Utopian Thought Police

Sometimes I wish I was the bringer of a utopian society. Utopia to most people means a perfect world. The concept of perfection is an impossibility, a limit you can only approach but never reach. Giving utopia a more realistic definition, I would say that it is the accepted merging of a government and its society. "Accepted" is the key word there.

I think the internet social revolution is showing us what a mass of people can do with a few minutes of their time. Why don't we crowdsource our government? How would you accomplish such a thing? The internet is a step in the right direction, but we're still missing a few things. "Government" is just that: a system of rules that governs its citizens.

Our current government spends needless amounts of money playing a global scale game of Command and Conquer. We don't exactly know what our money is being spent on. The problem is lack of information and the fact that we hand our decision making power to some person that we may or may not agree with on certain issues. The politicians are not special. They're are people like you and I, yet they seek power over you and you willingly give it to them.

I propose the following. With the advent of the internet, we would be able to create a system with which we are able to hold our politicians accountable, or even better, become the politicians ourselves. How do we trust our politicians? How do we trust ourselves with power? Accountability.

I know many of you value your privacy, but for utopia, you must sacrifice it. To be held accountable for your actions, everyone else must know what you are doing at all times. Let's take it one step further and let everyone know what you're thinking at all time as well. Hear me out on this though, the thought police don't have to be evil big brother.

There needs to be a compromise. I would gladly sacrifice my privacy if I knew nobody was going to give me a hard time over the things I keep private. I do my best to be a good citizen. I try to keep out of people's way and try not to do things that would upset anyone, though you will always have uptight people that get upset over nothing, but I digress. I may or may not do illegal things that don't hassle anyone else.

If everyone "open sourced" their minds to the public, people would be held accountable for their actions, but there's something more important: trust. If you could read everyone's thoughts, you would know their intentions (primal: whether or not they plan to eat you), and determine if they mean you harm. I believe we only do "bad" (always a subjective term, along with "good") things because we know we can get away with it. How can we govern ourselves if we are unable to govern ourselves?

As mankind merges with the internet, we will evolve into a utopian society. The reason is simple. Evolution tends toward efficiency. A civilization that works together rather than against itself is much more efficient than one that is fighting amongst itself constantly. One way of working together and becoming an efficient society is by sacrificing your silly privacy so we can trust each other. The more efficient the human network becomes, the longer it will survive.

12.09.2009. 13:25

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