Modelling Utopia

I was listening to Vandana Shiva on poverty yesterday
http://radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=8203

I read Silvia Ribeiro column on Walmartization.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=13&ItemID=7034

I read Will Braun’s article on Water Wars
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=52&ItemID=7033

Also read Vandana Shiva’s article on Delhi’s Water Regime
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-12/15shiva.cfm

I need George Orwell to articulate my fear and excitement of what’s happening in the world and what’s yet to come. After all Orwell was a true prophet, only problem is he attacked the wrong ideology, ‘communism’. The villain I am talking about is so clever, that he was able to corrupt an unparalleled mind like Orwell into believing communism is the problem. We needed more sharper minds as above and more material evidence to uncover the greatest villain of our times or any time.

I always wanted to live in interesting times. I wanted to live during the times of October Revolution, The Communist Massacre, Hitler’s Jolly Ride, Indian Independence Movement, where I would have fulfilled my romantic dream of fighting injustice. I am a megalomaniacal injustice fighter. I want to fight only the greatest and the most egregious of Villains like Hitler, Stalin and the British Empire. A small villain like say a [corrupt politician] or [myself using environment-depleting plastics everyday] is not worthy of my glorious fight against injustice movement.


Hey, the time has come to fight against the most powerful, totally wicked, pathologically non-repentant, shrewd and highly articulate villain. Are you thinking I am talking about Wal - mart (19th among the 100 most powerful economies in the world – only 49 of which are now countries.)? No not at all. Do you think I am talking about all the corporations and the Governments (who are behaving as just slaves of these corporations)? No you are mistaken. It is not that.

It can be this - The concept of centralized control or a centralized power. In democracy the control is wielded by an elected body, in communism it is nominated through some klugey indirect election. I am talking about the “cracy” part (Latin -cratia, from Greek -krati , from kratos, strength, power). The problem is none of the elected bodies are ideally suited for the job. It might be due to lack of proper choice in such an election, resulting in a corrupt ‘cracy’. For a moment let us think and see if this argument is correct. How can a good person win an election? More deeply are there good people? (slight hint at what my villain is) and are there so many good people to fill so many government positions, who will remain good even after elected? I am really skeptical about this.

Let me take a poor slum dweller in India and the management of Wal-Mart and WTO. Who is a better choice for ‘cracy’ or who is morally better? The poor slum dweller? I am not sure. Lets see. If this slum dweller is made overnight the chairman of Walmart (ofcourse using Matrix (the movie) technology to provide with objective business knowledge without any transfer of emotion and bias), now what will he do? Will he shut down Walmart ? I think he will buy a grand house for his family, buy them a ticket to USA, may be donate some little amount of money to help the slum dwellers, and carry on with his new life of running Walmart and taking it to newer horizons like Mozambique for example.

The goodness, ideas and actions of an individual are circumstantial and destiny driven.

So ‘cracy’ is bad. But no ‘cracy’ is also bad. If there are no rulers, we know what will happen, anarchy, chaos, Mafiadom and utter destruction. Similar to what happened to USSR just after Gorbachev.

(Some Calculus)
Do you recognize this? The function is an equation with ‘cracy’ as a variable and global peace, harmony, equality and happiness (GPHEH) as the function value.

GPHEH = Fn(‘cracy level’)

All we need to do is to differentiate Fn and equate it to zero to find the minima and maxima, and then use that cracy level, which will cause maximum value for GPHEH.

Oh god, we forgot two points
a. We do not know this function Fn.
b. We do not know whether maximum value for GPHEH is the desired goal. I am not sure. The poor slum dweller who became Walmart chairman will have a different objective function (as per Operations Research) and that would be PH (Personal Happiness). The poor slum dweller is I would say the true representation of the humans of the world.


This leads to the classic problem.
: Personal Happiness vs Global Happiness.

Adams Smith’s Hypothesis:
Pursue Personal Happiness, Global Happiness will automatically follow.

Mr Smith, we all are doing that, for we can’t do anything else , as the pursuit of personal happiness is a no brainer for the human psyche. You know what! Personal Happiness is working fine for me, but the side effect doesn’t seem to be happening. One more thing Mr Smith, my next-door neighbor is a pedophile and his personal happiness lies in an area which the government is not allowing him to pursue. Where I live is not a free country and they have rules and regulations. A ‘Cracy’ body which has been constituted for global happiness, even though it is at the cost of personal happiness. Mr Smith would you agree to these kind of strict rules? They call it a welfare state policy. Infact in a land called the Red Land, they thought global happiness was very important at any cost and started killing people. Good Lord!! This ‘Cracy’ variable is one crazy variable, the world is struggling to find the right balance, and the right value for the ‘Cracy’ variable.

So what is the right value? Phew! Now I understood who the real villain is. It is not ‘Cracy’, but the fact that global happiness depends on attaining the right value of ‘Cracy’. Let us again think why we need ‘Cracy’? The most fundamental reason would be to prevent crime and ‘EVIL’ acts by humans upon other fellow human beings. Other reasons would be to enforce equitable and just sharing of resources to denizens. Further reasons may be to enable collective contribution for organized advancement and progress of fellow denizens.

Now atlast the Villain.

1. The Villain is ‘Darwins’s Survival Game’.
2. The Villain’s sidekick ‘The Human Mind’.

The present Darwins’s Survival Game

The rules of the game at present are “I survive and I survive”.

What I propose is a modified Darwins’s Survival Game

The modified rule is “All survive or Nobody does”.

Assume there is a comet which is stationed outside earth, monitoring the denizens and checking if everyone is happy. If some one is unhappy, the Comet collides with the earth and kills everyone. So, that is a good game. But then, this game will result in ‘nobody happy boundary condition’ as everyone will live in fear of the omnipotent Comet.

So that is not a good idea. Better Idea. Modify the Side Kick. The core problem of the side kick is its desire and its amplified form ‘Greed and Gluttony’

This is my final solution. Genetically modify each human so that all offsprings will have no greed and gluttony. Religious institutions have been trying to do this differently, but I don’t think they are having any success. This is a task for science. The task of “Mass Benevolentization”. Now this will make humans genetically unable to compete and hence they can’t take part in any game, and more importantly in Darwin’s Survival Game.!!


That is wishful thinking at its peak!

Alas.
But its probably the only way one can attain “Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinaha”.

Hey wait a minute! It is not that easy. What about the animals? If humans are so benevolent, then they wont kill the animals, in fact not even hurt them, so becoming an easy prey to animals. Ok. Then we will extend the “Benevolentization” to animals as well. Now, is it done ?

No. We are missing what will happen to the ecological balance, when all of them (animals and humans) don’t hurt or eat each other and population explodes!. May be we need to find a new ecological balance or equilibrium with conditions where all organisms are vegetarians. The growth rate of all organisms should attain an equilibrium value, so that earth reaches ecological balance. That will take some time, but after that, we will all coexist peacefully. A world full of Vegetarians, growth rates of each species adjusted to the new found conversion, the delicate interactions between species modified to suit the continuance of new found order. Is there still a problem, are we teaching God how to achieve utopia? I suspect my feeble mind wouldn’t have thought of all problems arising from this theory as well, and may never understand why God chose the present world order as the most optimum way of working. What is god’s Objective Function? Does anybody know?