Defining Utopia

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to the concept of a Utopian world; I am skeptical of who gets to define what the perfect world is or how they intend to implement it. The problem with Utopia is that people can't agree on what it is because they are themselves composed of conflicted opinions, competing beliefs, and contradictory philosophies which are often mutually exclusive. I compare this to trying to drive a car with more than one pair of hands on the wheel; you come to a fork in the road and a dozen different drivers clamor for control all at once...a scenario rife with conflict and catastrophe.

I feel attaining a state of Utopia is...well, attainable. The problem is how do we attain it without committing political and social hari-kari? Suppose we could all take turns being dictator, one at a time, maybe then we could conceivably achieve it without the ensuing self-annihilation that would otherwise result. In short, somebody is going to have to impose it on us, whether we want it or not. World domination is the solution.

I know world domination is possible from all those episodes of Johnny Quest I watched every Saturday morning. Every week it seemed one mad scientist after another came within a hair's breadth of achieving it, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids and their stupid dog.

Ever since I saw Johnny Quest as a kid, I've always wanted my own private Island with secret laboratory. It was difficult to acquire a pair of trained attack Komodo dragons since most municipalities frown on them as pets. Despite all the negative stimuli attached to large carnivorous lizards, Komodo dragons are easy to feed. We play fetch with ours when it isn't chasing me up a tree; but I'm afraid it may be broken. It doesn't terrorize the neighbors like it used to. I assume this is nothing more than a case of 'reptile dysfunction'?

Despite the best attempts of great thinkers, mankind seems undaunted on it's way to self-destruction.

James Madison, being one of those curmudgeonly realists when it came to human nature said, "if men were angels we would need no government." I suppose he could have come to this conclusion after a careful analysis from the record of human history.

Freud and Skinner tried to fix the human condition but we haven't made much progress on that front, other than discovering theories of salivating canines and legal ways to shock the 'be-jeebers' out of people; for their own good of course!

Apparently you can get by with most forms of cruelty simply by claiming it to be a 'therapy'. Electric dog-shock collars might be a workable solution but I'm leaning toward my personal favorite...lobotomies. Hollywood and Madison Avenue were making great progress accomplishing this through a non-surgical process provided by the entertainment industry until they invented video games...now we have all those really cool war games and car-jacking and mayhem games that may reduce our cerebral capacity to wage war without a video game controller but have significantly increased our aggression levels and innate propensity to psychopathic homicide. By then we should have developed the brain capacity of cantaloupe with the disposition of a piranha. There's nothing like commercial grade sociopathic tendencies being instilled in our children by unscrupulous software developers. On the bright side, humanity will perpetuate its' trend toward malevolent behavior.

Peter Malthus came up with several great ideas to achieve utopia through overpopulation and resource depletion but bringing about the end of the world isn't nearly a easy as it looks despite having organizations dedicated to world betterment through genocide. Be careful when you engage in idle talk about mass-murder...it's like Viagra for tyrants!

My theory is that man's impediment to well-being is...man himself. We seem to be the broken cog in the universe. or at least the only creature intent on its own self-destruction Ultimately we just may have to eliminate people first in order to save humanity. If we could just sweep humanity under the rug out with the dinosaurs, we could make some real progress.

Lucy said it best, "I love humanity...it's people I can't stand." Now I see why! For a two-dimensional nine year old, she was a profound thinker.

The history channel does mange to come up with several ingenious catastrophic planetary doomsday simulations that frankly would leave a maniacal mad scientist bent on world destruction green with envy. Fortunately for those of us still stubbornly clinging to the delusion that humanity is capable of solving its own problems, the best they can achieve to date are clever computer-generated models of what it would feel like should the world end by calamity. Sadly, all they can do is tantalyze us with the prospect of plausible doomsday scenarios.

Recently the world has lost several beloved maniacal dictators but we still have a fledgling loony or two left in Iran and in North Korea that show great initiative in achieving the means to annihilate mankind with nuclear devices, now that we've decided it would be extremely unequal and in poor taste to let America do so. Things are looking up...we have regional animosity between Pakistan and India, both new arrivals on the nuclear genocide game.

Despite all the gains made by maniacal extremists who have pioneered the solution of 'if I can't impose my frenetically deranged ideologies of a radical distemper on the rest of the world, I may as well blow it up' theory of social re-engineering. For those of you who just want to be left alone to live their lives out and be decent people, get with the program you obstructionists!

The peace activists offer a feeble attempt with 'we want peace, even if we have to kill to get it' philosophy. You gotta' love their zeal, even if all the other lunatics, bent on world destruction and mass annihilation aren't as eager to play the game according to their rules as they may myopically envision it to be. All in all we've had some major setbacks...back in the dark ages things were a lot more low-tech but overall things seemed promising; we almost achieved it through the Bubonic plague. Falling off the edge of the flat earth was a miserable failure. Once they invented science. the scientists quickly redeemed their failure by inventing the atomic bomb which came as a great relief to those of us who still cling to the hope of a catastrophic world-ending cataclysm engulfing the planet.

And so in retrospect, maybe GOD should have not intervened at the Tower of Babel so we could have exponentially advanced to a platform of technological sophistication where we could have alleviated the sufferings of the world by self-assured nuclear destruction or at least unleashed an efficient method of mass annihilation through biological, chemical, or other means.

Oh....that 'peace on earth and good will to man' thing, let me know how that works out! Leave it to GOD to mess up a good plan but with a little effort, and some creative contorted logic, humanity has managed to absolve itself from all culpability. After all, it can't be OUR fault! Since we are all obviously too scientific to believe in God, it only makes sense to blame Him for all our problems.

Suddenly UTOPIA isn't looking so good!

On the positive side, after we manage to blow it all up, all the mass radio-logical fallout may create some interesting new mutations...like occupants who aren't bent on self annihilation. It's a long shot but maybe the best one we have.

In the meantime, is it asking too much for somebody to please NOT blow up the world until we figure out how to get to UTOPIA?!!!