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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 we each want to live our lives in many diverse and unique ways and places, but many of us have very different ideas about what we want to achieve during our lifetimes. Given how different we each are from one another, it would be hard to imagine one way in which all of us would want to live our lives. Even if many or all of us dream of being rich, we each have very different ideas about how to get and to use that wealth.
The diversity of our physical and mental capabilities, desires, thoughts, emotions and more, has contributed to making our societies and our civilizations more resilient and stronger. In fact, humanity may not have even survived if our ancestors had all been too much alike one another. Our diversity gave us the ability to migrate to new places with different environments, which in turn drove us to become more diverse and to migrate to even more places. In addition, our diversity has made our world and our lives much more interesting.
Unfortunately, too many individuals and groups find it difficult to accept our diversity and our different lifestyles. This may be a result of their fear, jealousy, lack of empathy or understanding, or something else. Whatever the reason, it seems that many of these individuals and groups do not want to let us live our lives the way we feel would be best for ourselves. Instead, they want to force us all to live our lives in some way that they feel would make things better for them, even if it makes the rest of our lives worse. This kind of arrogance has led to a lot of the problems and conflicts that our world has had in the past and continues to have today.
Even when presented with all the evidence showing how trying to force us to live our lives in some way that we find undesirable has caused many of our past and current problems, too many individuals and groups will still try to force us to live our lives their way. These individuals and groups may claim or even believe that their way will create a better life or brighter future for all of us. However, in fact, even if it did make the world a better place for them and some similarly minded individuals, it would make life worse for many or even most of the rest of us. Regrettably, many of these individuals and groups simply do not care about the rest of us and the problems that they are causing us and our world.
Since we theoretically live in a democracy, we should have majority rule. Meaning that some minority of us should not be able to force an undesired lifestyle on everyone else. However, when our representatives do not truly represent the interests of the majority, they may be able to force an undesired lifestyle on the majority. In addition, even with majority rule, the majority may still be able to force an undesired lifestyle on some in the minority.
Imposing an undesired lifestyle on us has never and will never make us happy. Some of us may simply grumble a bit while trying to muddle through with living our lives in an undesirable way, and some of us may just complain or protest. However, others of us may get angry enough to revolt. If enough of us get angry, it could 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 we would not be happy having an undesired lifestyle forced upon us and that we might revolt against it, those individuals and groups who want to do the imposing will often resort to some form of manipulation or brainwashing. That is, they will use misinformation, exaggeration, lies and other manipulative tools to trick us into doing things that will end up with us imposing an undesired lifestyle on ourselves and on others. For instance, this manipulation could be used to trick us into voting for otherwise undesirable propositions, or for political candidates who will then vote for otherwise undesirable legislation.
Although there may be some of us who want to be told how to live our lives, most of us do not like being told what to do. That is, we do not like being told what we must or must not do, nor even what we should or should not do. If we are not harming others, then we should be able to live our lives our way. For those individuals who want to control other peoples’ lives, they need to imagine themselves being told what to do and consider if they would like it or not. To guard against being manipulated or brainwashed, we need to become well informed about how our world works and to learn how others might try to manipulate or brainwash us.
Given our differences, it would probably be very difficult to find more than a few individuals who would ever agree on all the details of a lifestyle that would bring them a better life and a brighter future. In addition, a lifestyle that 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 any 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 a better life and brighter future that we feel would work best for ourselves.
However, we cannot just let everyone try to do whatever they want. Otherwise, we would have anarchy, where some individuals may choose lifestyles that would prevent others from trying to live as they want or that would be harmful to others. To prevent the anarchy and the suffering that it would cause, we would still need to follow some rules that would frame how we can live our lives.
Therefore, we must create a solid set of fundamental rules that will guide us in creating the laws and regulations that would help to protect us, our chosen lifestyles, and the chosen lifestyles of others. Beyond obeying these laws and regulations, we would be allowed to be free to try to live our lives in our own way in a manner that would not prevent others from trying to live their lives their way.
In the following subsections, I will explain more about how we can live our lives our way, and about some fundamental rules that we will need to create a foundation for our better and brighter future. These fundamental rules will help us achieve the unalienable rights of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" that we claimed for ourselves in the United States Declaration of Independence.
For each of us to live our lives our way, we cannot let others prevent us from doing so. 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 was somehow the way we wanted to live our lives. The best way to protect ourselves and our lifestyles from physical and psychological harm is to have our governments enact the needed laws and regulations, and to provide the means to enforce these laws and regulations.
To protect ourselves from being harmed, we must first decide what harm we need to be protected from. 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, if it was a fair competition, then we have not been unfairly or unduly harmed, even if we felt like we had been harmed. Therefore, 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 any object. Since many individuals may have a difference of opinion as to what constitutes this undue harm, the trick is to figure out what it should include. Luckily, in most cases, most of us can easily recognize undue harm. However, in other cases, it may take a bit of careful thought and consideration to determine whether something is or is not 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 considered undue harm, but would probably not be when doing so to someone who is attacking you or others. In cases of self-defense or in cases where we are defending others, our actions to protect ourselves or others from the undue harm being done by an attacker would not be considered undue harm unless done to excess.
There are also cases where there is a mutual agreement that stipulates what is and what is not undue harm. For instance, some things that participants do in contact sports that would otherwise normally be considered undue harm, would not be undue harm when done when, where and how these things have been stipulated in the rules of the sport. For instance, it is fine for willing combatants to punch each other during a round in boxing, when it is done above the belt, with regulation gloves, etc.
We should also be free to decide when some harm that we or someone else does to us or to our property that would otherwise 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 we did so in a manner and at a time that did not do undo harm to someone or something else. Please note that the reverse is not true. That is, we should not have the right to decide unilaterally that some harm that was not undue was undue.
Another way that we might indicate that harm done to us is not undue, is for us to have done or to be doing that harm to others. Think in terms of the Golden Rule, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". For those others, this might translate as “do unto others as they are doing unto you”.
Of course, it is not acceptable for individuals to do undue harm, and we should try to stop them. However, other individuals’ harmful actions should give us the right to respond and to do the same harm to them, and our responses should not be considered undo harm. This applies to self-defense but should also apply more broadly to many other otherwise harmful acts as well. However, once individuals have stopped doing their undue harm, this should become an issue for the justice system and not a matter of revenge.
On the other hand, just because someone is doing undue harm to us or to others and is therefore giving us permission to respond in kind, we are not obliged to do so. However, we should always try to stop someone from doing undue harm as best we can. How we respond depends on whether we prioritize our moral values to do no undue harm or our respect for someone giving us permission to do so. Of course, our prioritization may depend on what undue harm is being done and whether the person doing the undue harm is going to stop or not.
Using the above concept of undue harm, I came up with some fundamental rules that I believe would be a good foundation to help us cooperate in allowing each one of us to live better lives and to have brighter futures. In their most basic form, the following are these rules along with some clarifying comments about each one.
- Do no undue harm.
- This includes us not doing undue harm to other individuals, to our environment, to our resources, to our properties, 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 our life, we are not causing anyone undue harm, even if we win out over others. We would only cause undue harm if we did not compete fairly and honestly.
- There are cases where we would be justified in harming 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 so to protect the individuals who are being unnecessarily harmed. Another way to consider this is that individuals doing or trying to do undue harm are bringing that harm upon themselves. Therefore, we are not responsible for any of the harm we do to try to stop someone from doing undo harm unless our actions are excessive.
- Protect everything from undue harm.
- This means that we all need to protect other individuals, our environment, our resources, 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 do 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 our 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 would help to protect us, and by paying our fair share of taxes.
- Allow all living things to live their lives their way.
- If we follow the first two rules by doing no undue harm and by protecting everything from undue harm, then we should be allowed to live our lives our way.
- This also means that we should allow 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 have any guarantee that we can live the way we want. It just means that we would have the right to try the best we can with the skills and resources that we have.
- This also does not mean that we are under any obligation to help others live their lives their way. It only means that we should support their right to try to live their lives their way, just as they should support our right to try to live our lives our way.
Currently, we have many laws that violate the above fundamental rules. That is, we allow certain types of undue harm, prohibit things that do not do any undue harm, and prevent ourselves from trying to live the lives we want to live. Therefore, our first step is to codify these fundamental rules by enshrining them in our federal and state constitutions. Then we would need to update our laws and regulations to prohibit undue harm and to give us the freedom to live our lives our way. We can then enforce these rules through our legal system.
We would also need to modify our political, economic, and other systems so that they are flexible enough so that we can be both protected and allowed to live our own lives. However, for us to be able to make these changes, we must first be well informed and involved in our political, economic, and other systems. Then, we can make the changes needed so that each of us will finally be able to gain the freedom to do what we feel we need to do to make our lives better and our futures brighter.
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 that affect us and our world. We must also learn to recognize when other individuals 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. One way in which I am trying to get involved is by writing this book.
Not only do we want to change our laws here in the United States to adhere to the above fundamental rules, but we want to encourage people worldwide to strive for changes in their nations, states and regions as well. Those of us who believe that respecting these fundamental rules will help to create a better and brighter future for all of us and everyone else should come together to help each other to bring about the needed changes everywhere.
To help ourselves gain the freedoms, liberty, and better and brighter future that we want and deserve, we should pledge our loyalty to the values that would come from respecting these fundamental rules. In fact, our loyalty should be to them and not to our supposed leaders or even to some majority. If we can all come together to respect everyone and everything then everyone and everything will be freer from undue harm and be freer to try to live our own lives our way.
In what follows, I will try to explain how these rules, knowledge, logic, 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, while also better protecting our environment and our world. This better future needed to be one where all of us could have a better opportunity to be free and to live our lives in our own unique 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 few different paths that we could take, but the best path would be the 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 individuals 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 individuals can read about my ideas. In the future, my hope is to do this in as many ways as possible, and with the help of as many other individuals as possible who share my desire to create a better future, and who can help to spread these ideas to more individuals.
My next goal is to find the right group of individuals 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 where we could use those communities to demonstrate to everyone everywhere what this better future might look like.
If we can show enough individuals 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 and our world.
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 our problems, their causes, and some realistic solutions in a clear and convincing manner. Although I have not yet added all 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 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 start out with 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 next chapter, I will present a preview of some of our present problems, some solutions, and a vision for a better future. 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.
Foundation -
Introduction to the Foundations for the ideas affecting Our Future Path.
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