Social Enlightenment

From Instant Enlightenment: Metaphysical Fast Food

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Chapter Fourteen:

Social Enlightenment

Someday this world will live as one
All this ignorance and greed will all be done
When someday comes and the old will teach their youth
To speak the same language, and seek the same truth
(from my song, Someday)
It is very difficult to feel content and spiritually enlightened when we look around us and see homeless people in the streets, millions dying from disease, nations at war, genocide, starvation, government corruption, the destruction of rain forests, global warming, etc. We are watching the quality of life deteriorate for the masses worldwide. Individual liberties are constantly eroding, while the threat of terrorism, economic collapse, disease and other preventable disasters becomes more and more a part of even the most comfortable lives. Even if we personally remain unaffected, as each of us gains more personal enlightenment we realize we can not truly be happy while ignoring the suffering around us.
These negative conditions are a natural expression of humanity's present state of enlightenment, and because we are on this planet to learn, in greater terms it is good. Nor should we overlook that fact that even with these terrible conditions occurring across the globe, many of us live fulfilling, peaceful lives. Every day billions of people are not raped or murdered. They get enough to eat, have shelter, employment and good health.
But we would not choose to live in an unenlightened world if we honestly believed we create our own reality. Since this is the world we live in, we must apply ourselves to supporting those ideas which can bring greater peace, happiness and prosperity to all the people of the world. Not because we are kind and understanding individuals, but because we personally, selfishly, want to live in a better world. The ideas presented in this chapter may not appear to be very "spiritual," but they describe basic observations regarding the means for creating an enlightened society in practical terms.
The most significant characteristic of an enlightened society is that the same socioeconomic structure would be implemented worldwide.
As I write this in March, 2003, war has begun yet again in Iraq. Terrorism will certainly follow, along with more wars intended to prevent terrorism, which will spawn more terrorism and more wars. War has been part of human society as far back as history can take us. It seems that war is part of human nature, that wars will continue to happen forever, but wars will cease to occur when the conditions which make them possible are eliminated.
War is a result of individual groups of people insisting that other groups change in some way. These groups can be nations, races, religions or other organizations of individuals with common ideas. In all cases, war requires the division of populations into groups.
There is nothing wrong with feeling connected to a particular group of like minded people or cultural heritage. There can be great value in sharing experiences with others who appreciate similar ideas and activities. The maintenance of various cultural expressions also provides for a diversity of experience which can be enjoyed by all. The problems arise when groups of people create artificial separations from the rest of humanity. For example, when individuals of a particular race actively develop specialized language usage, custom handshakes, uniform styles of dress, etc., they encourage "racism" by holding their group separate from everyone else. Whole nations enforce "accepted" styles of dress or appearance which separate them from other nations, i.e., some Muslim countries require men to have full beards and women to cover their faces. The danger is greatest when governments enforce artificial and unnecessary cultural/religious restrictions. In this country, for example, it has been immoral for a woman to show her bare ankle, and people have been imprisoned for publicly supporting the idea of free love -- to say nothing of burning witches for practicing unpopular spiritual beliefs. At the same time it was perfectly OK to own slaves and murder Native Americans.
An enlightened society involves recognizing and reinforcing those things we have in common while simultaneously celebrating the diversity of every individual. We must be able to communicate with each other, which means sharing a common language in addition to any native language we might speak. It is much more difficult to kill someone if both sides can make the other aware of why one is fighting in the first place. Conflicts can be resolved before they happen if we can first agree upon a common method of discerning the truth.
The creation of a single, worldwide socioeconomic system, having fair and reasonable principles which apply equally to every human being on the planet, would eliminate wars between nations because there would be no separate nations. Wars motivated by greed and ideological differences can be prevented if the operating principles of this single socioeconomic system benefited everyone equally and left no legitimate justification for group conflict.
There are four primary principles which can serve as a basis for an enlightened, worldwide socioeconomic system: Reason, Fairness, Opportunity and Freedom.
Real truth is objective. The means for discerning truth is reason. Reason -- one plus one -- is the same for everyone, everywhere on the planet. Beliefs and emotions do not share this common factor. Reason then, is the only means of reaching agreement.
Reason tells us that whenever more than one individual is involved in some situation, the only way to keep everyone happy is for things to be fair. Fairness does not mean all things are the same for everyone. We were not born with equal abilities and motivations. Some people can run faster or jump higher than others, and some will want to work harder to achieve more. So fairness doesn't mean everyone must have the same things, but that no one is forced to have less than someone else. In order for everyone to have the same, fair chance, opportunity must be incorporated into an enlightened social system.
Cooperation is not possible if people are "forced to cooperate." Force automatically generates resistance (every extreme implies the opposite). Peace, therefore, is not possible without freedom. Over the years there has been a gradual, but still incomplete transition toward the recognition of the true limits personal freedom. That limit is reached when one's personal behavior forces others to participate against their will.
Reason, fairness, opportunity and freedom must, therefore, be the fundamental principles of an enlightened, worldwide socioeconomic system.
It may at first appear that these principles are incorporated into modern democratic societies, which are obviously far from being idyllic examples of civilization. In the United States, our media constantly tell us we are the land of opportunity and freedom, but the opportunity belongs mostly to those who are born into it, and the freedom is restricted to behavior sanctioned as acceptable by government. Greed and control have taken the place of opportunity and freedom.
In the U.S., more than ninety percent of the wealth is owned by just ten percent of the population. This is the same as saying one person has nine apples and nine people are left to share one apple. If you imagine ten people going to work somewhere, and at the end of the day one person walks away with nine apples, while everyone else is given just one-ninth of one apple, you can see how unfair our current economic system is. If the guy with nine apples were to take home just eight instead, the standard of living for ninety percent of the population would double. Nine out of ten people would have twice their present income. This also means one's current standard of living could be achieved while working half as many hours, enabling one person to support a family, or for two to work half as many hours per week.
Ask yourself a question. Would you still do what you do for a living if you didn't need the money? If the answer is yes, then for you, it would be possible to live in a world where money was not necessary. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all have the things we need and want and get rid of the monetary system altogether? Perhaps some day that may be possible, but I can not imagine it happening in the foreseeable future. Too many of us work only because we have to in order to survive and be comfortable.
Fairness means that those who work harder, or contribute in ways which benefit more people, deserve to acquire greater rewards. Communism fails because its fundamental ethos is, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." In such a system the greatest rewards vs. effort belongs to those with the fewest abilities and the greatest needs. It is necessary to reward people according to their level of contribution, otherwise no one will want to contribute.
This can be achieved without allowing greed to dominate by applying reason and fairness. Items of basic necessity are those which are necessary to reasonably comfortable survival, so the idea that a few individuals should be allowed to make huge profits while others are forced to endure price gouging is unfair. Items of basic necessity include food, clothing, housing, energy, communications, education, transportation, medical care, etc. Since everyone needs these items, it would benefit everyone equally to create a system where they were made available at the lowest possible cost. This would extend to natural resources, which are part of the Earth and therefore belong to everyone, including wildlife, equally. Natural resources should be made available to all manufactures at the lowest possible cost, while at the same time it is necessary to manage natural resources in ways which protect the environment.
On the other hand, items which are not necessary to "reasonably comfortable" survival should be marketed without price restrictions. The only exception to this is when a person would be forced to purchase something, i.e., repair parts needed in order to maintain the usefulness of a previously purchased item. Price gouging is a form of force, and force would not be part of an enlightened society for individuals who were not exerting force upon others.
Taxation is another area where reason and fairness would change how things are done. No social system can operate without financial resources, so taxes are necessary. In a fair society, everyone should be taxed equally. But taking the same amount of money from rich and poor alike is not fair, because the rich would hardly notice what would be a devastating loss to the poor. Fairness would mean taking an equal percentage of income from everyone. The poor may feel the crunch of losing ten percent of their income more dramatically than the rich would, but the rich would be financing more of the services taken advantage of by the poor. For example, the rich can send their kids to any school they choose for higher education and losing ten percent of their income would not be felt as a devastating loss. The poor may feel the loss more directly, but free education means their kids can be educated with less financial hardship than would otherwise be the case. When you combine the benefits of being provided with basic necessities at the lowest possible costs, the poor would actually enjoy a better standard of living than they would if they were denied these services while not taxed at all. The rich would pay the same percentage of their income as the poor would, and still have more to spend than they would if they were taxed at a higher percentage of income than the poor, which is currently the case -- at least in theory. Loopholes enable the rich to avoid paying taxes almost entirely.
Taxation is presently used for both revenue and control, and tax loopholes make the system entirely unfair. "Sin taxes" are placed upon the sale of tobacco, alcohol, etc., as a way for government to enforce moral choices upon its "free" citizens. Taxes are also levied upon particular items as a way of "hiding" how much taxes a person actually ends up paying. There are taxes on the sale of any item (sales tax), on services rendered, on property, gasoline, utilities, hotels stays, phone and internet access, to name just a few. It is impossible to know how much we actually pay in taxes without laboriously adding up all one's receipts, and this confusion regarding how much we are taxed is exactly what the government intended. The result is seeing, say, twenty percent of your income withheld from your pay check, while in fact the majority of us end up paying more like forty percent of our income in various taxes. These additional taxes take a far greater percentage of income from the poor than from the rich, which is entirely unfair. This is particularly true with property taxes, where even after a lifetime of paying for a house, the government can take it away if retired people on fixed incomes become unable to pay the constantly increasing property taxes.
The solution is to create a single tax, upon income, with no loopholes whatsoever. The best way to implement this is an "exchange tax," where the receiver pays a fixed percentage of the amount exchanged in any transaction.
An exchange tax differs from a sales tax in that it affects transactions other than simply sales. Workers and others would pay the tax when they receive their income and would never have to concern themselves with being taxed again on the same money. Nor would anyone have to file a tax return. An exchange tax would also apply to all transactions made by corporations and businesses, not just their employees. There would be no deductions for "costs associated with doing business," including writing off jet planes, houses and automobiles. Loopholes associated with business taxation policies currently enable multi-million-dollar corporations to pay no taxes whatsoever. When businesses pay an equal percentage of their income in taxes along with everyone else the overall tax rate would drop dramatically. Remember that if you are presently paying twenty percent of your paycheck in payroll taxes, "hidden" taxes are doubling that. A true tax rate of twenty percent would cut the average worker's taxes in half. Twenty percent of all the money that changes hands every day in this world is a whole lot of money.
But don't expect "the authorities" to support such a change in the tax system. For ten percent of the population the tax rates will sky rocket to the same percentage that everyone else would be paying, which is far more than they have had to pay in the past. The people with nine apples will forecast doom and gloom for the entire world if they are forced to be fair and have to get by with only eight apples. They will point out that you will lose the deduction for interest paid on your home loan, hoping you will forget that you will end up paying even more in property taxes and twice as much in "hidden" taxes. The greedy will fight hard to keep the system favoring them, but fair is fair, and for ninety percent of the population things will become far better when things are fair. Don't forget that.
It is important to understand that no one deserves a free ride. Then again, it should be understood that when society became so large it took away the right of individuals to live freely off the land, society incurred the debt of providing everyone with the opportunity to support themselves. Welfare and unemployment compensation should be eliminated and replaced with guaranteed employment for anyone who wants it. People need items of basic necessity, and people can be provided with employment creating those things. So long as a person can always find decent paying work there would be less justification for petty crime, and no need for bankruptcy, which is unfair to the creditors who incur the loss. There should, however, be a reasonable limit on the percentage of income any creditors can forcibly withhold from a person in debt. Not long ago a man I know found half his weekly paycheck being withheld for child support, then the IRS took the other half for back taxes. It's no surprise that he quit his job and the creditors received nothing.
Everyone, other than the totally disabled, is capable of contributing to their own survival in some way. Those few individuals who are totally incapacitated would require medical care in medical institutions. They would not be considered "special cases" exempt from the socioeconomic structure that applies to everyone else, because free medical care should be provided to everyone. Medical care is one of the basic necessities of life, as illustrated by the following.

Robbers in White Coats

Consider the case of an American making minimum wage who has a toothache and discovers he needs a root canal. At present, the average American dentist wants $500 for a root canal plus over $600 for a crown in order to save the tooth. To save one tooth it will cost anyone making minimum wage (currently $5.15/hr.) over 200 hours to earn that much money, and the procedure will take the dentist about 2 hours. Of course, at minimum wage no one can support themselves to begin with, so such people have no way to pay.
If this person doesn't pay the money he will be in severe pain and his appearance will be disfigured. The same conditions would apply if facing a hoodlum carrying a tire iron in a dark alley -- pay the money or else.
Not long ago someone I know had a heart attack, and a few weeks later similar symptoms occurred so he went to the hospital. All they did was hook him up to a monitor for an hour then sent him home $1,000 poorer.
An acquaintance recently cut through the tendon of his little finger. Because he has no medical insurance, the doctors refused to reattach the tendon unless $1,000 of the $5,000 for the two hour, outpatient operation was paid up front. Not having the money, he resigned himself to spending the rest of his life with a maimed hand. He also lost his job because he could no longer work as a result of the injury. Fortunately, in this particular case a relative came up with the money for the operation, but not all of us are so lucky.
If you have a job which provides good medical insurance, pray that you don't end up unemployed in an economy where similar employment is simply unavailable, or pain and disfigurement, even death, may be options you also face. Tens of thousands of Americans die each year as a result of not having medical insurance. In the U.S. there are forty-four million people without medical insurance, and the absence of a national health care system which regulates prices has turned medical professionals into millionaire extortionists. We are the only industrialized country without a national health care system, and the cost of medical care here has risen at ten times the rate of inflation for decades.
One analogy for this situation would be a bridge called Life that spans a bottomless chasm, where the bridge is often icy and the wind always blows. It is inevitable that all of us will at one time or another be blown off the side of the bridge where we desperately grip the broken railing. Medical people are like robbers in white coats, who did nothing to put us in our precarious position, but walk the length of the bridge carrying a rope they can use to help people back up to safety. But before they help you they ask how much your life is worth to you, because that is how much they will charge. It's the same question a robber with a gun would ask, but the robber only takes what you have on you, while doctors and hospitals will take everything you have spent your entire life earning. It doesn't have to be this way.
From my encounters with pre-med students in college, I realized they are not the smartest, brightest flowers of the bunch. They are just people like everyone else, cramming for exams between parties simply to pass the tests rather than to retain the information, with many of them studying medicine only to acquire the wealth and status of being a doctor.
An enlightened social system would provide free education to anyone who wants it because education is a basic necessity. If people studying to work in critical professions were actually paid to go to school there would never be a shortage of qualified professionals willing to work for high but reasonable wages. Those individuals who have a natural desire to work in healing professions, but presently can not afford the many years of required education, would be drawn into the field and the quality of service would actually improve. There would be sufficient staff in hospitals so that emergency doctors would not be required to work thirty-six hour shifts and the shortage of nurses would disappear. The motivation of these individuals would not be to make millions of dollars, but to provide quality healing services and make a very good living at it. At the same time the cost of health care to society would drop dramatically, perhaps as much as eighty percent once the unbelievable profits built into the cost of pharmaceutical drugs are also removed.
Free health care would also enable people to take more pre-emptive health measures, such as having regular physical and dental exams, while free education would allow people to take yoga or other exercise classes and learn more regarding alternative health systems. People would be healthier in general as a result, further reducing health care costs.

One-Building Cities

The construction of one-building cities, housing one-hundred-thousand people or more, would result in cost savings that would cut the cost of living in half for those fortunate enough to live in them. (Fair taxation and access to basic necessities at the lowest possible cost would double your effective income, and living in a one-building city would double it again.) I am not talking about ugly, over-crowded public housing units for the poor, but spacious, beautiful, and above all, efficient masterpieces of architectural engineering.
Imagine a black pyramid a mile across at the base and half a mile high. The outer walls are lined with (separated) residential and office spaces. The living spaces could have large, outdoor patios big enough for a hot tub, dining table, lounge chairs and hanging gardens. These living spaces would be as large as an average home, without stairs, and no yard to keep up. The walls, ceilings and floors would be soundproof and each unit can be configured to taste regarding interior wall placement, with lots of storage space between adjacent units, which further reduces sound transfer. High speed data networks would provide access to virtually unlimited digital entertainment and information, including interactive on-line educational programs (reducing the cost of education). This communication system would also enable individual participation in government affairs. "Smart dumb-waiters" could deliver groceries and other products directly to your residence, while everything inside the building can be reached in just a few minutes via traveling walkways, escalators, etc.
The pyramid would appear black because the walls would be covered with solar panels to assist in power generation to individual housing units, so there would be no system-wide power blackouts. Wind, wave and other energy sources could supply electricity with no dependence on fossil fuels and their associated pollution. Since electricity can be used to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water, it seems possible that a motor could be constructed which would burn these chemicals (currently used as rocket fuel) while powering a generator that would produce more electricity than needed to separate the hydrogen and oxygen. In other words, it seems possible to construct a motor which runs on water and produces harmless water vapor as exhaust. In any case, it is possible, right now, to generate sufficient energy from renewable resources and completely eliminate dependence on oil and coal.
Surrounding the building the nearby areas would contain parks and both community and private gardens, with farmland beyond. There are no roads in site, since no one needs a car, and a railroad tunnel would run under the building to a transportation hub some distance away. Along the outside of the building at ground level, as well as inside, would be shops and restaurants. Office space and light manufacturing would make up much of the interior, which is also open and spacious, with indoor gardens, natural light, and a stadium large enough to seat half the population of the city at one time. Constructing one-building cities is not simply an exercise in community design. The main reason for them to exist is to improve efficiency, eliminate pollution and enhance the quality of life.
The cost of mass producing a private residence as part of such a structure is far lower than that of a free-standing building. Plumbing, electrical and data transmission lines are much shorter, streets do not have to be dug up and resurfaced to make repairs, there is no roof to build, and the main structure can be built with automated machinery designed specifically to "mass produce" that project. Using carbon nano-tubes as the primary construction material would enable the building to last a thousand years. Because most of the interior space is not exposed to the outside, heating and air conditioning costs would be dramatically reduced. And most importantly, cars would be eliminated.
Consider the reality of our civilization being so dependent upon automobiles. Besides the billions of dollars spent every year on roads that scar the environment, everyone who drives a car has to deal with drunk drivers on the road, speed traps, traffic tickets, dangerous weather conditions, auto insurance, automobile repair costs, fuel costs, etc. Forty-thousand deaths and five-million auto related injuries occur in the U.S. each year. Many of those injured suffer brain or spinal cord injuries which result in tragic, permanent disabilities. Automobiles result in tens of billions per year in insurance claims, cause seventy percent of water pollution, and about half of our air pollution. If we were to start all over from scratch, is this the way you would design things to be?
Constructing one-building cities and eliminating automobiles would save enough in construction, maintenance and insurance costs to double the standard of living for the residents. With everything you could want just minutes away, it could also be a great place to live.

Freedom and Justice

Laws governing individual behavior should be so simple and easy to understand they can be written on a single piece of paper in large type. "Do not force others to participate against their will," is essentially the only law necessary as far as individuals are concerned. Business, on the other hand, needs to be regulated in order to prevent exploitation and maintain public safety.
True personal freedom means an individual is the owner his or her own body and can do with it as one pleases. Personal freedom means private sexual behavior can not be regulated, nor can government regulate which substances one chooses to ingest. The "war against drugs" is a battle which can never be won because individuals will never accept that government has the right to restrict private, individual choices. Illegal drug distribution makes up eight-percent of the worlds economy -- a larger industry than automobile manufacture worldwide -- and entire countries are ripped apart by corruption and violence financed by drug profits.
The solution is to grant individuals the freedom they inherently possess as the owners of their own bodies -- to make them responsible for the consequences of their own decisions. If society made honest information available regarding the pros and cons of using street drugs, rather than flooding the uninformed with biased propaganda which is largely ignored, individuals would be able to make informed choices. If drugs were not illegal prices would fall closer to the cost of production, which is minimal, and there would no longer be huge profits to finance the violence, which would then cease to exist. With current wages for unskilled workers being less than the cost of survival, combined with the opportunity to make huge profits by selling drugs, many young people in our inner cities can see no way of succeeding in life through legitimate means. In other words, our present socioeconomic policies and the war on drugs causes gang violence and poverty.
Of the two-million people in American prisons nearly half are there on non-violent drug charges, one-sixth for marijuana alone. Due to our drug laws the U.S. has the highest percentage of its population in prison of any industrialized nation. One out of every thirty-seven adults now alive in the US have been, or are, in prison. This does not include those who have only been in local jails. Government refusal to grant individuals true personal freedom causes children to be torn from families, careers to be lost, and personal property acquired over a lifetime of hard work to be confiscated -- all in the name of "goodness."
Freedom does not mean "only those behaviors approved by government." Freedom means doing as you please so long as you do not force others to participate in your behavior. There is no other way to define personal freedom in a fair society.
In terms of real crimes, there will always be those who refuse to play by the rules and will treat others unfairly. There are two main ideas to consider when attempting to decide how to deal with such people. The first is remembering that no one will do anything which they are certain is wrong. A basic education regarding the concept of fairness, and a society that is fair with its people, will do a great deal to reduce real crime. This is sort of "the long explanation" given to adults -- over and over if necessary. (Being incapable of doing what one is certain is wrong, and "the long explanation," are covered in the "Psychological Wisdom" chapter.) The ability to earn a comfortable living with minimal effort will also do a great deal to reduce crime. The second point regarding fairness is that if an individual refuses to be fair, society can refuse to be fair in return. Every opportunity should be provided to enable an individual to see the error of his or her ways, but if the laws are fair and real opportunity is available, and someone repeatedly refuses to be fair toward others, they should simply be removed from all interaction with society and its benefits, with no attempt to provide comforts beyond healthy survival, i.e., solitary confinement.
Putting like-minded (criminal) people together where they associate with others who think the same way is truly stupid. It only serves to reinforce the kind of ideas that got those people into trouble in the first place. When it comes to those who simply refuse to be fair with others after numerous opportunities to learn differently, it would be equally "fair," and much cheaper, to simply kill such people and be done with it. However, it is better for society to pay the financial costs of a lifetime of incarceration than to unjustly kill a single innocent person with capital punishment.

Eliminating War

War is the most unfair of all human acts. Innocent people are killed, maimed or deprived of material possessions as a result of war. Families are ripped apart and the suffering lasts long after the fighting has ceased. The consequences of a nuclear war are horrible beyond imagination. The only thing more insane than a nuclear war is continuing to prepare ourselves to have one.
Both sides in a war feel their actions are justified and necessary. But wars are not created by nations. They are created by individuals, the leaders of those nations. There is nothing more noble about dropping a bomb on a tank containing several soldiers than having a sniper shoot the leader of an opposing country and preventing the war entirely.
When one considers the enormous cost of expendable military hardware such as bombs and cruise missiles, it seems that dropping new cars, hot tubs and big screen TVs on the opposing forces would do more to end the war, and at less expense. If the money currently spent on military operations were instead spent providing jobs, education and infra structure, on supplying the opposing force with a better life, wars could be avoided.
Wars are usually fought by one nation against another, or by one religion against another. In other words, wars are caused by groups promoting different interpretations of right and wrong, or good and bad. If one group believes it is wrong for a few individuals to profit from the exploitation of natural resources while the vast majority suffer, and another group believes the opposite, there will be war. If one group believes it is wrong for women to have equal rights, for individuals to enjoy financial and social freedoms, or that a particular religion should control government, and another group believes the opposite, there will be war.
The good intent of the American people is so sincere that we allow our young military people to die in defense of "freedom" in other countries, and for most of us we can not grasp why anyone would want to harm our county in any way. It is incomprehensible to the average American why the United States government is hated by so much of the world. Most of us never consider the possibility that it is because the U.S. constantly seeks to manipulate foreign economies in ways which benefit the few at the expense of the masses, that we actively seek to impose our morality and form of government on other nations, and that we are not fair with our own people, let alone toward those in other parts of the world. We are far from being the only unfair country, but we are the most aggressive in promoting our policies overseas.
On the other hand, corruption and repression are so extreme in other parts of the world that many people seek to come here. And there is the problem of religious morality in other nations creating unopposed propaganda which encourages people to take up arms in order to enforce their morality upon all others. The same principle of "moral necessity" we apply to imprison pot smokers is used by others to encourage suicide bombers.
The most effective weapon in any confrontation is communication -- getting both sides to see things the same way, and that means both sides agreeing to be fair. War is not possible where fairness exists. War is a result of unfairness, where each side is convinced, by it's leadership, that the other side is being unfair. The unfairness often exists, on both sides. Open communication between opposing populations would eventually eliminate war because all people are able to recognize reason and fairness when they see it. (Though it can take some time to sink in.) Because the Internet enables free expression between individuals across the globe, it is the single most valuable tool for peace in the world today.
As Seth tells us, "War will end when all young men refuse to go to war." There is nothing fair or reasonable about forcing a man to kill other men, so drafting people into military service is worse than slavery. When enlightened definitions of reason and fairness are communicated worldwide, and considered absolute necessities by the population of the world, all young men will refuse to go to war. The sooner positions of power are eliminated the sooner this can come about. Decisions should be made by a consensus of all those citizens who understand the issue at hand.

Democracy via an Informed Population

True democracy is a situation where each person has one vote and the majority rules. Another name for democracy is "mob rule," and angry mobs are not prone to investigating all the facts. True democracy also creates a situation where a completely uninformed person has as much power to affect society as the wisest individual on Earth. Most current "democratic" societies operate by empowering the population to elect individuals who will represent their views in the making of laws. These individuals, however, are not capable of representing everyone, so once in office they are trusted to use their own judgment. This often leads to corruption and abuse of power.
An alternative is an informed population, where all those who can demonstrate awareness of the details of a particular case are allowed to vote on the final decisions. In other words, decisions affecting others would be made by an "informed population." There should be an interactive communication system where anyone willing to study the issue at hand would be able to observe all the facts and contribute opinions, as well as vote.
If you don't believe corruption is a significant problem in every country, consider what has happened to the global monetary system. To make this explanation easier to understand, imagine the world has a population of only one-hundred people, and each of these people have one dollar. Twenty years later the population has doubled to two-hundred people. That means there would only be half as much money per person in circulation, or fifty cents each. The money would increase in value because there would be less of it to go around. That means wages and prices would have to drop by half.
In our present society, instead of money gaining value as the population increases, it loses value. Inflation causes prices to double over and over again. Everyone has to spend twice as much money to buy the same things. But that is impossible because there should be less money to go around due to the increased population.
Where did the extra trillions of dollars come from? It was created out of thin air. The monetary system of the entire world has been corrupted.
Corruption is also created when government officials purchase products and services from private manufacturers. These contracts often go to those companies who provide favors or bribes to the officials involved. Government should work toward manufacturing all the products it requires and providing its own services, rather than outsourcing from private companies.
In the U.S. the gap between rich and poor has doubled every ten years for the last thirty years, and is now even worse than during the great depression of the 1930s. Minimum wage, relative to the cost of living, is a third less than it was in 1973. "Free trade" has resulted in the loss of a three-million U.S. jobs in the last three-and-a-half years alone. Manufacturing is shipped off to third world countries where employees are paid one-tenth as much to work in sweat shop conditions and are denied employee benefits, and high tech jobs are increasingly being shipped overseas as American companies interact with foreign employees via the Internet. The result? Millions of Americans with healthcare and mortgages have lost everything.
When I was young I believed the world was a mess because no one had been smart enough to come up with effective solutions. So I spent years working towards finding those solutions. Later I realized that the solutions were fairly obvious to a lot of people, but they had not been implemented because those in power make deliberate efforts to keep the population in ignorance. Those who benefit unfairly from the way things are actively use the power of their enormous wealth and political influence to keep things as they are, and to make us believe we live in the best society possible.
Definitions of political left and right have been distorted in order to make right wing politics seem less repressive than they really are. On the right are people who believe it is correct and justified to force others to behave in particular ways. Examples include imprisoning people for using street drugs, having or performing abortions, viewing movies with "indecent" sexual content, etc. The opposite of this is not the liberal left as it is today. The opposite of right wing political thinking is using the same kind of force in the opposite way. It would be to force people to have abortions in order to reduce the population problem, to view pornographic materials to get over sexual hang ups, to use street drugs to gain enlightenment, etc. True left wing politics does not exist because there is no attempt to force others to participate in left wing thinking. What is considered left today is actually dead center.
So long as we are convinced we could one day have nine apples, we will be satisfied with one-ninth of an apple, and that is all that ninety-percent of us will ever get. We are constantly told that we have the opportunity to acquire great wealth if we are decent, hard working people, so when we find ourselves living on the streets we think it's because we are somehow inferior. We accept potential unemployment and the loss of all we have worked to acquire as an unfortunate but unavoidable reality.
We are relentlessly bombarded with advertising convincing us we need more things. This results in a lifetime of servitude working to line the pockets of the already wealthy so we can pay for a home and modest lifestyle. A lifetime of slavery to our never ending debt is the American way. It is becoming the way of the entire world, because we are all blindly led to believe that there is no better way.
Those who derive profit and power from the existing political systems either ignore or suppress opposing views. For example, many millions of people worldwide protested the 2003 war in Iraq prior to it beginning, while those in power acted as they pleased because they had the power to do so. In spite of this the propaganda has convinced us that government by representatives is the best political system possible. We believe we live in a democracy, that each of us has an equal voice, but when was the last time you changed a law?
There is no voice for opposing positions because the wealthy own the media. The capitalist government controls media licensing, and capitalist companies pay the advertising costs which are the medias profit. When is the last time you watched an American television program proclaiming the virtues of socialism, for example?
The idea that competition is good, that it inspires innovation and results in lower prices, has been ground into us from the moment we entered school as children. But competition means survival of the fittest. For example, large corporations with endless financial resources open chains of huge mega stores, buying products at reduced prices due to volume discounts and undercutting prices of all the smaller stores in the area. The small businesses can't compete and go out of business, but that's OK because we pay lower prices. Then the mega stores raise prices because there is no longer any competition. We lose. But still we act as if competition is good.
The solution is not competition, but cooperation. How well can a team work if the members are all competing against each another? Humans are social creatures and we all interact with each other. Like it or not we are a team, and we need to stop competing with one another. Cooperation doesn't mean communism, socialism, or any other kind of -ism. It means being fair. The world is a mess because reason is not applied to insure fairness, which includes opportunity and freedom.
Fully describing the way an enlightened society would operate could easily fill an entire book, and would be significantly enhanced if the best minds in the world contributed. What I have attempted here is to provide a brief description of some basic concepts involved in making this world the best place we are capable of creating as a society.
To review the main ideas:
There should be a single socioeconomic system worldwide.
The fundamental principles of this system should involve the equal application of reason, fairness, opportunity and freedom.
There should be a single form of taxation, an "exchange tax" paid by the receiver in every transaction, with no loopholes and at the same percentage for everyone. This would reduce taxes by half for ninety percent of the U.S. population.
The construction of one-building cities and the elimination of automobiles would again double the average person's standard of living.
Items of basic necessity and natural resources should be made available at the lowest possible cost by eliminating profits associated with private enterprise. Private enterprise should be allowed to compete in all other areas. Education and health care should be free to all.
Welfare and unemployment benefits should be eliminated and replaced with guaranteed employment.
Positions of power should be replaced by an informed population.
Criminal rehabilitation should involve education and progressively longer periods of solitary confinement, with no capital punishment.
There is one thing we can all do politically to begin improving the world -- which actually has a chance of succeeding because it doesn't prevent most of those in political power from exercising their greed. That is to legalize freedom by supporting the Personal Freedoms Protection Amendment:

"Behavior expressed in the pursuit of happiness, which does not force others to participate against their will, is an unalienable right of the American people."

This amendment would release nearly a million non-violent people from U.S. prisons, cut off the financing of most organized crime, reduce much of the corruption in drug producing countries, dramatically reduce gang violence on our streets, and rid us all of much artificial guilt. It would save tens of billions of dollars now spent every year on prisons and the doomed-to-failure war on drugs. That money could be used to educate and employ those leaving prison. And I wouldn't be too concerned about it turning kids into drug addicts - it's easier for a kid to buy street drugs now than to get alcohol.
A similar law could be implemented in many countries around the world, and we could at least begin the process of bringing reason, fairness, opportunity and freedom to all humanity. The necessary changes won't be easy, but that doesn't mean they can't be accomplished.
Social enlightenment is not simply a matter of bringing spiritual awareness to the masses. The political and economic system we live within must be capable of nourishing individual spiritual development. Our beliefs about the society we live in help to form the society we experience, and we should all begin by believing there is hope.
To bring enlightenment to the world is to create an environment where our own, personal, spiritual development can be nurtured in an atmosphere of peace, tolerance and prosperity for all. Be selfish. Choose to live in such a world for your own benefit.

One man can not change the world alone,
but one idea, shared by enough people,
will have already changed the world.
If you think others would benefit from these ideas, please get the info to them.
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