Our species is amazing. Great apes that have risen from relative obscurity to become the most dominant organism ever to inhabit the earth. Rapid evolution has allowed us to gain consciousness, form societies, and bend earth’s bounty to our will. Go us!
When you step back and think about it, we can do almost anything we want. However, our biggest accomplishments have been achieved by banding together to achieve common goals. From farming to the creation of AI, have been done due to our fortitude, creativity, and collective will. With all of these accomplishments on our species’ resume, why can’t we figure out how to greatly reduce or eliminate unnecessary suffering?
That should be a goal of ours, right? Regardless of national or political affiliations, religion, or race I firmly believe the 98% of us that don’t rule the world would sign up for that lofty goal. What’s the downside? Suffering and pain translate to everyone similarly and typically we avoid it the best we can. Why not stop it if we could? What’s holding us back from trying?
For the first time in history we can communicate with almost any other human across the globe making it possible to potentially organize at a meaningful scale. Why not take that awesome ability and apply it to getting everyone to a minimal standard of living? Health care, ability to rest and recharge, information access, child care, basic human rights, and the ability to love instead of fear the world around us.
We literally have all the resources to make this happen. Technology, especially the internet and AI, have reduced the burdens that have prohibited this in generations past. In my opinion, all we need to do is organize to the point of critical mass, state that reducing/ending suffering is our goal and then agree on what the minimum standard of living should be.
If a movement like this started, what could those in power do? Nuke us? Refuse to allocate money? Money only means anything because we agree that it does as a species as it’s an efficient way to trade goods and services. If we want to reduce its prominence in our lives, we just need to agree that it should be limited. Fearful of losing a job and the ability to support yourself and loved ones? What if we agreed to orient most work towards achieving happiness and could guarantee an even better standard of living? Religious? Literally all of these themes are supported by your faith. We've tricked ourselves into believing that we can't be happy.
I believe that the pandemic slowed society down enough for us to collectively realize how miserable we were and where that trajectory leads. Why accept going back? I read posts on this sub and many others that show that we’re ready to move on from our current organizational paradigms. Whether it’s capitalism, communism, theocracies, it doesn’t matter. They are all nowhere close to raising all humans from the pain that they don’t deserve.
The sad truth is that through the opening up of communication, I’ve realized that we’re all the same and generally want similar things from life. I wasn’t raised to believe these things. I’ve watched streamers from countries that are historically enemies of mine show unbelievable kindness, process grief, and lament the unnecessary loss of life attributed to war. Boundaries mean nothing. Continuing to support systems that pit us against each other is, if anything, counter to our collective and individual self interest.
I’m not saying this will be fast or easy, but shouldn’t we at least try? We’ve seen organic movements use the power of the internet to organize and achieve what we would have earlier thought impossible. The Arab Spring being spread through smart phones to GameStop being saved by Redditors, all you need is enough people to agree that something is broken and that we should band together to rectify.
I watch our leaders and billionaires exhibit greed and fear instead supporting what the rest of the 98% of us want and deserve. Musk is trying to run to Mars while also trying to make others feel the pain he feels inside, America trying to impose its culture on all the inhabitants of earth, and religious zealots advocate that only their believers are worthy of happiness. They’re all the same to me. They do these things because it supports their goals, not ours. They trick us into believing it benefits us because our organizational systems are hierarchical and we know no different. We can absolutely choose a different path, if we find it worthy.
Imagine instead of working a dead-end job making a billionaire more money in the tech industry, using that skill set to bring free broadband to a remote corner of the world that craves its knowledge. Imagine being an underpaid American teacher and instead developing programs on how to bring up the education level to places that want to improve their standards and having the means and support to make it a reality. In the reverse scenario, instead of unwillingly contributing to the lavish whims of a dictator with your masonry skills you can support building the infrastructure that is guaranteed to help you and your family to not worry about putting food on the table. Sign me up.
All of this could be a preachy pipe dream, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s far more simple than we collectively believe. It just takes enough of us to buy-in, put aside petty differences, and force the hand of those in power to focus on achieving goals that are universally supported instead of what benefits the elite.
Let's use Reddit and other platforms to generate ideas, survey for what a minimum standard of living should be, create a movement, brand it, and get some momentum. I am done with participating in something that exploits me and my family's talents for an elite few and their personal benefit.
We are human. We are amazing. Together, we can do whatever the fuck we want and no one can stop us.