Discover Socrates' ideas for a new societal model, updated for modern times, to overcome territorial conflicts and ensure our future.

 

 

3:  A Unified World

  

This book proposes that we are now facing extinction for a very understandable reason:  We have inherited societies from our animal ancestors that are not suitable for animals our intellectual capability.  

These societies, called ‘territorial sovereignty societies are built on the idea of ‘divide into teams to compete in to the death battles over feeding territory.’   This model can work for many animals.  By forcing these animals to divide into teams to compete over territory, nature places great pressure on them to be the best they can be.  Stronger animals will have advantages.  Nature favors the strong and the strong replace the weak.  Smarter animals have advantages.   Nature favors the smart and the smart replace the weak.  Nature favors ingenuity, inventiveness, and the ability to understand new ideas.  If you were trying to invent a society that had the strongest forces pushing toward evolution, you would probably not be able to find a better model. 

This model worked for our animal ancestors.  It even worked for our primitive human ancestors.  Most of the tools we have now originated as part of the pressure to make new and better weapons.  Technology and progress allowed the tribes with both genetic and cultural forces that encouraged progress and growth to survive, while tribes without these forces perished. 

But there comes a time when this ‘divide into teams to compete to the death for territory’ is not only not necessary anymore, it is harmful.  As soon as the beings have the ability to control their population and food supply, and can make sure that there is enough food for all, these beings no longer have any need to form into teams to kill each other off in order to keep the population from exploding.  If population levels stabilize (and we are very close to this point now) and food is plentiful, this system is no longer biologically necessary. 

This system becomes dangerous as soon as the warring entities (countries here on earth) gain the technological ability to wipe out the planet.  We are there now.  If we keep our systems organized around the ‘divide into countries to fight, using any weapons and tools we have, over feeding territory’ after the need for feeding territory is over, the fights become meaningless and horrifically dangerous.

What can we do?

There is a path to survival. 

But it requires that we change the way we think in dramatic ways.  We must understand that we have control over our own existence.  Our societies don’t work as they do because that is what an invisible being that lives in the sky wants to happen.  They work as they do because of forces we can understand.  They can work in other ways.  We will see that humans did not all evolve under the exact same conditions everywhere on the planet.  In different areas, the ‘divide into countries to fight over territory’ model didn’t work.  The humans who evolved in these areas had other kinds of societies.   In other words, other societies have existed.

This tells us that other kinds of societies are possible.  Specifically, societies that are built on something other than territorial sovereignty have existed.  In fact, many kinds of societies are possible for humans and other beings in our category.  Thinking beings with physical needs; the book Possible Societies, a part of the New Perspective Series, explains the differences.

This book explains how to move to a society that is very much like the societies we have now in almost every way.  But it rests on a different structural foundation.  It is not an animal society, it is a human society, one created by intelligent design as an alternative to the animal societies we have inherited. 

I call it a ‘socratic.’ 

I didn’t originate this idea:  it came from analysis that was presented to the world by Socrates more than 2,300 years ago.  But I don’t think the world was quite ready for these ideas when Socrates presented them. 

 

          Socrates was tried, convicted, and executed for the crimes of heresy and sedition for saying the things he said.  Heresy means ‘not thinking in conventional ways.’  It is not normally a crime.  It becomes a crime when the ‘wrongthinker’ (to use Orwell’s term from 1984) starts to the unconventional way of thinking to others.  The second charge against him was corrupting youth (now called ‘sedition’).  It involves saying things that make people think in heretical ways.  When Socrates started to spread his message, he became what Orwell called a ‘thought criminal.’
          I think that Socrates went to elaborate lengths to make his message understandable.  I think that if you read the socratic dialogues that present his words with the right perspective, you will understand exactly what he was trying to say.  But it is very hard to attain the right perspective.  He could make young people (those whose minds were not totally conditioned to think in conventional ways) see his ideas.  But, unfortunately, the jury that heard his trial and decided his fate didn’t consist of young people.  It consisted of establishment conditioned adults who had been raised to think in conventional ways.  So, he was put to death. 

 

A lot of time has passed since Socrates presented the basic ideas.  A lot has changed over the last 2,000 years.  The message of this book isn’t really new, in that it is built on ideas of the ancient past.  But it updates these ideas and builds on them. 
          The historical events that Socrates used to illustrate his points have passed from memory.  But they are very similar to events that we all remember and events happening around us today.  I have updated the references in this book to help you see that very little has changed since the time of Socrates.  The world was divided into countries to fight wars then.  It is still divided into countries that fight wars.  There was a fundamental conflict between the societies of the west at the time (those of Europe, as illustrated by the writings of Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato) and the societies of the east (from Turkey east, as discussed in the works of Aristotle and Alexander the Great).   The conflict is still here, except now the players have nuclear weapons and ICBMs. 

We have tools that Socrates never had.