard! it is interesting to think about details of habitation. i want my home to be soundproof, because sometimes i want to work at night or hear loud music and never can…and it would be nice, not to hear my neighbours any longer yelling and working and talking and whatever…

for that purpose i have a little balcony, but for many years i have a longing to experience the world outside and nature alone with no disturbance. a little garden would suffice, if it is hidden from view …but if i could live in the star trek universe, i would choose the holosuite or beam myself from time to time to unspoiled places.

yes, and i want to add: “no violence” because it is a form of structural violence, to have less than a minimum- standard.
“…historically given (and often economically driven) processes and forces conspire to constrain individual agency. Structural violence is visited upon all those whose social status denies them access to the fruits of scientific and social progress.”

oh want an airbike like that! :sunglasses:

absolutely! free access to knowledge and help. and avoidance of the hidden curriculum.

this is interesting. i asked myself what the core of “progress” really is… if it is the development towards an optimum, it could be both: a move back in time, to reverse former changes that led away from the optimum, and a move towards the future and new achievements. but what if some day the optimum will be already achieved? then it has to be knowledge and space travel, because this seems to be endless.

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I found it hard to think about a personal minimum utopia. On one hand, there is so much broken in this world that I wouldn’t be content with anything but the most positive transformation of the world that most people cannot even imagine. On the other hand, we already live in a totally amazing world compared to, say, the feudal era.

So, I’ll start with a more personal approach: I want to have at least 4 high energy hours a day that I can dedicate to the effective improvement of this world. And I want everyone to have this opportunity. For many people it may mean having more time. With a 40 hour week there should still be enough time for 4 hours per day that you can completely dedicate to something else. What is the problem though, especially for me personally, is energy. This is certainly connected to my health issues, but it’s actually a general problem. People get exhausted, they are not perfectly healthy, they have problematic habits. Outside of work most don’t have enough energy to improve themselves or the world, so they settle for low-energy entertainment. And who am I to blame them? I often do the same when my energy level is low – which it is all too often.

What I want is something that raises the energy level of everyone.

  • Exercise would fit the bill, maybe, it is wasn’t so hard.
  • Or meditation, oh, that’s hard too.
  • What about everyone taking the best health improving supplements, or would that be too expensive?
  • Put everyone on the best diet possible, which people would need to find out on their own individually, because everyone is different.
  • People should get more sleep, if they could. Sleep is super awesome, at least if it’s high quality sleep.
  • What about good stimulants? Wait, I’ve been on them for years, and they didn’t actually help me much. They made me more tired when I’m not on them.

So, while all of that would be nice, it doesn’t really suffice. At least for me. We need something more radical. I’d opt for medical nano-sensors that can measure all the body’s parameters in real time. Within the blood, the nervous system, and select cells of the body. Measure hundreds of crucial molecule concentration levels. Track that data all the time. Analyse it with the help of AI and great visualization tools. With that, everyone would have the tools to find out what improves his or her energy levels on a biomolecular basis. Medicine would become a real science that everyone could do personally. Total biofeedback techniques would enable people to get a level of control over their own bodies that only hardcore gurus could have hoped to achieve. And everyone would be able to see the earliest signs of disease and counter them effectively. Preventive treatment of diseases and even ageing would become simple and practical. This would be the greatest revolution in the history of medicine every. Forget antibiotics – they are mostly ineffective now due to widespread resistances anyway. We mostly even wouldn’t need medical nanobots that cure diseases, because people simply wouldn’t get sick in the first place. An optimized natural immune system can deal with almost anything successfully.

I want that, because I realize that the level of our health system is utterly insufficient to cure people from chronic diseases, or keep them healthy, or even energetic. And I want it, because it would take out a lot of the guesswork out of medical treatments, and because it would empower patients a lot. Last but not least I want it, because I’m one of the many people who suffer from a chronic disease for which no effective conventional treatment exists. I’m doing so much for my own health, but it’s still not enough. Give me medical nano sensors and I’ll become better at treating myself than even the best team of medical experts on this planet.

It’s too sad we have to deal with such basics as health and energy, but that’s the way it is.

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I would conform a world in which people are given the tools to make a better world, and a world which makes better people.
Maybe it is too broad, but is an idea to build from scratch, and what you say has many components to make this happen.

Bag that and put it on a ship, and is what I would like to have. A transport which is also my home, seasteading has it.

Love it, it covers social, academical as also psychological needs.

Yes, absolutely.

Yes, and I like that. A personal “space ship”. I am not joking when I say to want that, ehem, someday.

I totally agree. This is the concept of discrimination in my opinion. A harmful, hideous poison in our society.

It is for now. I see videos on parkour and wanted to do that. Even more imaginary, the “jumping over the roof” of superheroes, that is something I would like.
I dream of a time when genetic treatment can be used to enhance the human being, no matter how old, and to have the ability to change our skills, our capacity, if we want, and in the way we want.

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You beat me to the punch on this one. Though this works both ways: I have a slightly batshit neighbor who once phoned up to complain she could: ‘hear typing’. I spend most my free time in headphones and any parties I’m involved in tend to occur somewhere other than my home, which leads me to conclude, with extreme prejudice, that the woman’s a lunatic. I also think rooms within the house should be soundproofed from one another, for all sorts of reasons, but reasons related to near futurism would be that you aren’t bothering anyone when you use things like this or making use of devices that you talk at to use. Basically more options for privacy in general and being able to keep society at arms length and pick and choose your engagements, would be better.

Agreed. As exists now there are things such as:

Worn sensors: Like smart bands and watches. Which are still expensive.

Pills: Provigil (modafinil) I’ve heard is supposed to do wonders for some, like staying awake for 40 hours without feeling tired, sleeping for their usual time then feeling fine in some cases and in others just being able to hyper focus on work, but I don’t fancy risking supplementing myself with rat poison or gaming the system by saying I have chronic sleep issues to get hold of it. Also it is expensive to import.

Then supplemental things like: Coffee, Lucozade and Kendall Mint Cake which unfortunately make me feel uncomfortably twitchy.

In the near future:

Nintendo is developing what it calls called ‘Quality of Life’ systems that you apparently leave around the home and they maintain vigil over aspects of your health and such. This is probably going to be related also to the gamification of life to some degree but details are sparse as of yet.

Exercise wise: Perhaps exercise would be less difficult for people if it was made more interesting, for example exercise as a side effect of playing a game? Again using this kind of thing.

Long term:

Enhanced bodies, ‘full metal’ bodies, being able to transfer our consciousness between bodies and also machine memory.

Yes a ship. Definitely a ship. My long term dream is to get away from here and return whenever I feel like it. The idea of waking up to a different one of the ‘best views in the universe’ each day is also extremely appealing.

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If there is such thing as an optimum, then as you say, expansion knowledge wise and physical is all that is left. But also information wise, um, like culturally as in more people creating differing content, is also something worth continuing. So there are more things to do, see and enjoy.