All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
However manifold our activities, in a certain sense we come fresh to each new subject. Who can maintain his attention, if he has to listen for a whole day to one teacher harping on the same subject, be it what it may? Change of studies is like change of foods: the stomach is refreshed by their variety and derives greater nourishment from variety of viands.
Quintilian
Okay, I said I’d get down to details in setting up “photopia.” Well, where do we start? The first question is how do you start such a thing from where we are now? In the past the founder would be a prophet. Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, Joseph Smith, L Ron Hubbard (!). For my founding I’ll settle for a trillionaire with virtually unlimited resources of artificial intelligence. Then he’ll have to be a humanitarian, a philanthropist, a lover of mankind. Because he’s going to have to take the long view. He’ll know that to save mankind he’ll have to start by rejecting a good chunk of humanity at the start. Because as humanity currently exists, there is a definite percentage of the population that can’t be included in an optimized human environment. There is a twenty percent group that is hopeless. Some of them are uncontrollably violent. Some are completely unwilling to do work. Some are anti-social to the extent that they habitually commit various types of crime. It goes without saying utopia has no place for such individuals.
The system that our founder builds must begin by trying to select a core of people that are unmistakenly outside of this 20%. The only way that the system can be founded is to start with the best starting material. So extremely careful biographical research into the initial candidates will have to be performed to rule out any unacceptable or even sub-optimal individuals. Ideally, married couples and even families of the highest quality should be incorporated in the starting material. This will build additional stability in the structure.
But one thing that will be true is that even within this foundation of selected individuals there will need to be a continuous weeding out mechanism for people who fail or for the offspring who will be identified as failures. And if offspring are rejected, often the parents and siblings will find it impossible to stay inside the group. And not because this community is a hermetically sealed bubble. Everyone inside will be in contact with the outside world continuously. But if children of group members become dangerous, they must be kept outside of the community and that is hard to enforce unless the rest of the family is ejected. So, it becomes apparent that policing the group for anti-social activity will become one of the most important activities of the administrators.
And as I mentioned in the earlier installment of this essay, those who are ejected are given the equity that they’ve earned in the community when the leave so that they can find their own place in the world. So, what exactly are the rules of this club? Well, the founder gets to decide those. If he’s wise, these rules are ones that will tend to increase stability, prosperity and social cohesion. What exactly these rules are may be dependent on the values and personal traits of this “prophet.” And ideally, there could be a number of different foundations to allow for the different but equally valid personality types that exist in our species. And maybe some of these will be failures and some will thrive. But over the course of time by trial and error a calculus for creating human communities could be derived.
Now, what happens to those who can’t be included. Well, nothing. They’ll be on their own. This assumes that the larger human community still exists outside of these enclaves and that it has to deal with the full spectrum of human types. And that is why prisons and welfare exist. And that brings up another point. How would these societies be viewed by the outside world. My guess will be; poorly. I believe many nations would try to destroy them or at least force them to accept members that they would reject. And for that reason, the location of these societies may be one of the most important questions that the administrators will have to decide. Of course, trillionaires can do wonders with the right amount of bribery. But let’s just say that a nuclear weapons program may be a necessity for this utopia of mine.
When I write the next installment (and I may have to think about it for a while) I think I’ll talk about education.
Nature herself, indeed, seems to have given music to us as a benefit, to enable us to endure labors with greater facility, for musical sounds cheer even the rower; and it is not only in those works in which the efforts of many, while some pleasing voice leads them, conspire together that music is of avail, but the toil even of people at work by themselves finds itself soothed by song, however rude.
Quintilian
“It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes.”
Theodor Reik
When I think about what is going on in the world, I have to wonder whether the nonsense that we see all around us can go on forever. Now it goes without saying that human folly is a tapestry that envelops all of us in a pattern that generates pain, fear, violence and death at a prodigious rate. And that there has never been a full century in history when the majority of human beings lived in peace and happiness.
And this isn’t anything surprising. This is just what human beings do. We’ve always lived in a state of wary hostility even when we were nothing but small family groups living around a campfire to keep the cave bears and sabretooth tigers at bay. We’re not peaceful creatures. We may live now in enormous groupings measured in the millions and even billions of individuals but at all times and in all places, we seem to end up at each other’s throats. But, does this have to be? Could it be possible for humans to organize themselves into groups that interact in ways that lead to long term and abiding cohesion and satisfying cooperation?
The track record for utopian communities is definitely poor. Some of the religious groups have thrived and shown some ability to cooperate in many community endeavors but this is a small minority of the human race. And even they can’t completely eliminate anti-social behavior. Currently, communities that live in affluent areas and support a robust police presence and a conservative judicial philosophy seem to do the best at creating a workable human environment. But as we’ve seen since 2020 the forces of chaos can unleash barbarism even in the most affluent areas of the country.
But what if technology can provide a system to guarantee both social cohesion and material security? We’re seeing the dystopic version of this in the Chinese system of social control called the “Social Credit System.” Here those who don’t follow the rules are blacklisted and denied access to various important social advantages like good schools and better neighborhoods. But think of the opposite. Imagine a multitude of organizations that figure out ways to find compatible people and build social systems that bind them together and allow them to thrive. I imagine these as completely voluntary associations. And if someone doesn’t work out, they get the equity that they put into the system and are assisted to find another association where they would fit better. But such an ejection would be considered a failure by the organization, which would use the most advanced research to analyze personalities before candidates are accepted into the association.
In the next installment I’ll discuss what facets of life would and wouldn’t be included in these organizations. And I’ll talk about what I think are the human realities that make something like this extremely difficult to pull off outside of a science fiction story.
We give to necessity the praise of virtue.
Quintilian
Too many irons in the fire. More and more “stuff” dumped in front of me to trip over. Boredom, frustration, ennui, blah, blah, blah. Okay, whatever.
So, I’m trying to concentrate on the important stuff. I got my cover artist signed up. He needs some information from me and I’m working to answer the questions. I’m still waiting for some answers from the experts on small stuff and big stuff that has to be decided (when, how and how much).
And I’m looking to sell off a bunch of lenses I don’t use much and exchange them for that new 100mm f/2.8 macro lens from Sony. It’ll be good to move out a bunch of stuff that’s just sitting around and concentrate on what I like to play around with. I’ll probably also buy a macro rail and maybe some doo-dads that will let me experiment with tilt shift and other technical adjustments. I was watching a video from a guy in England who does a lot of product work. You know, pictures of corn flakes boxes and shampoo bottles. He was demonstrating his technical camera. It’s a digital “back” attached to a bellows with a lens on the other side attached to a support that allowed for all kinds of motion for the lens; tilt and shift and any kind of motion relative to the digital back. In addition, the digital back can tilt and shift also. This allows the image formed by the lens to strike the sensor either straight on or at any angle desired. Now I think this is really great. I’d love to have this capability. But the numbers being thrown around for a medium format digital back and the other components runs into the tens of thousands of dollars (well, pounds for that Brit).
But it occurred to me that with a little ingenuity and a slight downgrade in kit (e.g., a full frame camera like my Sony A7IV instead of a medium format back) I might be able to get almost the same effects for very short money. And since the winter is beginning to bite into my soul (we had the first noticeable snow cover this morning) this would be a marvelous time to distract myself from the realities of Dunwich in the winter.
Tuesday and Wednesday will be boring work days. Saturday is another family party (great!). A week from Tuesday will be a day of tedium not to be imagined and then Thursday is Thanksgiving. I guess you must take the good with the bad. But I’m not very patient. Camera Girl is much better at that sort of thing. She was raised to be hard-working and dependable. I, on the other hand, am lazy, easily bored and unreliable. I like to think this is because I am like my idol; Wiley Coyote, a super genius. I like the way that sounds, WILEY COYOTE, SUPER GENIUS!!!!!!
I’d better cut this short. It’s becoming too much like me talking to myself and that’s not healthy for anyone. It’s too close to the scene where Wendy Torrance starts reading the manuscript that Jack has been working on and finds that it’s hundreds of pages of text that consists of variations on the sentence, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” It’s just too early in the winter to start getting cabin fever.
If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of the Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligation; and, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a separation,—amicably if they can, violently if they must.
Regarding the admission of Orleans Territory as a U.S. State. Abridged Cong. Debates, Jan. 14, 1811. Vol. iv. p. 327. This was later famously paraphrased by Henry Clay: The gentleman [Mr. Quincy] cannot have forgotten his own sentiment, uttered even on the floor of this House, “Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.” Speech, Jan. 8, 1813.
Josiah Quincy III
