Instead of focusing too much on all of the things that are currently wrong, could you please help paint a picture of what a future utopian society could look like?

My vision is heavily inspired by Terence McKenna. I imagine a world as it might have existed during prehistoric times. Lush forests teeming with exotic wildlife, clean air, and crystal clear water. No highways full of billboards, no parking lots, no shopping malls, and no cars. Just safe grounds and paths for humans embedded deep within all of this nature.

At a birds-eye view, it may look as if humanity has completely abandoned technology and regressed back into its childhood. Yet if you were to look out through the eyes of one of these utopian people, you would see the most wonderful augmented reality display.

Information, communication, entertainment, education, global economies… almost everything has been de-materialized. Humanity’s ceaseless pursuit of technology has been mostly divorced from our physical environment and mother earth is bustling with life again.

The only technologies that remain in the real world are those that help all of us live happy and healthy lives (modern medicine, delicious food, solar power, etc) all the while the shared virtual reality in our eyes is limited only by our collective imaginations.

We are finally living in accord with nature without having to forsake our innate desire for knowledge and progress.

  • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Our cities would be compact, walkable, jam-packed with quality transit, and nearly car-free. Cargo would be transported with cargo ebikes, barges along rivers and canals, local freight rail, and cargo trams. People would move by foot and bike and trams and metro and high-speed rail.

    The surrounding countryside would be home to ecological, sustainable smallholder agriculture, preferably with plenty of technology for efficient precision agriculture. Instead of massive monocultures of corn, we’d have diverse polycultures of dozens of different crops, both annuals and perennials.

    Nature would be abundant, protected, and rewilded. We would remove most roads into wild areas and replace with trains and velomobile trails, which would be much lower impact on wild habitats. Every city would have easy, rapid transit access to natural areas by rail, so anyone can go hiking or exploring or whatever they like.

    Our economy would be centered around productivity, not rent-seeking and speculation. We would use policy to reduce barriers to entry to create highly competitive markets. We would heavily tax externalities like carbon emissions and fertilizer runoff and PFAS contamination.

    We would tax people on what they take, not what they make. Income taxes? Nah, you did the labor; that value should belong to you. Carbon emissions? That materially harms others so you should pay tax on that. Hoarding valuable god-given land? You didn’t make it, so you should pay taxes on the land you deprive from the rest of humanity.

    Our democracy would be reformed with a much better voting system like mixed-member proportional representation (MMPR) or single transferrable vote (STV), so we could have healthy multiparty systems.

    Our society would publicly invest more in research and development, open-source projects, infrastructure, and anything else that generates positive externalities. You rewilded 100 acres of native grassland? Society should pay you for your valuable labor.

    The balance of power between labor and employers would be balanced. A citizen’s dividend or universal basic income, subsidies on positive externalities (like rewilding), and the economic general growth spurred by elimination of rent-seeking would allow for an empowered working class that could capture its own productivity gains, demand better pay, and demand shorter hours. Much like how the professional class can demand good pay and good working conditions currently.

    In short, the economy would be centered around Georgist principles, environment and agriculture around permaculture, and democracy around technocratic and representative democracy. A shared, sustainable prosperity for all.

  • dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net
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    2 years ago

    All people guaranteed a baseline lifestyle. Housing, food, clean water, healthcare, electricity, internet. Everyone contributes to maintaining infrastructure in some way, would probably require 10-20 hours a week. Beyond that, people free to do what they want. Garden, make art, invent new things, whatever.

  • x4740N@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago
    • democracy with citizens having more power and having the ability to revoke a representative by vote if they turn out to be a dick
    • Socialism
    • no scarcity
    • equality
    • No discrimination
    • solarpunk
    • capitalism is abolished
    • high quality of life
    • needs of the population met
    • Complete automation of production, repetitive tasks and menial tasks so humans can enjoy life
  • timeisart@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Decentralized localization of every possible energy generation system (renewables but if we’re dreaming here then the supposedly suppressed Zero Point / radiant / overunity energy systems). Post scarcity abundance levels of all essential items, but mainly food, again through the localized means of production with vertical farm towers if space is a constraint. Free travel to anywhere on the planet and beyond using suppressed anti gravity electrogravitic technology (you said I could dream). Free access to every form of media ever made and knowledge formerly sequestered behind paywalls or otherwise suppressed, and a free and open forum to discuss these things.

    But most importantly a new way of thinking that is cooperation based instead of competition based, and a new economic system that renders the profit motive obsolete and money itself much less of a controlling factor in peoples lives (such as a resource based economy like The Venus Project)

  • Locuralacura@lemm.ee
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    2 years ago

    Meditation, study, gardening, self improvement are paid jobs. We’ve given freedom to those who are able to use it in a responsible manner. Hard labor is a 4 to 5 hour gig that we take turns doing, not because we are forced to, but because we understand the necessity and value of the work. Work is not seen as something we must do to have a house and food, but it is seen as participating in our society.

    Compassion, tolerance, and freedom are primal virtues.

    Personally I love work, I love the feeling of charity, I love learning how to better myself.

      • Locuralacura@lemm.ee
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        2 years ago

        Sure. It’s just, communism is not an answer. It’s human nature that fucks up these systems. We need to address human nature

  • XpeeN@sopuli.xyz
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    2 years ago

    Empathy and kindness all over, no countries,borders or nations exist, just humans. People and corps no longer powered by greed as much as these days, and general thinking of how to keep growing and do better as a specie.

  • tunetardis@lemmy.ca
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    2 years ago

    I’d like to see a world in which the manufacturer of a product is responsible for its entire life cycle. So many problems we have today stem from our disposable culture. If say you package your product in plastic, that plastic should eventually come back to you for reuse/recycling, or at least you should foot the bill for processing it. Everything is barcoded these days, so it shouldn’t be impossible to sort it by manufacturer. Could be a killer app for AI?

  • Andiloor@sh.itjust.works
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    2 years ago

    Totally ideal? Green energy robots automate all the stuff humans need (food, water, shelter, sanitation, etc.) so that no one has to work and people can do whatever they want!

  • Chetzemoka@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    I’m deeply skeptical of any and all utopian ideas. They have this mysterious tendency to wander down paths to authoritarianism because we, as a species, are more defined by our ideas of who and what we are than by anything else in our existence.

    When an idea becomes an ideal, people become willing to kill or die in attempts to bring that ideal to fruition, no matter how vain.

    In fact, this is how I self-edit my own beliefs about the world and myself. “If the cards were all really on the table, would I be willing to proudly die in defense of this idea?” If the answer is yes, then I cling to that as an ideal that I strive toward.

    All human lives matter equally.
    It is important to lift up those who have less than I do.
    Any small effort to alleviate the suffering of my fellow humans is meaningful.
    There is always hope.

    That is the utopia I choose to live in deliberately every day, and what I appreciate most is that it is resilient to the whims and chaos of this world that I can’t control.