Re: Mind's Eye Modern Utopia

I watched a documentary on Nestlé's worldwide drinking water business
last night. It's good to be reminded of how it looks like when
nature's impurities are being perfected. Your pie in the sky seems
more accessible than cloud cuckoo land ever was.

On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 2:10 AM, archytas <nwterry@gmail.com> wrote:
> Utopia means something like 'the ideal that is nowhere' - the word is
> sprung with irony. Many decent ideas are derided as Utopian, much as
> whistle-blowers soon become incompetent malcontents. I don't believe
> there is a modern world - we are still largely dark age. Most people
> can't offer much explanation why science is more rational than
> godswank or a sales pitch. Even I see little difference between the
> physics pornography of the big bang and the origins of our main
> religions. Doing science was always liberation from dogma for me,
> with the end of getting to what works.
>
> A modern world would be scientific, but there's a catch. Most people
> can't do it (at least as we teach and practice it) and the Frakenstein
> fear probably dominates in the majority. Say Einstein and most will
> trot out E = MC2 - his work isn't about this. Most people don't know
> about the pollen grains, let alone the tensor equations and his
> reconciliation of the great work of Maxwell and apparently
> contradictory experimental evidence.
>
> A modern society would organise around scientific estimates of what
> work we need to do. My own guess is this would be about 6 hours/2
> days a week/9 months a year/40 year span. One has to wonder why we
> don't have a proper estimate of this that takes modern technology into
> account. My guess is based on agriculture being 7% of world GDP and
> 75% being 'services'. I suspect essential work is about 30% of what
> we call work.
>
> This leads me, with other matters, to think we have not established a
> welfare state at all. A real one would be about us all contributing
> equally towards creating decent living conditions for all and doing
> this essential work as a duty to each other and the planet. The rest
> of my Utopia follows from this and the rest of the economy would be
> based on producing/doing what interests us.
>
> Pie in the sky?
>
> --
>
>
>

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