Ideal Society Essay, Research Paper
Creating Our Ideal Society
The perfect society does not exist. If it did however, it would probably sound much like the vacation brochures you can read at your travel agency. The air and water would be clean. You could have a perfect view of anything you wanted. Also, the weather would be perfect for any activity you wanted to do. This Utopia does not physically exist, but in our minds, it goes something like this.
The air is always fresh and clean, free of any toxins. The climate would be perfect for any activity you wanted to do at any particular day. If you wanted to go, skiing you could go the mountains in the north where the temperature is just cold enough for snow to fall. However, if you wanted to be a beach bum the next day you could go south to the sandy beaches. The ocean water would be crystal clear and always warm. You could lie in the sun all day with no worry of skin cancer. The people on the beaches also do not worry about what may wash up on the beach because pollution is not defined in their society.
In our society, every person is treated as an equal. No one person would think or act as if they were better than someone else was. There would be no racism present, all types of people would reside here and get along together. It would not matter if you were African, Caucasian or any color of the rainbow everyone is treated the same. People would not judge each other by their appearance or whom they interacted with.
In addition, there also would be a diverse amount of different religions that would coincide with each other in our ideal society. Today religion is one of the most controversial topics in society. There are countless numbers of active religions coinciding with and contradicting each other. Today when each person believes that his or her choice of religion is the correct one conflict is inevitable. Through the years, people have been discouraged from exhibiting their religious beliefs in social situations. In public places today, such as school, religion is prohibited in order to avoid conflict. In our ideal society, religion would still play an important role but only as important as each person wanted. Religion would not be pushed on to anyone and yet offered to anyone wanting it. Every religion would be equally respected and effort made by all citizens to understand all religions thoroughly.
This great society s government would be a lot like the government More, wrote about in Utopia. It would be divided up into small communities. These small communities would have two appointed head officials that would meet with other head officials once a month to discuss the laws and business of that month. The head officials are appointed not elected. There would be no need for elections, because elections in most societies today are useless. Elections are more mud slinging than facts and would be a thing of the past. Another reason for no elections is that everyone would get a chance to be a head official. In our perfect society it would not matter your race or gender because everyone would get a chance to hold a high office.
In addition to our government, our economic system would be much different from any economic system today. There would be no such thing as money. The reason for no money is so that no one person would feel inadequate to any other person that had more money than they did. In our society, there are two types of goods, free goods and consumer goods. According to the web site for Intelligent Systems and Their Societies, free goods are goods that renew themselves and should be given out with out anything in return. This would mean food would be a free good. No one would have to go hungry in our perfect society. However, say you wanted something that did not renew itself and you had not the means to make it, this is where consumer goods would come into effect. The individual who wanted the item would find someone who could make that particular item. Then they would negotiate a trade. Like More, in his book Utopia, we believe each individual would be taught a special trade of their own (632). This would mean everyone would work! There would be no special treatment for example government assistance for those would decide to stay at home to watch Jerry Springer, and have twelve children. If you did not work or go to school than you could not receive and free goods. In addition, everyone would receive free health care and an education. Education is the key to many problems that we face in our society today, like welfare, drug abuse, and violence.
In contrast to everyone being able to live happy and peacefully together with everyone else, those individuals who decided to commit horrible crimes would be dealt with harshly. The people of this society would have no tolerance for those who wanted to rape, murder, harm or steal. The old eye for an eye policy would go back into effect. If you stole form someone, you would have something taken away from you. You would also have to publicity apologize to the one who you stole from. If you committed a more serious crime like rape or murder, you would be dealt with immediately. In our society, the court systems will work much faster. Today many cases do not go to trial for at least six months. Then if it is a harsh crime, the punishment does not always fit the crime. In our society today some people get off easier for murder than they do for speeding. There are many inmates today who have been on death role for twenty years, for committing such crimes as raping and murdering children. For example, according to the web site for the Tennessean, Robert Glen Coe was just executed for raping and killing a six year old little girl that died in 1979. He has been on death row for twenty years. Those individuals in our ideal society who acted in this manner would not be aloud to live for more than one year after their trial. With juveniles, the punishment would not be as harsh as with adults. The juveniles would have to do a lot of community service work. We also think that with juveniles public humiliation is a good form of punishment. They would have to wear signs saying what they did wrong. One of the reasons we think this type of punishment is good for young people is because young people are so afraid of public opinion of themselves to do anything wrong very often.
How important is our society to us? It is very important. Our society may not be right for you but it is right for us. No one could live without some form of a society. We all need the knowledge accumulated by the society in which we live. The most important things should not be how many material things that can be produced from this knowledge, but it should be using the knowledge and experience of the past to help us peacefully coincide together today.