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Foundation
Before we can make any real and lasting change, we need to make sure we have a solid foundation on which to build. To create this foundation, we will need to have the knowledge (facts, information, and skills) to understand the issues, to recognize what is true and what is false, and to come up with and to evaluate solutions to our problems.
To understand the issues, we will need to learn more than a little bit about things like politics, law, logic, economics, medicine, engineering, science, psychology and sociology. In addition, we will need to understand many other different things about ourselves and our world. These would include, but would not be limited to, such things as how our minds work, our history, our philosophy, our place in the world, and what is and is not possible.
To recognize what is true and what is false, we must first understand that we do not always see the world as it really is. We see the world through the lens of our biases, values, emotions and the unique lives that each of us has lived. In addition, various individuals and groups have tried to manipulate us with things like disinformation and lies, and we have often lied to ourselves. Therefore, we need to understand our own biases, values and emotions, we need to understand how our lives have shaped the way we see the world; we need to be able to recognize when others are trying to manipulate us; and we need to find reliable sources of information.
Although most of us do not want to admit that we allow others to manipulate us, our cognitive biases, our moral and human values, and our worldviews can allow that to happen. Our cognitive biases are the filters and shortcuts that our ancestors evolved to make decisions that helped them to survive, but which may not always help us as well in our modern world. Our moral and human values help us live, work and play together and are the guidelines that assist us in deciding between right and wrong, but which may sometimes lead us astray. Our worldviews are our philosophies of life and views of the world that we constructed for ourselves to help us live our lives, but which may not be complete nor accurate.
With this knowledge and understanding, we can update our view of the world so that it better fits with reality and we can be better prepared to protect ourselves from some of the people who are trying to manipulate us. Then we will have a better foundation from which to set our goals, to analyze our problems, to find and to test solutions, and to come up with a plan to meet our goals and to implement our solutions for a better and brighter future.
With the knowledge and understanding that I have worked to acquire, and after much investigation and consideration, I ended up settling on a philosophy of life that is my foundation. One version of this is what I talked about in the Fundamental Rules subsection of the Prologue. That is, "do no undue harm", "protect everything from undue harm", and "allow all living things to live their lives their way".
This can also be stated as a version of one of the most famous phrases in the United States Declaration of Independence. My version would read something like the following.
“Respect and protect the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that all current and future living things deserve.”
This means that all current and future living things deserve the rights and the protections needed to live a life of their choosing unless that life unfairly infringes on the rights of others to do the same. The only “harm” that we should be allowed to do to others would be the result of fair and honest competition or the appropriate response to what undue harm someone else has done or is trying to do to us or to others.
Along with coming up with a philosophy, I came up with some corresponding guidelines and principles to help me test the ideas that I or others have come up with to see if they would in fact solve the problems we face in our world and in our modern civilization. Basically, these guidelines and principles are just some requirements that must be met for me to deem any idea to be worthy of consideration.
At the very forefront of these guidelines and principles are the concepts of "do no undue harm", "protect everything from undue harm", and "allow all living things to live their lives their way". Beyond that, an idea must also respect the right of everyone and every living thing to have a fair and equal opportunity to work towards getting all that life has to offer. Which I will describe as the principles of Options, Respect and Balance. Unless an idea can be implemented so that it at least passes these tests, then it will not work, and I believe it should not be considered.
After I have delved into a deeper discussion about our history, about how our minds work, about the nature of knowledge and about the concepts of our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, I will go into greater detail about these guidelines and principles in the upcoming section on Philosophy.
With my philosophy, guidelines and principles in mind, I came up with some new ideas for solving the problems that we face in our world today. These ideas are meant to help us all live our lives in better harmony and cooperation with others and with the world around us. By implementing these ideas, I truly believe that we would make the world a better place for all living things in the near and distant future.
Even though I have formulated my philosophy, guidelines, principles and ideas over many years of study and careful thought, I will acknowledge that there may likely be some new and better ideas out there waiting to be discovered. I find that I keep finding out things that lead me to some new ideas all the time. However, they now mostly help improve or reinforce ideas that I have already had, but I keep looking for some new and better ideas.
As I learn new things, I am always using what I learn to refine my existing ideas, and to look for new ideas that might replace some of my ideas with better ones. However, I do not think we have the luxury of waiting for the absolute best ideas to come along before making some needed changes. Therefore, we may need to make do with the best ideas we can come up with right now so that we can start to solve our problems and then update our plans as better ideas come along.
Of course, for my ideas, or those of anyone else, to be implemented, others will need to know about them and to understand them. Therefore, I have taken it upon myself to document my ideas for putting us on a path towards a better and brighter future, so that they can be read, discussed, refined, and implemented. To get started, we will first need to review some information that will help us build a solid foundation, set the stage and get us started thinking about our future path.
To find our future path and to solve our problems, we must each start with an open mind and a knowledge of ourselves, our world and our issues. We must look at the latest and greatest of our accumulated knowledge from many different disciplines, which would include, but not be limited to, logic, history, engineering, science, philosophy, sociology, religion, law, economics and government. With this knowledge we can put together a better understanding of ourselves, the world around us and the issues we face.
Next, we cannot take anything for granted. We may need to question and analyze everything that is relevant. As appropriate, we will need to come up with some new ways of seeing and doing things. I did this while working on my ideas for our future path and I found that even some of my previously deeply held beliefs turned out to be wrong.
By utilizing the best of our current technology and knowledge, and by applying some appropriate fundamental rules, guidelines and principles, we can move towards solving today’s problems. In addition, we can find a path that will take us into a better, brighter, and more sustainable future, where all living things can have a chance at richer and more rewarding lives.
Of course, even with the vast amount of knowledge we have today, there are many things left for us to learn. In fact, some new discovery may greatly change what our future will look like. Even so, we cannot count on some future discovery to save us from a bad path. Therefore, we must map out the best future that is possible with what we know today but make our plans flexible enough to take advantage of any new discoveries and to come up with solutions to any new problems that may crop up.
Unfortunately, many of today’s problems do not have easy solutions or we would have solved them already. In addition, when looked at separately, many of our problems may not even seem to have a workable solution. One difficulty is that a current “solution” to a previous problem may be preventing us from finding a solution to some other problem. For example, just locking up a criminal in prison for a few years may solve a short-term crime problem, but unless we reform these criminals and stop creating new criminals, we will continue to have a long-term crime problem.
In addition, some individuals may feel that a given course of action is the solution to a problem, but many other individuals may have very different ideas about a solution. The problem here is that many so-called solutions may work with some individuals’ lifestyle choices, but not with those of others. A good solution to a problem must work for everyone. In some cases, that good solution might mean implementing different solutions for different people.
Therefore, we need to look deeper than just our current or short-term problems. The key to solving our problems is to look at the big picture. We must look at how everything in our world and our civilization works together as a whole. Then we can put together some overall principles that we can use to guild us in solving all our problems for the long term. Basically, this will mean coming up with a new model for a civilization that would not have our current civilization’s problems and would work with any lifestyle that does not do any undue harm and then finding the best way to transition our current civilization into this better one.
In the following sections, I will try to provide some understanding about the history of how we evolved and progressed, how we have come to think, to feel and to interact with one another and also provide some information that can help us be better informed about our world and our issues and that can help to explain the foundations of my ideas for a better and brighter future.
Historical Perspective -
An Historical Perspective that will help guide Our Future Path.
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