The Utopian Dream

I'd always thought it was some sort of fantasy, a world of peace without religion or money. Take away the two greatest evils of our society and there would be no poverty, war, greed or any of the other crap that dominates the world. The idea itself seems too good to be true. Surely the greatest Utopia imaginable.

Last night i watched Zeitgeist: Addendum, the sequel to the excellent documentary Zeitgeist: The Movie, both can be viewed here. While the first installment is a compelling film based largely around conspiracy theories, the new one shows how messed up the monetary system is and how a world without money is not only preferable but actually possible.

Technology rules our world, technology can be anything created by mankind to make our lives easier, whether that be a humble bicycle or a jet plane, a pen and paper or a computer, a catapult or an atom bomb. As technology advances, the need for humans in the workplace diminishes, the corporations always eager for increased profits can make more money by cutting staff and replacing them with machines. But it stands to reason that as jobs are cut there will be less workers earning money to spend on the things that these machines are now making.

So how could a money free society actually work? Well, i cant even begin to explain it anywhere near as well as the film does so i would suggest watching it, but to put it simply, in a world without money people would no longer be slaves to the financial system. People would not have to do crap jobs because the machines could do it, no-one would be losing out because there would be nothing to lose.

Given the freedom to live our lives as we choose, would we not all want to work together to make our world better, to improve our societies and our collective knowledge. Remember that in our capitalist society, we are forced to look out for ourselves first, after work we have little time or effort to worry about the community or those less fortunate than ourselves. The fact that the only way to help in our world is by donating our time or our money makes the proposition seem quite unappealing, but if money was no issue and our time was not wasted trying to just make ends meet then surely many of us would want to help.

Putting it like this it still seems like a fantasy, every aspect of our capitalist society is based around greed, power and corruption, that anything else seems impossible. Maybe it is, the power of money (and religion) is so huge that its hard to even imagine how a Utopia like i have just described could come to exist.

The Venus Project could be the answer, it could be the great hope for world peace and a better way of life. Of course, it needs support, ironically much of that support is financial but that is the way of the world right now, and it needs time but surely its worth it.

If you haven't already, please check out both Zeitgeist movies and try to think about the world differently to the way we have become accustomed to thinking. Then ask yourself "what can i do?".