Can You Imagine a Better World?

I wonder if those who had only ever lived in tyrannies, monarchies, and dictatorships would have believed someone who described how a representative democracy at the scale of the United States was possible.

I wonder if those who had only ever known slavery as “a typical feature of civilization” and “legal in most societies” would have believed someone who described how slavery would eventually be “outlawed in most countries of the world, except as a punishment for a crime” and “abolished de jure in all countries” (source: Wikipedia).

I wonder if those who had only ever lived with repeated failures of human flight would have believed someone who described how the Wright brothers could take their engineering experience to craft a machine capable of flight and just 64 years later we’d land humans on the moon.

I wonder if someone who had only ever lived with fiat central bank debt currencies enforced by threats of nation-state violence would have believed someone who described how bitcoin might work as a decentralized payment network and digital currency which anyone anywhere in the world with the right hardware, software, power, and internet connectivity can mint themselves reaching a marketcap of over half a trillion dollars.

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I don’t have to wonder if most people believe it’s possible for humans to cooperate non-violently in groups not just at the family or tribal level, but at numbers greater than Dunbar’s number with the aid of technology and consciousness evolution through tools like shadow/trauma work, meditation, plant medicine, and academically proven methods for reaching fundamental wellbeing and persistent, nonsymbolic experience. The answer is they don’t believe it’s possible. They believe the game theory of Prisoner’s Dilemma and selfish human nature will never adopt a more sustainable, resilient system for mutual self-benefit that takes into account our human nature and creates rewarding systems for positive human behavior and wisdom building (like philosopher democracy, a form of deliberative democracy which has been successful at the nation-state level around the world). They seem to believe what we have is the best we can do, despite historical examples where huge leaps into previously “impossible” things have taken place. Like crabs in a barrel, I often feel I’m being dragged back into their stories when I start to talk about my own story that imagines a better future.

Part of me just wants to be quiet, and keep doing the things I’ve been doing (working on non-violent governance systems through DAOs and blockchains, making cryptocurrency easier to use for everyone, talking about philosophies like the non-aggression principle, voluntaryism, mutual preferred behavior, etc., and exploring tools and resources for consciousness development and evolution). If many decades from now, something non-violent and cooperative grows beyond Dunbar’s number, I can point to it in my old age and say, “See, that’s what I meant. That’s what I envisioned. That’s what I knew deep in my bones was possible for the human species.” That would certainly be “easier” in that my “idealism” and “optimism” and what comes across in my communications as confidence (but is really just articulated strong hope) wouldn’t create so much cognitive dissonance among my friends who otherwise think of me as somewhat intellligent, capable, and rational.

And I get it. I know what my brain is doing. As Thinking Fast and Slow describes, my “system 1“ brain is coming to a conclusion it likes because of a story I’ve adopted that “system 2” then tries to weakly justify with platitudes, anecdotes, and examples of limited use. I get how this further discourages people from taking my story of the future seriously. I’m learning to be okay with that. I don’t need to stop talking about these ideas (even if that’s easier), I just need to stop defending them with poor rationalizations. By sharing my stories, I attract those who also believe similar stories. We find each other as multidimensional thinkers and philosophers who dare to dream something into existence which has never existed before and we don’t need to defend these ideas, just live them.

And maybe we will fail in our ignorance, but to me trying is a life well spent. At least we can be counted among those who tried. We chose better stories, and we lived them out, starting with ourselves and branching outward from there. I’m not the only one. Someday I hope you’ll join us.

[Verse 1]
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
I

[Verse 2]
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You

[Chorus]
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

[Verse 3]
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You

[Chorus]
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one