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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 descendants 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 each of us is from one another, it would be hard to imagine any one way in which all of us would want to live our lives. Even if many or all of us wanted to be rich, we each might have very different ideas about how to get and to use that wealth.
When we have worked together and cooperated with one another, the diversity of our physical and mental capabilities, desires, thoughts, emotions and more, has contributed to making our communities, our societies and our civilizations better, stronger and more resistant to dangers around us. 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 of perspectives, insights and ideas has made our world and our lives much better and more interesting.
In fact, humanity may not have survived if all our ancestors had been too much alike. If we had all wanted to do and to have the same things and to live in the same places, we would have spent all our time competing with one another over the same things and places. Instead, our differences are what has driven us to want and to do different things, to live in new places and to have different lifestyles. Our diversity allowed us to progress and to migrate around the world.
Unfortunately, too many individuals and groups today find it difficult to accept our diversity and our different lifestyles. This may be the 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 the rest of 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, even if it did in fact make the world a better place for them and some similarly minded individuals, it could 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 or cannot empathize with 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 even be able to force an undesired lifestyle on the majority. In addition, even when we do have majority rule, the majority may still be able to force an undesired lifestyle on those of us 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, many 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.
Although there may be some of us who want to be forced or at least encouraged to live our lives in some way, most of us do not like being forced or even encouraged to do something against our will. 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. Those individuals who want to control other people’s lives need to imagine themselves being told what they must do or should do and consider if they would like it or not.
Today, many of us live a mainly rural, suburban or urban lifestyle. For the most part, we each choose a variation of one of these lifestyles or some other lifestyle. In general, our choice of lifestyle is often closely related to our political views and who we want representing us in our governments. The political party who gains control of our national, state or local government will often enact laws, regulations and policies that will help the lifestyles of their supporters but may harm the lifestyles of others. In essence, the political party in control will often attempt to force their preferred lifestyles on all of us.
One critical aspect of control is financial. Our political parties, through our representatives, can control the taxes, government programs, laws and regulations that influence how much money we have and can get. Each political party exerts its control in different ways. Some ways are overt and others are covert. Each political party will want to help their supporters to live a better lifestyle than what they would get from another political party. Nevertheless, the goal seems to be to make us dependent on them in some way so that they can control the way we live our lives and help them to gain or to keep power.
The wealthy can also exert their influence and control over the less wealthy of us and our political parties by controlling how much money we and they have access to. For instance, they can keep our wages low enough that we do not have the power to live the way we want nor to exert our influence over others, our communities, our representatives, the political parties and them. The wealthy can also dangle the prospect of getting money over us and the political parties to get us and them to do what they want.
Knowing that we would not be happy having an undesirable 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 disinformation, exaggeration, lies and various other manipulative tools to trick us into doing things that will cause us to help them to impose an undesirable or detrimental lifestyle on ourselves and on others.
For instance, some political candidates often use various forms of manipulation to trick us into voting for them so that they can get elected and then enact legislation that we will find undesirable or detrimental to ourselves. In addition, our representatives and other groups often use various forms of disinformation, lies, exaggeration and other types of manipulation to trick us into believing that some proposition would be desirable so that we will vote for it even though it is in fact undesirable or detrimental to us and others.
To guard against being manipulated or brainwashed, we need to learn and to become well informed about how our minds work, how our world works and how others are using various tricks to try to manipulate and to brainwash us. I will present a foundation for some of what we need to know in the first chapter of this book.
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 they feel 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 may 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.
One of the fundamental principles that we have is that all men (and women) are created equal. This means that when we are born, we should all have equal rights, equal opportunities and equal responsibilities. Thus, we should have an equal right to choose and to try to live a lifestyle that we feel works best for us and have an equal responsibility not to impose that lifestyle or any other lifestyle on anyone else.
Therefore, the key to creating a better life and brighter future for everyone is not to try to find one lifestyle that would work 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. We would not need to like other people’s lifestyles, we simply need to accept and to respect their right to live them and to allow them to be included in our society and in our communities.
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 that would cause, we would still need to follow some basic rules that would put some boundaries on how we can live our lives so that we can all work together and cooperate in a shared goal of making our society and our communities better and brighter for all of us.
Therefore, we must start by creating a solid set of fundamental rules that will guide us in creating the laws and regulations that would help us to protect ourselves, our chosen lifestyles, others and the chosen lifestyles of those others. These rules would also help us to work together and to cooperate with others in our society and in our communities. It should be clear that a society or community cannot survive and thrive unless their members work together and cooperate on shared goals to make them stronger and more successful.
Beyond obeying the laws and regulations that we create based on these fundamental rules, 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 doing so we would have the needed diversity, equality and inclusion that will make us and our world better, brighter and stronger.
In the following subsections, I will explain more about some fundamental rules that we will need to create a foundation for our better and brighter future where we can live our lives our way. 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 for us, through our governments, to enact the laws and regulations that we would need, and to provide the means to enforce those 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 man or woman of our dreams. However, if the competition was fair and honest, then we would not have been unfairly or unduly harmed, even if we felt like we had been harmed. Consequently, 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 individuals may have a difference of opinion as to what constitutes this undue harm, the key 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 a case of 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 some 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 us as we are doing unto you”.
Of course, it is not acceptable for individuals to do undue harm, and we should always 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 whether that is with us intervening or with us seeking help from others. How we respond also 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 work together and cooperate in allowing all 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 to protect the individuals who are being unfairly or 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 needlessly do undue 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 everyone to live their lives their way.
- If individuals are following the first two rules by doing no undue harm and by protecting everything from undue harm, and following this rule, then we should allow them to live their lives their way and do nothing to hinder them from living their lives their 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.
- In addition, if we follow the first two rules by doing no undue harm and by protecting everything from undue harm, and follow this rule, then we should also be allowed to live our lives our way.
- This does not mean that we have any guarantee that we can live our lives the way we want. It just means that we have the right to try the best we can with the skills and resources that we have without any undue hindrance.
- This also does not mean that we are under any obligation to assist others in living their lives their way. It only means that we should support their right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and do nothing to hinder them from trying to live their lives their way, just as they should support our right to try to live our lives our way without any undue hindrance.
Anyone who is a fan of science fiction may notice a slight similarity between my three fundamental rules and with Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. Although I did not purposefully model my fundamental rules on these laws, I may have been inspired by them without realizing it at the time. It was only after I had created my rules that I noticed some similarity with these laws.
For the curious, the following are the Three Laws of Robotics from Isaac Asimov’s fictional “Handbook of Robotics”.
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Asimov later clarified that these laws should be implicit in the design of almost any tool and should also be used to govern the behavior of humans. However, there are a few flaws in these laws. For instance, the first law does not address what to do when one human being attacks another. Both action and inaction could result in one of these human beings being harmed. Therefore, I prefer my rules, which I believe are far more all-encompassing when it comes to how we humans should behave even in the case above where one human being attacks another.
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 to find their real causes, 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 freedom, 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 we will 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 identify a foundation upon which we could build our better and brighter future. This entailed studying how our world works, how our minds work, and how we have and are interacting with our world and with each other. This knowledge has helped me to gain a fundamental understanding about why things are the way they are and to see more clearly the sources of the problems that we face and the solutions that will form a foundation for a better and brighter future.
My second 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 while strengthening our communities and our society. 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 third 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 some 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 fourth goal is to present and to allow as many people as possible to read about my ideas for this better future. Initially, I am doing this via this web site, which I created in 2006 and have updated a few times since. 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 even 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 a 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 everything. 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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