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Home - Prologue
With the information and ideas presented in this book, I believe that we can make our future path one that will take us, our decedents and all the other inhabitants of our planet into a brighter and more sustainable future.
Each one of us is a little or a lot different from everyone else. Not only do most of us want to live our lives in very different ways, but we want to achieve very different things with our lives. Given this, it would be impossible for us to come up with one way in which all of us would want to live our lives.
The truth is that humanity may not have even survived if we were all the same. Our diversity of physical and mental adaptations and capabilities, desires, thoughts, and more, have made humanity and our civilizations more resilient and stronger. In addition, our differences have made our lives more interesting.
Unfortunately, too many people have found it difficult to accept our differences and our different lifestyles. This may have resulted from some misunderstanding, a lack of empathy, jealousy, or something else. Whatever the reason, it seems that many of these people had wanted to force us all to live our lives in some way that they said was best for us instead of letting each of us decide what we thought was best for ourselves. This led to a lot of conflict and to many of the problems that we have had in the world.
Even with all our past problems, there are still many people who want to force us all to live our lives how they have decided that we should. They say that this is the way to create a better life or brighter future for all of us. However, what these people usually propose is something that may make the world a better place for them and some similarly minded people, but would not do the same for others. Regrettably, some of these people are still trying or will try to impose their specified lifestyle on all of the rest of us.
Since we live in a democracy, we theoretically have majority rule. Meaning that some minority of us should not be able to force an undesired lifestyle on the majority of us. However, that would not stop the majority of us from forcing an undesired lifestyle on some minority of us. In addition, if our representatives do not honestly represent us, then they could also force an undesired lifestyle on the majority of us.
Imposing an undesired lifestyle on people has never and will never make those people happy. Some people may just go along with living their lives in an undesirable way, some may grumble a bit, but others may get angry enough to revolt. If enough people get angry, it will lead to conflict or even to an armed uprising. This is what has happened in the past and this is what could happen in the future.
Knowing that people would not be happy having an undesired lifestyle forced on them and that they might rise up against it, those people who want to do the imposing will often resort to manipulation. That is, they will use misinformation, lies and other manipulative tools to trick people into doing things that will end up imposing an undesired lifestyle on them and others. This manipulation could also be used to get people to vote for or against a specific proposal, or for political candidates who will then vote for or against specific legislation.
Given our differences, it would probably be very difficult to find more than a few people who would ever agree on all the details of what a better life and a brighter future should look like. In addition, what would be a better life and brighter future for one person could be a worse life and a darker future for another person. This means it would be impossible for us to come up with one way in which all of us would want to live our lives.
Therefore, the key to creating a better life and brighter future for everyone is not in trying to come up with one lifestyle for everyone. Instead, we must embrace our differences and let each one of us try to create the better life and brighter future that works best for ourselves.
However, we cannot just let everyone try to do whatever they want. Otherwise, we would have anarchy, where some people may choose lifestyles that would prevent others from trying to live as they want or that could actually do real harm to others. In order to prevent the anarchy and suffering that this would cause, we would still need some rules for how we can live our lives.
What we must have is a solid basic set of rules that would help to protect us and to allow us to live our lives our way, but without preventing others from living their lives their way. However, beyond obeying the laws and regulations that would come from these basic rules, we should be free to live our lives in our own way.
In the following subsections, I will explain more about how we can live our lives our way, and about some basic rules we will need to create a foundation for our better and brighter future. These basic rules will help guarantee us the unalienable rights of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" that we claimed for ourselves in the United States Declaration of Independence.
Since our current laws and regulations do not truly allow us to live the way we want, we would need to make some changes. We would need to modify our political, economic and other systems so that they are flexible enough to protect us and to allow us to live our own lives. However, in order for us to make these changes, we must be well informed and involved in our political, economic and other systems.
To become well informed, we must gain some needed knowledge (facts, information and skills). We would need to learn about our political economic and other systems and about the issues. We must also learn to recognize when people are trying to manipulate us, how to analyze the issues, and how to recognize or to come up with real world workable solutions for these issues.
To be involved, many of us might just try to become well informed and to vote. However, we could do much more. We could write letters to the editor, petition our representatives, join a political or special interest group, get involved in a political campaign, or even run for office.
In order for each of us is to live our lives our way, we cannot let others prevent us from doing that. That is, we must protect ourselves from the physical and psychological harm that others could do to us or to our lifestyles. Of course, if we constantly needed to protect ourselves from harm, then we would not be able to live as we wanted, unless that is actually how we wanted to live our lives. The way around this is to have the laws and regulations that would protect us and our lifestyles from physical and psychological harm, and to have our governments provide the means to enforce those laws and regulations.
In order to be protected from being harmed, we must first decide what harm we need to be protected form. Since we live in a competitive world, we cannot all get what we want when we want it. We may feel that we have been harmed when we do not get a job, get a promotion, win a race, or get the gal or guy of our dreams. However, even if we feel we may have been harmed, as long as it was a fair competition, then we have not been unfairly or unduly harmed. Therefore, we could say that what we need is to be protected from undue harm.
Undue harm is a term that is used in personal injury law. However, here, I am going to use it in a broader sense to include any unfair, unnecessary or excessive harm done to any living thing or object. Since many people may have a difference of opinion as to what constitutes this undue harm, the trick is to figure out what that includes..Luckily, in most cases, most people can easily recognize undue harm. However, in other cases, it may take a bit of careful thought and consideration in order to determine whether or not something is undue harm.
We also need to realize that some actions will do undue harm in some situations, but not do undue harm in other situations. For instance, punching, kicking or shooting someone would normally be undue harm, but would probably not be when doing so to someone who was trying to hurt you or someone else. In cases of self defense or in cases where we are defending others, our actions are actually protecting ourselves or others form undue harm.
There are also cases where there is a mutual agreement that stipulates what is and what is not undue harm. For instance, some things done in contact sports that would normally be considered undue harm, are not when done when, where and how they have been stipulated in the rules of the sport. For instance, it is fine for willing contestants to punch each other during a round in boxing, as long as it is above the belt, with regulation gloves, etc.
People should also be free to decide when some harm that they or someone else does to them or to their properly that would normally be considered undue harm is not. That is, to the extent that that harm does not also do undue harm to someone or something else. For instance, this should extend all the way up to suicide, but only if the person did so at a time and in a manner that did not do undo harm to someone or something else. Please note that the reverse is not true. That is, someone should not have the right to decide unilaterally that some harm that was not undue was undue.
One way that someone might indicate that a harm done to them is not undue, is for that person to have done or to be doing that harm to someone else. Think in terms of the Golden Rule, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Of course it is not right for people to do undue harm, and other people should try to stop them. However, people's harmful actions do give others the right to respond and to do the same harm to them, and their response should not be considered undo harm. This applies to self defense, but should also apply more broadly to many other harmful acts as well.
Using the above concept of undue harm, I came up with some fundamental rules that I believe would be a good foundation to allow us to live better lives and to have brighter futures. In their most basic form, the following are these rules.
- Do no undue harm.
- This includes not doing undue harm to other people, to our environment, to our resources, to our property, or to any other living thing.
- When we compete fairly and honestly for such things as jobs, food, homes, mates and the other things that we each want in life, we are not causing anyone undue harm, even if we win out over others. It would only be causing undue harm if we did not compete fairly or honestly.
- There are cases where we would be right to harm someone in a way that would otherwise be considered undue harm. For instance, we may need to harm someone who was trying to do undue harm in order to protect the people who are being unnecessarily harmed. Another way to consider this is that people doing or trying to do undue harm are actually bringing the harm upon themselves. Therefore, anyone trying to stop someone from doing undo harm is not responsible for any of that harm.
- Protect everything from undue harm.
- This means we all need to protect other people, our environment, all of our resources, all of our properties, and all other living things from anyone who would do undue harm to them.
- If we do not protect others from undue harm, then we cannot expect others to protect us from undue harm. Think along the lines of the Golden Rule, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you".
- However, we have the right to protect ourselves and should not be forced to endanger our own lives. Therefore, we need to do what we can, but not to the point where trying to protect someone from undue harm would put us in danger of being harmed as much or even more.
- In addition, we must take care when we protect someone or something so that we do not also do needless harm to someone or something else.
- We also do not need to do this all by ourselves. This is a shared responsibility. The most important way we do this is via our governments. One of the main roles of our governments is to protect us. We assist in that by ensuring that our laws are appropriate, fair and equitable, and actually help to protect us, and by paying our fair share of taxes.
- Allow everyone to live their lives their way.
- If people follow the first two rules and do no undue harm and protect everything from undue harm, then they should be allowed to live their lives their way.
- This also means allowing all living things, including all plants and animals, to live their lives as they were meant to be lived.
- This does not mean that we are under any obligation to support the way others live their lives. It only means that we should support their right to live their lives their way, just as they should support our right to live our lives our way.
- This also does not mean someone has any guarantee that they can live the way they want. It just means that someone would have the right to try the best they can with the resources that they have.
There are currently many laws that violate the above basic rules. Therefore, in order to codify these basic rules, we should first enshrine them in our federal and state constitutions. Then, we could come up with the specific laws and regulations that would allow us to enforce them through our legal system. Then, each of us would finally have more freedom to do what we feel we need to do to make our lives better and our futures brighter.
In what follows, I will try to explain how these rules and a little common sense can be used to change things so that we can live better lives and have a brighter future. I will show this based on an analysis of what has and has not worked in the past, on the good and the bad of where we are now, on the various paths where we could be headed, and on the better and brighter path where we can all hopefully end up.
My first goal was to create a blueprint for a better future where we could have a much higher and more sustainable standard of living for ourselves and for our world, while better protecting our environment. This better future needed to be one where we could all have a better opportunity to be free and to live our lives in our own way. This blueprint for a better future should just need the knowledge and the resources that we currently have available to us today. If so, this means we could get started on it right away and not need to wait for technology to catch up.
My second goal was to find a path that could take us from where we are today to this better future. Luckily, it looks like there are a number of different paths that we could take, but the best path would be one that we could start taking sooner rather than later, that would take the least amount of time and effort and that would get us to our destination the fastest. Basically, the longer we continue down a wrong path, the more damage we will do to our world and to our lives, the harder it will be to get on a better path, and the longer it will take to create a better future.
My third goal is to present my ideas for this better future to as many people as possible. Initially, I am attempting to do this via this web site, which I created in 2006 and have updated a few times since, where people can read about my ideas. In the future, my hope is to do this in as many different ways as possible, and with the help of as many other people as possible who share my desire to create a better future, and who can help to spread these ideas to more people.
My next goal is to find the right group of people to help me to refine and to implement these ideas for a better future, and take this from being Our Future Path to being Our Path. Initially, we could also try out some of these ideas in some communities were we could use those communities to demonstrate to everyone what this better future might look like.
If we can show people that we can create a better future for ourselves and for our world, it will make it much easier for us to get everyone on the path to this better future where we can all have a higher and more sustainable standard of living, while better protecting our environment.
I have tried my best to identify our problems and their causes, and to come up with the best ideas and solutions and a plan for making our future better and brighter. Here and in the following sections, I have also tried to do my best to describe these problems, their causes and some realistic solutions in a clear and convincing manner. Although I have not yet added all of my ideas and solutions, and I still need some help with many of the details, I believe that I have covered here most of the important problems and their solutions.
However, no one person can know or anticipate everything that is needed to come up with the best ideas, solutions or plan. In addition, I have never considered myself a really great writer, so I may not have done the best job at describing things. Therefore, I need your help.
Please let me know if you have any new or better solutions or ideas, see any issues with what I have written or with how I have presented things, or have any questions. You can email them to me using the email link found at the bottom of this web page.
In the first chapter, I will present a preview of some of our present problems, some solutions and a vision for a better future. I will follow that up with a chapter that will include some information that I used as a foundation for my ideas, and that you can use to make your own informed analysis of the issues, of my ideas and of the ideas of others. In the remaining chapters I will discuss in more detail some of the issues and problems that we have with our political, economic and other systems, and present some of my ideas for solutions.
Preview -
Preview of the challenges to be overcome by Our Future Path.
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