A Tomorrow that Never Comes: Quality Education

This is a brief post on the education in an ideal Just Society. Please, see previous posts on the topic to know about the dogmas and systems this kind of "futuristic" society entails.

Disclaimer: No, I am not an educator. I am just a normal person, a computer programmer, who happens to think about all kinds of stuff. Moreover, as an attempt to improve my communication skills, I practice writing on this blog. Hence, the content you are about to read is not the words of an expert or the result of dozens of educational studies. It is solely my perspective on the topic.

Is There Really a Problem?

I would say so. In my view, education must be more than simply acquiring knowledge. Education is about giving people enough light so they can see all the paths that light illuminates, any of which they can take at any moment in their lives. It is also about letting them taste the fruit of the tree of knowledge, that is, allowing them to distinguish between good and evil, but not necessarily in the sense exposed by religion.

I believe today's society is educating us to be technical experts, but not rightful and prudent citizens. There is little effort in educating people to live morally in society. We learn science, language, history, but there is not much emphasis on ethics and moral principles. Moreover, even the current good technical education is not free, regardless of its level.  Therefore, I believe a good educational system should:

1. Help people make educated decisions;
2. Help them distinguish between right and wrong;
3. Be accessible to everyone;
4. Allow people to acquire knowledge to perform a useful task in society.

This is the list of educational goals society should attempt to tackle, and do so in a top-down order. This would be an educational approach which I like to call decision-focused, because it prioritizes helping people making correct and educated decisions over providing them knowledge to perform a certain task in society.

Nowadays, I feel we are approaching these goals upside-down, an education approach I like to call knowledge-focused. We are currently attempting to provide education according to market and industry demands. As it is, however, we haven't even successfully and fully tackled the issue of education accessibility yet. Therefore, as it is, society is far from being able to seriously tackle goals 2 and 1.

And You Have a Solution to All of It, Right?

Well, I have ideas. Whether they are solutions or not it is up to the reader. First of all, to make education free for all, we need to make all educational institutions non-profit or public. This would require them to live off of government funds or donations.

However, you may ask, wouldn't this lead to a melt-down of the educational system? I mean, do you really think public money and donations can fully support high-quality education? I don't know. What I do know is that profiting from education does not sound right. Many people either can't have access to quality education or have a lifetime of debt due to having it. Neither situation is acceptable and the only way to solve it is to make it free. Making education free levels the play field for students of all social classes and potentially mitigates the issue of social class stratification in the long term.

In order to make rightful citizens out of ordinary people, in addition to simply turning them into technical experts, more radical changes in the educational curriculum needs to be made. Students should be required to take classes on ethics, moral principles, politics, philosophy and problem solving from early ages up to college. This will help them form critical thinking and question results based on their perspectives on a variety of topics. It may also help them build social skills as they work together to resolve problems. Last, citizens will better know their rights as citizens and how to protect those rights or protest when these are in jeopardy.

Being able to know and do all these things are all very important in the formation of a citizen, regardless of the professional role one assumes in society. It helps keep citizens in control of society instead of having it be controlled by corrupt politicians and other governmental evil doers.

Does Education Have a Future?

The future of education is in the hands of every citizen in every society. The right for education should be universal and all of us should demand from our governments that they play their role in protecting this right. Life is a struggle, a battle, but changes only come if one takes action. Look into you naked soul, what is it really telling you? Educate yourself, envision all the paths you can take, and make a decision.

I hope this post has been educational to the reader. :) At the very least, it was much shorter than previous ones, which is also be a good thing. Happy holidays to you, the invisible reader, and may 2016 be filled with enlightened decisions and life-changing actions.

The Path of the Vegan

For this post, I have decided to take a break from the Just Society related posts and speak a little bit about another topic. I will get back to the Just Society discussions in later posts.

For long I have been thinking about writing on the topic of veganism. I have been hesitant about doing it mostly because of the ideas associated with the following quote that got stuck in my mind after I heard it on a documentary. It goes more or less like this:

"The unwise man tries to change others.
The not-so-wise man tries to change the world.
The wise man tries to change oneself."

I could not write about veganism without at least being a vegan. Admittedly, I cannot want to change others and the world without first changing myself. Now that I am almost a complete vegan (at least in terms of the food I eat), I have found the strength and inspiration to write (or preach?) a little bit about it. I was further motivated by a thought that could not leave my mind and that is in line with the following quote:
 
"Without marketing, your business is doomed to fail"

Maybe I am not the wisest of men, but if I think it is not enough to do the right thing. If you want people to do the same, you need to let them know about what is the right thing to do. I think that leading by example is not simply doing the right thing, but also advertising about it.

In the spirit of the blog subtitle, I have finally put my ideas together in a way that actually allows me to (de)code them into words. At the end, this post may sound slightly  arrogant or egocentric, but I really hope that does not happen. I just want to expose my perspective as a pro-animal-life person. Arrogance is not in my genes. If anything, my genes have given me poor communication skills. But enough of a preface, let us talk about veganism.

Non-vegan Behavior and the Invisible Wall

Assuming a vegan diet is not the easiest of tasks, especially when you were grown accustomed to serving barbecue during your birthday parties. However, once you are convinced that it is good for you and the others, and by others I mean other species of animals, there is really no turning back.

The hardest part in becoming a vegan isn't really the fact that you can't eat delicious meat, dairy-based products or even an omelet. At least, that is not what makes it difficult for me. What really makes it difficult is finding the answers to the questions that appear in your head on a daily basis once you assume the role of being vegan. In my case, the core questions currently are:

1. Is my vegan effort really making a dent on the current animal-based-product industry?
2. Will I be able to accept and live with meat-eaters without judgement on their own actions?
3. Why are there some many people aware of the unfair situation for animals in the animal-based industry, but yet they do nothing about it? 

The first question is really the easiest to cope with and answer. I mean, I know the power of us as individuals to affect the grand scheme of things is out there. The consumer power is out there. Whether it is in the hands of the consumer themselves or being "puppeteered" by the marketing teams and the interest of large companies, that is a different story. However, I am certain that if enough people would become vegan, we could change this world into a less cruel one. Nowadays, however, being a vegan is not the most fashionable of roles to assume, in the same way that it is not trendy to take public transportation to reduce global warming. Again, the lazyman rule casts its shadow on these aspects of modern life.

The second question is a little bit harder to answer. I must admit that I sometimes feel like just arguing with all non-vegan people I know (everyone I know really) about how wrong it is what they are doing. I like to call this argumentation urge the vegan attitude (a cute
funny name, thank you). Most of the time, I can control it, but it gets really hard when others start criticizing about my diet. The line of thought that leads to this sometimes aggresive attitude is the following.

Eating meat, dairy, eggs, seafood, etc. is imposing a live of slavery and misery to a multitude of species. It is treating them as resources not as sentient beings with feelings and emotions. It is removing life from another sentient being. How can anyone not see this as they look at their plates every day? Well, I know why. I was one of them at some point. You just don't think about it. You dissociate the word meat from the concept of the body part of an enslaved and tortured animal that is used to sustain an unnecessary culinary luxury for our taste buds. Let me just tell you this, it is hard to be a quiet vegan. The vegan attitude always tends to show up at some point and transform a conversation into a row.

The third question however, is the one that brings me the most indignation. How can people who actually know what goes on behind the scenes of the meat and dairy industry still not change their eating habits? How can they not feel guilty for participating in the atrocious animal genocide that is involved in consuming these animal products? How can they live with that? It is hard for me to believe that all humans have good in their hearts when I see this happen. It is not a matter of being narrow-minded or disinformed. It is cynicism, indifference, apathy, or as C. Wright Mills would accurately say, organized irresponsibility. I mean, wake up, people! Look into you naked souls and let it tell if this feeding behavior is really in tune with your own principles! I mean, do you follow any principles? Hm...I am kind of losing control of myself right now. My vegan attitude taking control again. Let me give a few long, paused breaths for a little bit...

Ok... I feel much better now. :) The thinking about these question creates what I call an invisible wall that separates us vegan from everyone else. Being a vegan is seeing normal social behavior as abnormal. It is putting yourself in a position that feels in line with your inner principles and, at the same time, noticing that the rest of human race has not even dared to consider that position. Even though you feel good about yourself, you feel sorry about anyone else who is not following that path. Yes, this may sound a little pretentious, I know, and I am sorry for that. It is not my intention. It is just a fact. You feel sorry for others, how much they could do to make this world a better place with less suffering. And it is this constant comparison between a vegan and others that creates this wall that permeates all of a vegan's social interactions. And even though it may not be perceived by most people who a vegan interacts with, its presence is felt by the vegan and it affects the way (s)he perceives the surrounding world and other fellow human beings.

I would say that learning to deal with this invisible wall is one of the most important lessons for an apprentice of veganism. It is a lesson of respect and tolerance for differences, no matter of what kind.

The Whys

Well, the purpose of this post is not only to express my opinion on the path of veganism, but also to condense in a single piece of text explanations for why one should follow such path. Attempting to do this is obviously not new. Many vegans have done the same thing in the past. And this is why I am going to leverage from their knowledge in this post. In order to make my life a little easier and the post a little shorter, I am going to be adding links to the text with many explanations to justify veganism. Hopefully the interested reader will follow them along and read their content. Believe, the text is of much higher quality than the one you are reading right now. :)

My hope is that, by putting this information together, whenever someone attempts to lead me astray from the vegan path by asking me why this, why that, I can refer them to my blog, instead of using the g word,  telling them to go g***** (search it) themselves. And who knows, maybe I will persuade a few of the readers to join me in the wild vegan ride (comment to self: a few out of 0 readers is still 0. You know that, right?).

The list below is divided based upon the type of animal-based products, and it may get extended over time, time will tell. A warning: the links below present content that is potentially inappropriate for children and the faint of heart. Nothing unbearable, but definitely thought provoking. I would probably finish eating before clicking on any of them if I were you.

1. Why not eating meat?
   I mean, seriously? Do you think meat grows on trees? Well...not really. We kill other sentient and emotion-capable beings to acquire it, not to mention the torture these beings endure during the hideous production process it entails. No further external content required to understand that, but please feel free to search on-line for more information on the topic.
   
2. Why not eat eggs?
   Eggs contains a lot of good stuff (vitamins, fat, etc.) in it, correct? Additionally, they are just chicken abortions (female period left over?), so if you are OK with the idea of eating an unsuccessful fetus-to-be, theoretically, you should not be harming animals at all in the process, right? Well... not really. In the next link is a nicely summarized EXPLANATION of the reasons why animal-loving folks like me should not eat eggs. Hence, next time you go buy, order or eat an egg, think about what you just read on that link.
3. Why not have dairies (milk, cheese, butter, etc.)?
   I mean, it is not even about abortions any more, it is just milk. Cows don't suffer when they give away milk. It is just something they produce painlessly. Besides, they get free food, shelter from the farmers and in general, live a good life, right? Well...not really. In the next link is yet another good EXPLANATION for why the life of a domesticated cow is far from the better life it would have in the wild. And because vegans care about the means necessary to reach an end, we avoid as much as we can any kind of product whose production involves animals.
4. Why not use products tested in animals?
   I mean, look how much good vivisection (animal testing) has brought us. Wouldn't it be justifiable to kill just a few animals to the benefit of millions of humans and even other species as well? Well...not really. I mean, would you want to volunteer for a lab testing where you could potentially die? I know I wouldn't. And not wanting to be part of these tests is not the only reason, though it should be enough of a justification to forbid vivisection. Please read both EXPLANATION1 and EXPLANATION2 to understand why vegans avoid products associated with animal testing.

The Path Less Travelled

The path of the vegan is not only the path of animal compassion, but also the path of tolerance and respect for other fellow humans and beings. It is the path of fighting against organized irresponsibility. A path that leads human kind to the creation of a more civilized global society. It is not an easy path, but I believe it is a path that takes us in the right direction.

I am going to wrap this post up with a few quotes to further inspire the undecided vegans to-be (if any).

It is only the wisest and the stupidest that cannot change - See more at: http://www.lookupquotes.com/quotes/it-is-only-the-wisest-and-the-stupidest-that-cannot-change/21495/#sthash.KynaM2zS.dpuf

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
Peter Drucker.

“Life is a sum of all your choices.”
Albert Camus.

Look into yourself and admire your naked soul.
What is it asking from you?

The Politics of Transparency and Communication: Overcoming the Lazyman Rule

I have mentioned in a previous post how the lazyman rule affects our lives in more ways than we can imagine. In  particular, it affects our behavior and development as a society. In the previous two posts I have described a few ideas on how to cope with the consequences of that rule in the areas of economics and other sub-areas of societal management. In this post, my plan is to provide the reader with a few more ideas on the area of  politics.

Public Monitoring

Monitoring the performance of government is of the utmost importance if we ought to have a corruption-free government. The System for Accountability Management (SAM) is one way to achieve that, whereby every single public work is monitored in digital form and available for review by the public.

SAM also keeps track of the political career of public servants. Therefore, it can be used as a tool for investigating and deciding on which candidate to vote or avoid voting in upcoming elections.

Last, every political decision, be it the creation and update of laws or the spending of public money is also going to be managed electronically. This will allow citizens to monitor every single aspect of political decisions, and also take part in it, as further discussed next.

More Power to the People

Another important change that needs to be made in the political process is  having the people intervene in any sphere of power whenever they deem necessary. Let me give a few examples to clarify that idea.

Let us say a community is represented by certain politician for designing and  implementing laws. In the political system of a Just Society, if the people feels the politician is poorly representing their will, they can change the political process very efficiently so it reflects their desires. There are a few measures they can take to mend the situation.

Firstly, they can participate in any vote the political representative participates. If a certain percentage of the citizens the politician represents (25%, 33%, or 51% of the population?) casts a vote and agrees on a certain decision (51% or more of every vote?), then they can override the politicians vote. Remember, all these results go on-line and if a politicians vote keeps mismatching the citizens decision, this is recorded in their political profile as well. Therefore, it is in the interest of the politician to be in-line with the citizens desires and demands.

Another option is to allow citizens to request the replacement of the politician in case they are deeply dissatisfied with him or her. This is already possible in some political models nowadays, but the process is generally slow. With the digitization of the political process, it is expected that changes in representatives are made more efficiently. Note that such change must be taken very seriously and would have to be triggered by a majority vote by the entire population. And because it requires the involvement of all the population associated with the politician, the process may endure more than desired.

Community Politics

In large population agglomerations, it is often difficult to understand who is in charge of representing the people of a certain community in specific issues. Communities themselves must have a better way to represent themselves in the spheres of power so they are capable of demanding their rights and desires from the public decision makers.

In the political system of a Just society, the decisions should be made bottom-up, that is, from the people to the politicians. The community leaders would gather the citizens desires about a  certain topic, and pass that on to the mayor or legislative representative for that community. The representative would bring to fruition laws that better reflect the citizen's will, and as long as they don't go against the core societal tenets. Similarly, a mayor (or governor or president) would allocate resources in a way that best satisfies all the communities associated with its town or state.

I know that I am over-simplifying the political process.  The political ladder has many more steps than the ones just mentioned. The point I would like to make is that the community leaders should have more influence on the decision-making process. Again, how much every politician and community leader can satisfy the community demands is reflected on his political profile and therefore highlights his or her skills as a competent or incompetent politician.

Minute Changes, Long-Term Progress

Honestly, I believe all these changes are doable nowadays, even without a complete overwrite of the current political system. They really try to cope with two main deficiencies in our political system: transparency and communication between citizens and their representatives.

If we use the existing technology, we can improve upon the solutions to these problems. We just need to overcome the lobbying and greed from the military-industrial complex and our current and already corrupted politicians in power. But that shouldn't be too hard though, should it? :) Well, when working together people can accomplish grand feats and overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. All we need is the will to do so.

The #1 Solution to the Economy: Make it Unprofitable

Let me start by saying that I think that any economic or political model can work well as long as it is guided by the golden rule, common-sense, compassion and tolerance. These are the underlying ideas behind the economic model that I am about to propose. It will contain a few references to the tenets and tools I have written about in previous posts. In case the reader is lost, please, feel free to review these.

The Five-Step Salary Ladder

In a just society, the concept of profit is completely banished. People are going to work for the pleasure of working and serving society.  The salary a person receives is going to be solely dependent on two factors:

1. The amount of knowledge and specialization required to do that work;
2. The amount of time the person spends periodically performing such work.

Therefore, in the Just Society, you can only earn more if either you work more or have a very specialized job. The categorization for the degree of specialization should not be a very complex one. It should follow the levels of education the job demands and could look something like the following:

1. No education required (e,g.,: public cleaning household jobs );
2. Reading and writing required ( e.g., driving and cooking jobs);
3. High school or technical specialization required (e.g.: office related jobs, crafts and technical jobs such as plumbing, mechanics, etc.);
4. University or high skills requirements (school teacher, lab assistant, factory manager, politician, etc.);
5. Specialized high-skill jobs (e.g.: biodiversity consultant, socio-political analyst, rocket scientist);

You can see that the qualifications are in-line with the amount of education one gets. It is also in-line with the amount of knowledge a job requires in order to be performed. Being the academic that I am, it is obvious I love this model, since I would be making the highest level salary, the highest in the market, that is, if I find a position! :)

This system not only guarantees a fair salary for everyone, but it also removes the personal greed and work exploitation since it won't lead to higher income to the upper level management to detriment of the uneducated labor class.

You may ask yourself: what will motivate people to go to work, if they are not going to make a lot of money? Well, there is indeed a concern that society production may come to a stall because of this restriction of the amount of money one can make in a job. Besides, if they can have their basic rights assured by the government, why should they care about working at all? Well, for one, the government will be watching you, if you can work and are not, you are out of society. Moreover, market competition is still out there. The person who does the best service will still be the one most requested to do a certain job an therefore be able to maintain a high level pay for longer periods of time. Competition itself is a motivator for doing good work and serving well others.
 
Moreover, there are techniques that can be used to mitigate such restriction on profit. For example, the employee-of-the-month approach used by many companies nowadays could be applied to all kinds of jobs. It could grant periodic bonuses to those employees that were elected by others as the most helpful and productive. The good part about this model is that in order to make more money, you need to be more educated and a better worker. This direct link between learning more and earning more is very important for the generation of a society of educated citizens.

Another motivator is that, if there are less working positions than people willing to work on that position, the position, the work hours get split among qualified unemployed candidates until everyone can work at least a few hours a week. While this might lead to a management nightmare, which might be overcome using technology, it would let everyone work their share, contribute to society, have their income and still have more free time. What is not to like about that?

Then you ask: what if there are jobs that no one wants to work on, like banking or financial management for example? Well, in these cases, the job is going to a community service pool. Citizens will be randomly pulled to perform these duties until their annual community service quota is filled. The amount of quota for each individual is computed using the ratio between the amount of work hours required to complete all the available and undesired jobs in the pool and the amount of citizens capable of completing that job. A citizen cannot be called to lecture a class in micro-biology unless he has the knowledge to do so. In extreme scarcity cases, training and education could be part of the hiring process.

What about political jobs? Who is going to want them anyway? They are probably not going to be the best paying jobs, because they don't require a lot of expertise, and they are going to demand a lot of work to understand the public demands, and make public money work in the right direction. Well, the beauty of this model is that people are going to work in the areas that are the most pleasurable for them. If you are doing a job because of the money you make, you should probably not be in that job. People should work on a job they like. And this is actually a good thing. This will make people who really want to be with people, and communicate and, help others to be the politicians, the ones managing society. Can you imagine a world where all the politicians are passionately working to serve their communities? That would be a dream come true, wouldn't it?

A Universal Public Service System

Dealing with individual salaries is a tiny bit and a somewhat easy to handle  part of the whole economic process. But what about private companies? How are their profit going to be controlled? Yes. You, the reader, is right again. I was procrastinating on that topic so as not to scare you and other readers right in the first paragraph of this post. However, I feel that now may be the right time do it. :) There will be no for-profit private companies! Andcall companies will be publibly monitored. In other words, all companies will become public nonprofits. And before you say I am crazy, please, think with me for a moment. What do private or public companies do? They provide a service to society. A company should not  and will not be able to do any more than that in a Just society. For example, they will not make their CEOs filthy rich because of the salary ladder imposed above. Every business, that is, a business that involves interaction between more than one person is a social service. Thus, it should not be a minoriry enrichment machine, but rather a society enrichment one.

This simple claim has an enormous, and positive, repercussion in the way we do business. It implies that, whether you are mowing your neighbor's lawn, selling bread, or managing a global IT company, your business will be public an monitored by a public System for Accountability Management (SAM, mentioned in a previous post). Every business will be potentially monitored and therefore be under the scrutiny of the public eye.

And what happens to a company's profit? Let us say a company makes more money than the amount necessary to maintain its infrastructure and pay its employees (whose salary are now fixed based on the above mentioned salary categorization above)? Where does the rest of the money go? There are a few possible destinations for this leftover:

1. The money is invested in new infrastructure to expand the amount and quality of the services provided by the company or reduce the cost of the service or product provided. 
2. If that is not done, then the money goes to SARA and is invested in public welfare according to the Just Society tenets.

The pressure in the workspace is not removed but replaced by a healthier one, the right one: to do the best job possible as efficiently as possible so as to provide the best service to everyone. Therefore, you might still have your manager breathing on your neck with this kind of system unfortunately. What can I say, nothing is perfect. However, at least now your manager will be motivated by the best of intentions.

A New Age of Social Consciousness

With this system implemented, the veil of institutional profit is removed and personal greed is uprooted from the socio-economic system. The system now works with the sole purpose of better providing services to citizens. People will be motivated to do better, to serve better and to be recognized for that. It sounds more of an oneiric economic system than anything else...and it probably is. Well, I really wanted to finish this post with a positive attitude towards my proposed economic model, but that would be too hypocritical of my part.

The fact is that if people are not willing to think of society as a group system designed to help one another, it really does not matter what kind of socio-politic-economic model one uses or proposes. People will always find loopholes and other ways to game the system and make it suit their egotistic self-serving purposes.

Therefore, in a sense, this post and many others preceding this one are useless if people are not willing to change their mentality towards helping one another. Whether this change is possible or not is a matter of faith. It is about believing humans want to fight their internal biological, survivalist or whatever-else forces that compel them to acting to their sole benefit. Are they willing to share their bread? Are they willing to lend their hand? Are they willing to sacrifice themselves in favor of others. Are they willing to put up with suffering so that others suffer less?

The answer to all of these crucial question is, from my view, at the present moment, a resounding no. No, because most people don't even think about these things, even after thousands of years of societal interaction. No, because I don't see a trend that this mentality is changing.

Few are the people who actually care about the people who they don't know, but who they know are in need for help. Human rights might seem to have evolved in some parts of the world, but at the cost of the exploitation and lack of human rights in other areas. Some countries may have become more civilized, but others are going through ever increasing revolutions, famine, plagues and public discontent. These countries are in two different sides of the coin. And regardless of how alike or different they may be at any point in history, the average result always point to the same idea: that the human behavior is ruled by the need for self-preservation. Self-preservation over social-preservation. There has never been a battle between these too, the former has always won.

Denying the prevalence of self-preservation over social preservation is denying our own nature. Accepting it and learning to deal with it is the path to growth and to building a better society. Whether the ideas proposed in this post are capable of being the solution to such a behavior is an open question. I will leave it to you, the reader to analyse these ideas figure out the correct answer to that.

Modern Tools for a Just Society

To reduce the amount of bureaucracy and human error, the management of the basic services provided to citizens in a Just Society needs to heavily rely on technology in order to guarantee the fair distribution of resources and provision of services to all citizens. A few of the tools that are going to be used in this new society are described in this post. Please, note how these tools are made generic enough so that they can be applied to a society in practically any state or federation.

The Big Brother: Digitalization and Public Monitoring

Whenever you are dealing with a messy situation, the first step is always to clean up and organize things so you can better understand what is going on. The first step towards revolutionizing the economy is digitizing every single transaction in society and make all of them globally accessible in a partially restricted manner. This is going to be done using what I like to call the System for Accountability Management (SAM). Whatever is related to the economy must be processed, logged and backed up by this computer system.

The digitization process will lead to a consistent history of the economy. It will help us do a post-analysis on the causes and effects of certain economic events from a micro and macroscopic scale. Citizens could also benefit from that, for this would help them better monitor their finances related to the  many interactions with the rest of the economy and monitor how politicians are spending money on their community. Therefore, SAM is not a bad guy, but is here to help everyone. It is a big brother, but a big brother that will protect everyone and keep them in line.

But this is really not a novel idea. This has already going on to a greater extent. Governments have websites to present reports and data on their spending. Nevertheless, most of the minute details of each individual service is still kept out of the public eyes. And that is where corruption creeps into the public machine. In a new economic society, every single cent that is spent in public affairs must be properly reported and logged in a digital system and made public for anyone to see. This will allow anyone in society to monitor the system and detect potential frauds by societal management.

One concern is obvious in this case, which is the privacy of the parties involved in each of the transactions being monitored. To protect privacy, the personal information (e.g., personal IDs) associated with the ones involved in the provision of public service should only be revealed privately for auditors in case of suspicion of fraudulent behavior.

SAM will not only monitor how money is spent on the provision of public services. It will also keep track of citizens contribution while performing societal jobs. If you steal, bribe, or commit any kind of misbehavior, you are going to get caught. On the other hand, if one works extra hard or contribute more than what is expected, this also goes on your file. And if you are on a political position, guess what happens? As a public servant, your professional profile becomes public for everyone to check it out during election times. And of course, records cannot be deleted, only mended with rectifying notes. This system will not only keep politicians on their leash, but will keep the leash on citizens' hand. It will also enable to help police and health managers identify citizens that have problems and may need social assistance.

Signature of Universal Effect

Every citizen within the society is going to have a unique ID that will allow them to perform all of society associated tasks. Let us call the Signature of Universal Effect (SUE). Sorry, but I am in the acronym-creating mood today. A SUE is directly associated with a DNA sample taken after the birth of each individual. A unique numerical representation of the DNA (a hash code) is generated using a special mathematical function (hash function). This number is then associated with an ID number that is given to the citizen. If an ID is lost, another can be retrieved through a DNA sample. If the DNA sample generated the same hash code, a new ID is given to the citizen. If not, whatever ID was associated with the generated hash code gets updated to a new one and the old one gets black listed. If the hash code is not identified, that is bad. It means the citizen was not registered yet.

Although the system would still allow for identity theft, it guarantees the person is who (s)he person claims to be...unless there are two people with the same DNA, which should only happen in the case of identical twins. And even in that case, this may not be a problem over time. For these special cases, one base hash function is used for one twin and a backup secondary hash functions are used for the other(s). Or perhaps a simple permanent and well-hidden body mark could be made on the twins individuals to identify which key they are associated with.

If the reader thinks that the DNA based approach is not enough, for it does not cover well enough the twins case or is too bodily intrusive and easily corruptible, there is still another possibility, which could be used together with the DNA id. It is what I like to call the brain ID. The idea is to use the anatomy of the surface of the brain to identify us as individuals, much like fingerprints. Since the brain develops its shape as each person develops their own personal experiences, it is expected that every single person will have brains anatomically different, even twins.  This will guarantee a unique identification mechanism for the fringe cases the DNA identification cannot cover. The only flaw with the brain ID is that, since the brain changes anatomically as time passes, monitoring of such changes must be made constantly as to guarantee the proper identification of the individual over time. This would require periodic scans for each of these special-case individuals. Because this might end up being costly, the brain ID better be used only to resolve cases that the DNA Id can't.

While this set of approaches to unique identification is not perfect, they provide a very reliable identification system that prevents long term identity theft. And whenever you need her, SUE will be there so you can know who to sue. :)

It's Just Money: A Global Measure for Resources and Production

From my view, the main issue with a monetary system is on what to base its value upon. A good idea is to have its value based on a non-perishable resource whose production process value is well defined and stable, such as gold. This has been used in the past, but has been replaced in part by the use of the dollar for similar reasons (and other reasons we don't want to know about).

The main problem is that even these are all affected by fluctuations in their associated markets. There is really no perfect solution to it. Therefore, I would like to propose my own base resource for fixing the monetary system in a Just Society. I am going to use a more ordinary resource that is accessible worldwide. I am talking about a healthy and universal meal (HUM$). Specifically, one out of the three meals one needs to have in order to sustain his/her body on a 2000 calorie diet.

What kind of food composes this meal may vary greatly from place to place, but the important part is that it is healthy. Therefore, it is based not only on one resource, but on a multitude of resources. Because of that, the meal can also adjust itself to the fluctuations of prices by using different ingredients depending on their scarcity or abundance. The important concept to take, however, is that, the value of every resource is based upon the value of a healthy meal and that the meal always provide the same amount of nutrients and energy to individuals.

Let us put the HUM currency to use now with an example. Let us say you have a deal to mow Miss McGrath’s lawn, a senior neighbor of yours. How much should you charge for it? We could think the value would be based only on the amount of calories your body has spent to perform the task. Then we could compute the average amount of calories in a healthy meal and then know exactly how much we should charge for completing such a task. Well, if you actually could know how many calories you have spent, then this would be a piece of cake. However, appealing as this methodical approach to computing the price of tasks may seem, it is far too simplistic to solve the multitude of situations that happen in real life.

The price of an activity includes not only the calorie factor, but also the price to be willing to perform the task. Some people may think that mowing the lawn is more of a burden than others. Hence, they are willing to pay more than the amount of calories necessary to do the activity because they dislike doing it so much. Moreover, you may spend a lot of calories mowing the lawn, but still end up with a terrible result because you just don't know how to do it. On the other hand, your other neighbor, Brett, may be a skilled lawn mower and spends much less calories while doing a much better job. Brett also has the latest lawn mower model which is easier to use and almost noiseless, thus making the lawn mowing experience much more pleasant for Miss McGrath. The reader can now see that the value of mowed lawn can vary depending on the type and quality of the service provided. Therefore, there is a lot of subjectivity involved in giving a price to an activity or product, which is to be expected. That is, in part, what moves the economy.

The important point to take, however, is that, whatever activity you do, you would have a very good measure of how much it would cost. Continuing with the example above, if you mow a neighbor's lawn for HUM$ 5.00 (5 healthy and universal meals), you know that by mowing one lawn everyday you would be able to support yourself reasonably well for a day and still have some leftover to use for something else to avoid working on weekends.

The beauty of this model is that it is common and accessible to everyone. It is also not attached to any specific resource, but rather to whatever resource is available to provide a healthy meal, which makes it a much more stable unit of measure, since it is the average of the value of multiple resources. It is also nation agnostic, that is, independent of a specific nation's economy health.

But how do we transition to this monetary unit? Well, we can come up with conversion units for each nation's currency based on the cost of  resources that are locally available and  necessary to produce a healthy meal.

But who picks what constitutes a healthy meal? Well, definitely not politicians or economists. Rather doctors and nutritionists who are hopefully more akin to the idea of keeping citizens healthy.

This healthy meal monetary unit will be the basis for a new economic model which will be described in a post to follow.

The Tax that Returns to Everyone

It is a fact: governments, people, or any other institution for that matter, need resources in order to serve society and accomplish whatever goals they set upon themselves.

Let us focus on governments for a moment, since they are at the heart, if not the heart itself, of a stable and healthy society. The government is responsible for ensuring the central tenets of a Just Society are properly applied to every citizen.

And that is where a System for Allocation of Resources and Amenities (SARA) comes into play.  This system will help automate the process of resource distribution across all the spheres of society. Together with SAM, SARA will help the government collect and allocate resources so that these are used to ensure the application of the Just Society core tenets.

SARA is going to contain algorithms that will help allocate the available resources to guarantee that the rights for all citizens are followed. The allocation of these resources cannot be fiddled with by government agents. If the SARA says a billion HUMs (remember, healthy and universal meals) need to be allocated in order to guarantee housing for all citizens, that is what has to be spent on that area. However, how that amount of resources is going to be spent is up to the governments agents who are in power. Please, also notice that the amount of resources is also distributed from the federal to the state and community levels by SARA depending on factors such as population, land area and others.

The main purpose of SARA is to guarantee that all citizens have their basic rights assured. And sometimes that even may require increasing the amount each citizen contributes to society (tax increase! Oh, no...).

Well, an important point to make is that, since every citizen needs to contribute a certain amount of the resources they make to society, every citizen is guaranteed that they will have as much of the basic resources as any anyone else. Please, let me give an example.

Let us say a poor citizen makes only HUM$400.00 a month. However, every citizen needs to give in HUM$1000.00 a month to SARA. What is this citizen supposed to do? Well, his/her entire income is going to SARA! Isn't that awesome! :) Talk about taxing citizens. But, hold on a minute, that is not the entire story. Let me explain.

Because his/her source of income is smaller than the minimum amount estimated by SARA necessary for a citizen to support  oneself, this citizen will receive from SARA extra credit to guarantee him/her access to potable water, food, shelter, sanitation, health treatment, safety, energy, work and leisure. Some of these services will be free of charge (e.g., public leisurely events), others won't. Therefore, in the end, SARA may even return to that citizen more than what (s)he has contributed, say HUM$700.00. And the idea behind this system is that, at the end of the month, every one that is part of society has enough money to live a decent life style that complies with the Just Society tenets as much as possible.

This sounds a lot like the idea of a minimum wage. The difference is that now the calculation involves all the necessary factors required to provide citizens with a good quality of life. Additionally, this contribution and reimbursement process is going to be somewhat seamless for citizens since all the processing takes place before any credit is received by them at the beginning of each month.

The catch of this system is that SARA is obviously going to detect which citizen are being unable to fully support themselves. Therefore, these citizens need to be more closely monitored by social agents, so that they can provide the appropriate help in order for them to become fully socially productive as well as self-supporting. And this is an idea that no everyone may like, once again, because of the Big Brotherish feel to it. I would argue, once again, that the intent of SARA is only that, as a society we should help each other, so all of us can work together to improve our chances of survival and quality of life.

The computation and redistribution of resoruces is a task that is much easier said than done. A simple example that exemplify the complication of such computations is the fact that people live and work in places whose distance differ. How is SARA going to compute how much money is necessary for one to spend on transportation? What if someone has a disease that requires special more expensive diet? Well, all of these factors could serve as input to SARA's credit distribution algorithm and make the minimum wage a custom one depending on each others situation. I mean, the same adaptation already takes place in tax return nowadays. I am sure adaptive Artificial Intelligence algorithms would have to be applied in order to adjust to the current global economic state. Moreover, SARA would have to be trained very well using simulation before it was actually be put to use.

There is one last idea I need to mention about SARA. Part of it is going to be controlled by governing parties. SARA allocates resources at a higher level, but the minute conversion of resources into services that benefits people would have to be done by elected officials. This guarantees that democratic process is still kept intact and alive. Citizens can elect candidates who they think are going to better put the credits to work in a way that most pleases them. An interesting consequence of this is that all elected officials would now have to master the use of SARA's system. Yes, they would have to know office, excel and SARA. :)

In summary, SARA can be understood as a larger and more powerful version of the U.S.A.'s Internal Revenue Service (IRS). It will put all resources in a single big heap and then distribute them in a fairly manner to guarantee all citizens have their rights guaranteed.

Reader, Are You Still There?

Yes, this was indeed too much for a single blog post, but at least I have covered all the ideas for societal tools I have been thinking (so far...). Let us end it here. I will continue providing more details on the inner working of the Just Society in the coming posts.

Fixing Humankind Simply Put: The Just Society

Over the past few years, I watched many interesting documentaries clearly depicting the greed of humankind such as Let's Make Money and Darwin's Nightmare. They helped open my eyes to a part of the economic reality of which most of us are unaware. However, after watching an interview
with the economic hit man John Perkins. I have decided that I have seen enough. I mean, enough to start thinking about a solution to this crazy economic world which a few of us has created to probably benefit the same few of us.

I have been thinking about this idea for a little while and I still haven't come up with a full blown solution to the problem. Hopefully, as I write this post, I will start asking myself the right questions and filling up the holes. Otherwise, I will let the reader fill up the blanks or request me to fill them up.

In a previous post, I have alluded to the idea that "Human existence and civilization is the endless conflict between nature and nurture". This could also be called lazy-man rule or the least-amount-of-effort rule. I identify better with the first name. It is also more concise, so I will stick with it for the remainder of the post.

From my point of view, an effective economic model for humans must be able to find a reasonable solution for dealing with the lazy-man rule, for it is this rule that makes us want more and more with the least amount of effort, even if laws need to be "bent" or broken. In fact, this model cannot be purely economic, but rather social, politic and economic, because these three subjects are so intertwined in defining how our society works. It is going to be difficult to explain any point related to one of these three aspects governing our society without mentioning its implications on the other two.

Moreover, and perhaps, more importantly, this model should give everyone the same amount of fair treatment. After all, the fundamental motivation of living in society is so that all of us can be better off than if we were on our own out in the world. And to emphasize the importance of this aspect of the the socio-politic-economic model I am about to propose, I am going to call it The Just Society Model (JSM) or, if referring to the results of its application to humankind, The Just Society. I also like this name because it is a subtle reminder for myself to write just what is needed to explain the model, since I tend to be rather prolific at times. After all, the simplest solutions tend to be more well accepted and implementable than complicated ones.

In summary, the JSM will hopefully be able achieve the following two goals:

1. Mitigate the existence of the lazyman rule;
2. Set a foundation of fair treatment across all aspects of society. 

That being said, I am certain that most of the readers will think that the model will either not go far enough or go way to far to accomplish these goals. I will let the readers decide on what the consequences of implementing such model are. And if at the end of reading this, the reader thinks the author is a lunatic, well, I hope the reading of it will at least have served as an amusement for the reader in his/her spare time. :)

By now, the same reader must have realized that this Just Society topic is going be a long one. Yes, indeed. It will require many  posts to be fully covered, since it is going to contain a multitude of considerations about our current society, as well an equally large set of  propositions for socio-politic-economic improvements, which are, more often than not, frail and ingenuous (No, not at all. Actually, ingenious! :) ).

In this post, I am going to start with a list of the core ideas or tenets this model will base itself upon. In the following posts I will then elaborate more on sub-topics and refer back to this list.

Tenets for a Just Society

Perhaps predictably, these tenets borrow ideas from the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the ten commandments, but I believe they go a little further and broader than those. Perhaps, they are simply less concise! The tenets are the following:

1. All citizens have the right of access to basic resources, namely: potable water, food, shelter, sanitation, health treatment, safety, energy, work and leisure.
   
2. All citizens with basic education have the right to participate in socio-political decisions. These citizens also have the right to assume socio-political managerial positions.
   
3. All citizens have the right to form and participate in gatherings of any purpose (e.g.,  familiar, communitarian, sports-related, etc.) as long as all participating members agree upon the gathering norms and take responsibility for the consequences of such gatherings. Gatherings norms should not go against the societal tenets.
   
4. All citizens have the right to basic and higher education.
   
5. Once adult age is reached, and unless deemed incapable, all citizens must contribute to the improvement and maintenance of society. 
   
6. Unless deemed incapable, all citizens must complete the basic education level, which shall include not only classes in arts, sciences and languages, but also moral, ethics, politics, economics, philosophy and religions.
   
7. All citizens must respect other citizens' freedom of expression, religion, and philosophy.
   
8. All citizens must always put their best effort to act fairly and tell the truth as far as they are aware of it.
   
9. A citizen must always look to help other citizens. He must not intentionally act in any way that harms another citizen, unless as a consequence of societal punishment for breaking these tenets. Euthanasia is permitted as long as the euthanized citizen is not deemed incapable to make such a decision.
   
10. In situations of scarcity of basic resources (see 1), citizens must fairly share their basic resources to guarantee that other citizens also have access to them.
    
11. Citizens may be awarded with special resources as elected by the majority of other citizens that participate in the same community at different geopolitical levels based on their contributions to societal progress towards achieving these tenets. 
    
12. Citizens that do not comply with these tenets lose their rights and benefits that are provided by these same tenets. A three infraction lenience system should be applied. A re-inclusion system should also be provided for transgressors.
    
13. For cases not covered by these tenets, compassion, tolerance and common-sense applies.

These tenets are visibly divided into rights (1 - 4), obligations (5-10) and relational and plan-B tenets (11 and 13).

I gave some thought on preparing these tenets to ensure they covered all important areas our society, but, again, I might have missed something. I will let the reader comment on them while I continue to detail how these are going to be used in the remodeling of our society into a Just Society.

Fixing Humankind: Transportation

Transportation has become miraculously effective nowadays. We can go wherever we want in less than a couple of days. We can also obtain products from around the world at arguably affordable prices. Transportation enabled us to plan our activities using as a target a much broader, even global, geographical scope. This was mostly due to the invention and pipeline production of the combustion engine.

But this all came at a cost. Due to its effectiveness and convenience, motorized transportation permeated our cities in a widespread manner and brought with it air, sound and urban landscape pollution. In many places, pedestrians are not treated with the respect they deserve. Moreover, vehicles potential for harm is many a time neglected, causing many accidents which are currently one of the leading causes of human and non-human fatalities.

There must be some way to benefit from effective and efficient transportation without detriment to the urban environment and lifestyle. I have tried to come up with a solution for the problem that leverages from as much new technology as possible. After a while, however, I have realized that a less utopian, simpler solution would be the best. I have decided to post both of these ideas here and give my analysis in terms of their feasibility and benefits.

The Expensive Utopian Sci-Fi Solution

In this solution, vehicles would drive themselves. This would drastically reduce the amount of accidents that occur nowadays. Best of all, people could get drunk as much as they want and still go back home :). In addition to that, there would be no more honking on the street, highly accelerated engine noises, and screeching tire that are now part of urban cacophony. The vehicle users would indicate one or more destinations and the vehicle would optimally drive the users around taking into account traffic and road topology. The technology already exists, it is only a matter of investment and building up the required infrastructure.

Roads would go underground much like subways nowadays. Because drivers would not be driving the vehicles, no day light nor even headlights would be needed to drive around, unless in case of  emergencies or faults. For longer distance dislocation, vehicles would get into train wagons and be carried along a high-speed underground rail network connecting major urban points in a state or nation. For that to be possible, vehicles would also have to be smaller, so that more of them can fit in less space. This would optimize flow in roads and optimize vehicle transportation.

Vehicles and trains would all be moved by electricity. While trains would be connected to the power grid all the time, the same would not be true for the vehicles. The latter would be connected to the grid when being carried on a train, but also when driving in metropolitan areas were the grid infrastructure would be more readily available and maintained or in higher speed roadways where the vehicle energy demands would increase due to higher speeds.

Most importantly, all transportation would be public. Vehicle stops would be homogeneously available in every city. Dispersion of vehicles would be determined by a computer-controlled system, which would optimize idle vehicles distribution based on their location.

Vehicles would be composed of 3 to 5 interconnected compartments, but with enough room for privacy and storage of belongings. They would look like a small subway wagon. A single vehicle could then carry multiple groups of people with similar destinations on only one trip.

A vehicle user would have a digital ID that would be scanned on a machine in the vehicle stop. He would input his destination and whether more than one seat would be required by adding other users IDs. Such information would then go to a central server to compute which vehicle the user should take.

If this transportation system was in use, the number of vehicles in the streets would be drastically reduced. Not only more than one group of people would be using the same vehicle at once, but a single vehicle could also be used multiple times during a single day. No more vehicles would be stopped all day long in a parking lot. Actually, parking lots would not exist, since vehicles would always be on the move or in stops ready to serve the population. The space of parking lots could then be used for other purposes. Parking lot structures could be used for schools, public gardens and markets or other  structures that would enhance the quality of life of the community in that area.

This mix of autonomous electric vehicles and trains would reduce all kinds of  urban pollution caused by our current transportation system. It would also remove the necessity for a Registry of Motor Vehicles to monitor the driving behaviour of citizens. Such an entity would then be solely responsible for maintaining the autonomous vehicle infrastructure.

Even if the power grid would still be dependent on coal, oil or other dirty sources to generate electric energy, the energy generation would be given in a small set of spots spread around along the grid. The integration of the energy demands of transportation to the electric grid would remove the costs involved in transporting gas and maintaining gas stations. It would also facilitate pollution monitoring and management. This would motivate collaboration between energy companies and governments in moving this project forward. However, the ideal would be to reduce dependence on carbon-related fuels over time.

In the automotive industry, companies would have to compete for better quality models of vehicles and compete for chunks of the public "autonomous cab" market. This would be a transition hard to accomplish. These companies would then be funded by the government, and would be responsible for maintaining their own vehicles in the public infrastructure. The competition would ensure the quality of the service provided by these companies.

The Cheaper More Practical Solution

Much as I would like to have the above solution implemented, I think not even the richest of governments would have the guts to do it. A drastic change would have to take place not only in the transportation system, but also in the vehicle, energy and other interdependent industries.

But there is another way which is, if not less impacting or revolutionary, at least more cost-effective. The solution is simple: let's replace the above-described autonomous vehicles with bicycles.

Bicycles would still be public and spread all over the place for anyone to use them. It is true, they would not autonomously lead the way. But, looking at the bright side, transportation users will stop being lazy and actually learn more about the local road network and the city they live in and work.

In addition, they would also be constantly exercising. This in itself would be a huge advantage over autonomous vehicles. An exercised population would have reduced stress levels and less chance of heart attacks and other health problems. Ultimately, it would lead to a reduction in public health costs.

Bicycles are also pretty small compared to current cars. Even if parking lots would still be required for them, they would be able to contain far more bicycles. In addition, bicycles would always be reused and hence there would be less vehicles stopped overall. Again, similar transportation systems are already being implemented in some cities.

Special cyclist wagons could be added to the current subway and train system available for bikers who want to either use their own bicycles to work instead of leaving them in the nearby station and having to take a public bicycle when they get at their destination. This would also be more enticing for transitioning users who would not be willing to rely on public bicycles that could not be as energy efficient from a calories-per-cycle standpoint (not enough gears) or may not be available when needed during rush hours.

With a small investment in both the current train, subway and road infrastructure to make them more bicycle friendly and the help of the increasing gas costs, more people would gradually transition to bicycles. Similar benefits for cyclists could be provided as for those with electric cars, such as tax discounts or special easy to park spots, or even parking lots with no parking fees.

But even assuming everything would go well and all commuters would transition to the bicycle commuting system, this would not solve all problems. The current road infra-structure would still be required for transportation of goods and for special transportation situations such as for disabled people, elderly, or just for providing ride to the airport with one's personal luggage. However, using bicycles would be an interesting midway transition before the entire road system can actually be modified to the utopian transportation solution. The investments and changes in infrastructure and urban lifestyle would be more gradual.

And, after all, bicycles are very energy efficient and inexpensive. There is no more energy optimized system than our body. Instead of paying for gas, people would have to pay for a little bit more food. But eating a little bit more everyday to compensate for the calories spent in commuting can never be a bad thing to do.

Furthermore, using bicycles for transportation is a change that is not entirely in the hands of a government. It is in the hands of the population. As long as the population starts using bicycles, it will demand from the government to create more infrastructure for them, and the industry would then follow along. Hence, it is a type of change in the transportation system that is much less hindered by the lobbying power of big corporations. It is only a matter of the population desiring that change to happen.

The Final Question

Everyday we experience stress, pollution and other annoyances due to our current transportation system. We also hear about the impact the carbon emissions have on the environment and how this is leading to a change in our biosphere. Yet, most of us persist in blaming authorities for complying with the pressure from the dirty energy industries while doing nothing about it. We tend to forget that, at the end of the day, the final consumers of a good part of that energy are no one but ourselves.

When will we, as global citizens, take matters into our hands, get our butts out of our car seats and start doing something about the problem? Riding a bicycle only brings us benefits. No more paying for the gym, no more wasting time in the gym, no more paying tons of money to fill a tank with gas or paying to maintain your "oldsmobile". One can exercise while commuting and also enjoy the sight. And if the bike breaks, you can fix  it, yourself! How cool is that?

Citizens of the world, take action to change this world into a better one. Start it by riding a bicycle.

Fixing Humankind: Getting Back to Caves

After much deliberation along the past few years, I have reached this incredible conclusion: we should all live in caves again. Yes, it would be fantastic! This would definitely be on my list of radical changes to humans' current way of living. Living in caves has, from my perspective, great advantages over living in apartments and houses. Let me try to explain some of the reasons for that.


Firs of all, and most importantly, if we lived underground we would actually free up a lot of the earth's surface to be used for other purposes. The first thing that comes to my mind is to use that space for our raising crops. Doing this would, hence, reduce our footprint on earth's crust and as consequence free up more space for forests and wildlife.


Secondly, living in a cave saves energy. Moist soil or rocks would keep our abodes at just the right temperature in whatever season we are exposed to. Allied to good ventilation and illumination, there is nothing better than the tranquil shade of a cave. Not only that, it also isolates us from external noise, and bad weather.


Thirdly, we would spend a lot less money on aesthetically pleasing facades for our homes and worry more about the comfort on their inside.

Fourthly, the outer world would look a lot lusher with vegetation on cities, even if such lushness comes simply from our own crops. I believe this would really make cities a more pleasant place to live.

Last, it would also bring the problem of use of land and natural resources to the urban reality of the city consumer, which will make human population more socially aware.

I am cognizant of the problems related to living in a cave. It might not lead you to a shiny happy life, literally, especially because providing natural sun light to a cave is not as easy as in a house. However, it is not impossible. There is already technology being developed nowadays to replace electrical light with direct sun light through the roofs of houses. Similar technology could be used to cave abodes. And even ordinary mirrors help to the work of spreading light around.


Another important issue is ventilation. But we have also developed technology related to that. Such is the case the skyscrapers can make air breathable even at amazingly high floors. It is really just a matter of finding the right design. And we can also leverage from nature's solutions to ventilation in similar situations.


There has actually been evidence of successful cave houses in Switzerland,  France and many other places worldwide. I believe the idea should be brought to a larger public other than tourist, rich adventurers or locals from such places. However, bringing cave houses to a more urban environment and in a larger scale would be quite a challenge. Media and government would play a key role role in making that feasible and accepted by ordinary citizens.

 In conclusion, if I were to rule humankind, one important change I would make would be to put people back in caves. It saves so many resources that it is ridiculous we have not done that yet. I must admit, however, that although large cave buildings are viable from an engineering point-of-view, having them implemented might generate urban problems similar to the ones ordinary residence buildings generate, such as increase in local traffic. Hence, such an idea would probably not be worth it. Perhaps suburban single-family caves are mode ideal. But I will take that hint to lead me to my next fix in human society: the issue of transportation.

P.S.: I myself have been thinking of a cave house design for me to live in (as if my wife would ever agree on that). Perhaps, it will be the subject of a later post when the house plan is better polished.

Fixing Humankind: Superpopulation

The readers who have been following this blog might have noticed by now that I have a certain criticism on our current societal values. Please, don't get me wrong. I know we are here only because of the path we took and, honestly, we have accomplished a lot of good things up until now. However, I still feel humankind has missed many important steps in its development as a civilized species.

In the last post I hinted about my personal desire for listing the changes I would make to the way we live if I had the power to do so. Well, this is going to be the first of many posts on that topic. This one is going to be an initial discussion about superpopulation. Nevertheless, because I haven't written in a while, the text is probably going to read a little sloppy. Hopefully, this will change as more posts come along.

If I could set a single goal for humankind to accomplish, it would be to drastically reduce its population size. The justification behind this idea is the following. Whatever we humans do, whether good or evil actions, their effect on what is around us is going to be much less significant if there are less of us in the world.

It is not fair that a single species should monopolize the biosphere and change it so dramatically that the biosphere itself is affected and threatened by such changes. Earth's ecosystems' future shouldn't  be dictated in its majority by a single species. Humans should occupy only a minute amount of the Earth's crust, so that other species have enough room to live and thrive.

The amount of damage we cause to the many bio-microcosms that surround us due to war, agriculture, and animal domestication is enormous. And if you consider how we manipulate and corrupt natural resources such as rivers and mountains to support the infra-structure necessary to maintain our current lifestyle, the picture of humankind as a civilized species then becomes pretty grim. Only a few ordinary natural resources we have not yet had full control over, such as sun light and air. But even those are already affected by consequences of human egotism and opulence through global warming.

I do not think having so many us imposing so much on nature and its limited resources is correct. I think we should learn from other species to let nature take its natural course. We should indeed, as some say, live in harmony with it. And, from my perspective, the first step towards achieving that goal is reducing our population. If we are in less numbers, we can cause less damage to the rest of the world. As technology progresses, however, the impact a of single man becomes ever larger, and, therefore this fact should be considered when deciding how much larger human population should be.

What I am going to say now is going to sound a little bit apocalyptic perhaps, but I guess it might be a good way to emphasize the point I want to make in this post. Let us reduce the number of humans so that the plague of humankind does not stifle all other species and as a consequence suffocates itself too. It is better for us to control our population our way than let nature impose that on us in its own catastrophic terms. If we keep growing haphazardly as we currently are, at some point there will not be enough resources for everyone, even if we manage to distribute it fairly, which is obviously not the case right now.

Look at the problems we are already having with drinkable water. What about crop space? The fish industry is also having a hard time dealing with the increasing demand of fish, which is leading them create their own way “fish domestication” processes by creating "marine cattle" farms, the so-called fish-farms. These, much like the standard crops, are very damaging to the surrounding marine biome and to the animals that are raised in it. At some point, we are going to have messed nature up so much that there will not be any real nature for us to talk about. And if we manage to survive and occupy the entire surface of the planet, by that time, nature will consist of men and their bioengineered high-yield fauna and flora, which will be some weird cyberpunk reality. What a great place this world is going to be! :)

Population growth should not be associated with economic growth. Economy can still grow if the same amount of people is better educated, well fed and more productive. What is the use in increasing population size if we cannot even manage the size of the population we have now. Let us first deal with the amount of people we currently have before we can even consider increasing our population.

In conclusion, if I could, I would likely limit human population by, let's say, at most 1 billion people. Then we could all live in a few smaller spots on the planet's crust and leave the rest of Earth's crust untouched and unaffected by the “creative” hand of men, available to the other uncountable amount of species to enjoy their freedom and natural habitat.

A Change in Diet is a Change in Perspective and Vice-versa

    I have been a vegetarian for almost two and a half years. I was certain that this was the right decision and that, despite some minor drawbacks, my life was better this way. It better matched my envisioned perfect representation of myself.

    Two weeks ago, right after my last post I was afflicted by a severe gastric-intestinal virus. It forced me to spend a large amount of my time on either bed or bathroom, leaving room for my mind to idle on various thoughts, including vegetarianism.

    This meat-eating forbidden diet started after a philosophy professor reminded me of the process that goes into putting the meat we eat on the table. It was by deliberating on the amount of environmental change and suffering imposed on the slave-species that are part of the human animal domestication process that I realized that human species, as rational beings, could act more rationally than that. Hypocrisy came down on me and I have decided to assume a responsibility for killing what I ate. From that moment on, I have decide to only eat what I would be capable of killing with my own hands.

    The transition was not easy. And it still isn't. And I am still far from being guilt free from my own perspective. I still use leather shoes, eat eggs, have ice-cream and use many other man-made objects that are a by-product of animal slavery and obliteration. It is a struggle to give up on the many pleasures modern society provides me with, despite the guilt imposed by my own consciousness.

    Perhaps, because giving up is so hard, it is why most people would rather assume an oblivious attitude towards this matter. To me, when becoming a vegetarian, the most impacting aspect of my life was not the change in diet itself, but rather how my perspective on food and other aspects of my life has changed. I have come to realize the multitude of bad social habits our society has gotten us accustomed to during our existence. Habits masked by many veils of bureaucracy and technology. Veils that keep important issues at arms-length, invisible and far enough from us, that allows us to comfortably accept the false claim that whatever happens on the other side of the veil is none of our business and we should not care. And sas if this post was not already boring enough for the readers expecting different types of discussions, let me take boredom to the next level by illustrating my point with some examples.

• The first point was already partially explained. Let us deal with the crude bestial reality of the way we treat animals. They are mere preys and resources to us. If we run out of cattle, I bet pets will be promoted as such. Why this distinction of pets and cattle? How hypocritical and selfish is that? Why a distinction between men and other animals? Why not eat the meat of prisoners in the death row or of those who pass away?

• The second point is with respect to socio-political power. Everyone, including myself, complain about how politicians are corrupt, how our lifestyle hurts the environment, how impoverished are most of the population. Yet, most of us do little to nothing to change that. I myself have been trying to participate in on-line petitions and donate to various NGOs. Nevertheless, I have never been able to dedicate a reasonable amount of my time engaged in activities that more directly affect the course of how my community develops. I recycle most of my garbage, but have never requested a company to stop sending me Styrofoam plates or avoided buying their products because of that. How many beggars have I crossed by and turned my careless face away from them.

• The third point is about self-respect. How many times do we do things to comply with society, family and other social circles, and end up leading our lives mostly to the satisfaction of others but ourselves. I have done that a lot. Only a few years ago I realized how much happier I could be by doing what I like, with some compromise of course. After all, living in family and society is about learning about the right amount of compromise that benefits both sides of a deal. 

    These three examples attempt to illustrate how untruthfully we tend to live our lives nowadays. Vegetarianism brought light to these issues in my head and provided me with a different perspective of reality (the objective reality :) ).

    I wonder why learning how to measure your actions more carefully and  better analysing their consequences is not an essential topic in high-schools worldwide. How many problems could have been better solved if more well-thought out decision-making was done based on a more in-depth analysis. How many lives could have been spared? How much suffering could have been avoided?

    After spending many days thinking about this - because, yes, I like thinking a lot about things and my CPU unfortunately is not multi-core, so it takes a while for me to reach a result - I have reached an  ingenious conclusion for why humans act the way they do: because it is only natural!

    Yes, it is human nature to act like this. We do what takes us the least amount of effort and bring us the most benefits. In fact, all animals are like that. It is about making the best use of the available resources in the easiest way possible to facilitate self-preservation and increase chances of survival. And no matter how evolved the thoughts in our brains are, at the end of the day, human nature has the final word. And inside each of us is a wild beast that tell us that "mine" comes before anyone else's. A beast capable of accepting and disregarding logical contradictions while proclaiming to follow the path of reason.

    Hence, here is another paradox of our existence: we design complex sets of rules to guide the collective group we call society, but the rules themselves are in conflict with our very nature and hence will never be strictly followed. The old saying "Laws are meant to be broken" seems to indeed hold true with regard to human nature. No matter how much law enforcement we have, in the dark silence of the night, those with power or lack of supervision will commit the most horrendous social crimes simply because the power of their nature has overcome the strength of their moral values. And is that really wrong, or is it only natural?

    And this leads me to my concluding remark:

    "Human existence and civilization is the endless conflict between nature and nurture."

P.S.: After two years being a vegetarian and getting sick a lot more often than when I was an omnivore, I have decided to step-back on this diet for a while and re-evaluate, grateful that the process brought me a new perspective of the world, a perspective I do not wish to ignore or forget.
P.S.2: A little time later I have decided to become a full blown vegan. Let the diet challenges continue...

Reality Unification Theory (RUT)

This post is an attempt to summarize my previous explanations of my theories for reality, God and man.  I can simply be summarized by the following equality:

reality = man = God

This means we are all Gods, we are part of God and that everything that is part of reality is also God. If one assumes this equality, than many other explanations may arise to the unanswered questions about the world we live in, including the previously mentioned theories, but also explanations provided by religions in general. Many bible citations could be explained by assuming this axiom, as well as other deliberations that were mentioned in past posts, such as enlightenment, reincarnation and the Holy Trinity.

In addition, explanations for supernatural beings could also be provided, such as the existence of ghosts, UFOs/aliens, etc. As a matter of fact, the RUT theory is much like any other religion that tries to come up with explanations to the world using as a basis entities or concepts that cannot be proved or disproved, but believed in instead. So, if you believe in it, you could you use it as basis to prove almost anything.

The RUT theory is just another Disneyland for the ones looking for answers. It is a simple axiom that masks the world with an appearance of being less frightening and filled with uncertainties.

The only thing certain in this life is that it has an end. Look into the depth of yourself and face your naked soul. It is only then that you will find the peace to persist in the strenuous and unpredictable path of existence.

Multiple Realities: Realities within Realities

The Many Meanings of Reality

Imagine the objective reality (OR), the reality in which each of us humans is immersed in. Imagine now that each of us, and potentially every other entity in OR is a reality in itself, be it a mouse, a tree or a grain of sand. In a gist, that is what multiple realities is all about. Thanks for reading. See you in the  next post.

No, that is just not it. I obviously want to write a lot more about this topic and its many conjectures.

As explained in a previous post, every sentient being has its own perspective of reality. This is what is called as subjective reality (SR). Conceptually speaking, it could be said that the meaning of “reality” as part of the concept of subjective reality is different from the one used to define objective reality. For example, the meaning of the word “reality” in the following two sentences are similar, but not exactly the same.

“The reality of the homeless is at best appalling.”
“World of Warcraft: why are virtual realities so addictive?”

While the former defines reality from a more situational and subjective perspective, the latter identifies and entire world that encompasses all beings and situations within it, not a specific group. Even though I agree that these uses of “reality” convey slightly different meanings, in this post, I intend to claim that both these cases deal with realities, but in different stages of development. Even by claiming so, I must agree that the perspectives presented below of different realities is still slightly different from the examples above, which are far more explicit in highlighting differences in the meaning of the word reality. Anyhow, let us move on and see how text will hopefully disentangle the ideas in my head.

Taxonomy of Reality

The main idea is that the objective reality (OR) spawns new baby realities within itself. These baby realities attached to different bodies are initially called subjective realities (SRs) because they represent the perspective of a single entity attached to a physical part of the objective reality.

Depending on their level of growth as realities, SRs can be bound to different types of bodies or even unbound to a body. As mentioned in a previous post, SRs bound to bodies were called body-bound realities (BBRs). Body-unbound realities are realities that reached the highest level of maturity and hence have become objective realities (ORs) themselves. Hence, a body-unbound reality (BUR) is the same as an objective reality (OR). As also previously mentioned, SRs can be aware of their reality natures or not. Therefore, BBRs can be classified as aware (ABBRs) or unaware (UBBRs).

The Growth Process of a Reality

The more aware of their reality nature SRs are, the more power they will have in altering themselves as realities, even while still being a BBR. This could be associated with the concepts of self-cultivation, meditation and spiritual growth. It is by this process that SRs better understand that they are more than the human vessel, that the body is just an interface to a reality, but that one's reality is in fact the one within. The more aware of its own nature as a reality and SR is, the more mature it becomes.

This could also bring about an explanation for why we dream. Perhaps dreams are not just replays of our experiences in reality, but rather they are a compilation for the SR of its experience so it can used for its own growth as a reality. Another explanation would be that they are testing their learned experiences as an SR in a kind of a mock-up room within themselves. Better yet, they reflect the evolution of the SR within itself as it experiences the OR in which it is immersed. Therefore, dreams are but a reflection of the construction of a new reality (SRs) within one's inner self. Wow, I like that sentence! :)

The process of maturation of an SR into an OR may take more than one cycle within the OR in which they are immersed. This means, that a reality might be reborn in many bodies until it is fully matured and ready to become an OR. This cyclic process is very similar, if not identical to the concept of reincarnation. And with such a concept then the following question arises: Do SRs start in vessels of less sentient beings and then progress to vessels of more sentient beings as they mature or the opposite? Or, perhaps, this vessel selection process is random, right?

Choosing Your Body: Anything Can Happen

As with everything in this blog, all is possible. It all depends on your imagination. Even though I try to show some arguments to validate my supposedly logical thinking, I am certain most people who attempt to read this text will think I am guy on a very wild trip.

As I have never used drugs, I will progress with my dissection of my theories of reality and will, now, attempt to show arguments that favor each of these three possibilities about the vessel selection process for SRs. The reader may then have their preference over which of these seems more plausible or even come up with his/her own explanation.

• From less sentient to more sentient vessels: It makes sense that SRs start with less sentient beings as body vessels because this would be a way to gradually learn about the process of sensing the OR in which they are immersed and born. It would prevent them from perceiving OR as paradoxical and, hence, protect SRs from losing their way on maturation and understanding what it means to be a reality.
  
  An analogy with the human school system could be made in this case. SRs start learning simple ideas and views of reality with basic sensory mechanisms that allow the understanding of primal needs such as dying, feeding and breeding. Then, as SRs bodily vessels evolve, they understand abstract concepts such as social groups, political structures, mathematics and philosophy. As the SR matures more, it is capable of grasping concepts that involve spirituality, compassion, tolerance, self-cultivation. Finally, when close to full maturity as an OR, it evolves to vessels that allow higher levels of understanding of reality that I myself am not evolved enough to imagine. When mature SRs are able to comprehend the nuances of reality, they are mature enough to become ORs themselves. How much of reality needs to actually be understood, I have no idea.

• From more sentient to less sentient: It makes sense that SRs start in vessels of more sentient beings because they still need to learn a lot about reality. They are new to the process of understanding reality.
  
  Again, making an analogy to the human educational process, the student that needs to learn more generally needs more help from the instructor. As the student becomes more proficient, the professor is there only to provide guidance from time to time. Hence, immature SRs would need more input from their sentient vessels about the OR they were born in than mature ones. As SRs mature and become more aware of themselves as realities, they depend less on what they perceive in the OR, with exception of their basic needs to make their body vessel survive. they encounter themselves in a higher meditative state, more detached from the OR. At the highest levels of maturity, they may even be encapsulated in insentient entities, such as stones or grains of sand, whose bodies need not depend on feeding, breeding and dying. Stones may become grains of sand, magma, but they don't care. The SRs attached to them do not care about it because they are so close to being ORs themselves.
  
  More interestingly, perhaps, would be that SRs would not need to pass through the process of being embodied in a vessel that is insentient. Perhaps, as explained in the previous bullet, SRs reach a level of independence and insensitivity inside the OR that they completely detach themselves from the OR and becomes themselves a new OR. And that would be the birth of a new reality.
  
  Personally, I like this explanation for vessel selection, because it implies that less sentient and insentient entities are actually vessels for more evolved SRs and should then be treated with a certain level of reverence. This would be a great justification for treating nature, resources and food with the respect that I think they actually deserve.

• Random vessel selection process: From the point-of-view of the OR as the caterer for the maturing SRs, it makes sense that this selection process be random. Having a random order of vessel experiences for each different SRs will lead them to experience different maturation processes. Hence, each mature SR may become an OR that is actually very different from each other and the original SR. And if you consider the different sets of individual experiences and situations each vessel presents the SR with during its existence, this adds even more diversification to the maturation process of SRs.
  
  Such a diversification may be reasonably justifiable based on humans own experience of different processes. For example, if two people go through the same set of experiences in different orders, they may have different perspectives from each of these. Even if the two people go through this set of experiences in the same order, they may experience and learn different things at the end. Humans are biased based on the order with which these experiences were presented to them and how their perspectives affect this presentation as well as their distinct perceptual mechanisms (different bodies, different sensitivity). The idea would then be the same behind the maturation process for SRs, that is, using randomness and chaos to form new, more diverse objective realities.

All for One, One for All

There is still one important unanswered question I can now think of. Once an SR matures and becomes an OR, where does it go to? Is there a reality space that encompasses both the mother OR and its OR children?

Well, an explanation that I like is borrowed from the ideas of reality and God presented by Boto de Gatas. Boto de Gatas, please correct me if I am wrong. The idea is that OR contains itself and the new mature SRs, that are now ORs. It is as if these mature SRs have become new versions of the original ORs and exist in parallel with and within the original OR. It works much like parallel universes. The inclusions of ORs within itself is the best way for an OR to grow as a reality: it makes copies of itself within itself. 

Hold on a second, that does not make any sense. Am I saying that a reality contains multiple realities, including itself? How can a reality contain itself plus other realities. This would imply in two concepts of reality, a reality container C and realities instances that are contained by the reality container C, right?

Wrong. This counter-argument is based on a perspective derived from the limitations imposed to us humans by the physical reality as we know it. Remember, the objective reality encompasses everything that is within itself. If new realities are created within an OR, they are part of OR, even if they are not part of the same physical reality any longer. And remember, these ORs that evolved from the maturation of SRs will themselves create their own SRs within, repeating the cycle of reality creation to a second level. And such cycle can go on indefinitely.

A few analogies to this process would be having bubble within bubbles, a tree or a multi-cell organism. A branch in a tree has other smaller branches within it self. As it grows, other smaller branches grow on these smaller branches, but they are all part of the same original branch. Now imagine the growth of a multi-cellular organism. The process starts with a single cell. This cell then splits in half, generating two cells. These two cells then split half again and the process continues. At the end, which one is the cell that originated the whole process? None of them? All of them?

Let us assume the reader accepted this, modesty aside, ingenious but not very novel explanation. Let us assume that one reality can contain itself and the realities that were created within itself. Then, wouldn't this mean that, at some point in time and space - and whatever other dimensions exist in reality - there was a single reality that started this whole process? If so, wouldn't it mean that there is in fact only one reality and not multiple realities and, hence, the title of this post is completely wrong?

As the perfect conclusion for this eerily long post, my answer to this question is: it depends! :)

If you think that everything started with one reality, then yes, you could potentially say that everything is actually contained in this one reality, the mother of all realities.

If you think that this reality is actually composed of multiple realities that may be identical or different from each other, than, no, there are actually multiple realities out there coexisting and growing within themselves in a an infinite tree of realities: realities within realities.

And perhaps they are not even related to each other after all. Maybe, in analogy to multi-cellular organisms, they are part of of what could be called a multi-reality (or a multi-verse?). What is outside of a multi-verse then?

There is no outside. Woo...scary.

It is up to the reader to decide what explanation suits him/her best.

Many questions may still be unanswered, such as the following:

• Assuming and orderly selection of vessels for SRs, can SRs make evolution mistakes step back in the vessel selection process? Can they skip steps if they mature faster than others?
• How has the initial reality come into existence?
• Is there an end to the growth process of a multi-reality, much like there is a stop in any multi-cellular growth process known to men? If so, what would the end result be? What pattern would a multi-reality form when it is mature?

P.S.: I just hope I have made any sense out of my self in this post. I have reviewed it, but I still have the feeling that there will be mistakes I missed. Readers, please, let me know.