What kind of Utopia would you like to live in?

Peace is not the absence of war—peace is the absence of fear.

All creatures have value and are subjects of equal care and love; similarly, in a society of justice and peace, all people matter equally.

I used to say ... that the dream of a peaceful society, to me, is still the dream of the potluck supper. The society in which all can contribute, and all can find friendship, that those who bring things, bring things that they do well and bring a variety of things. Those who can't cook can still organize, help clean up, and all belong. And that, however archaic it might sound, is still the society that I dream of, not that everybody runs everybody's business, but that we create conditions under which a potluck is possible.

— Ursula Franklin, various quotes

The potluck image has created another image in my mind, in this quest to describe utopia.

Let the most marginalized define this new world and have all or most of the decision making powers.

This is not substantially different from graduated income tax and various contributions to social programs, except - and this is a huge exception - in the removal of money from the equation. When the contribution is in money, it is necessarily arbitrary: one person's work is valued higher than another's, because of fashion or exclusivity, or the dictates of capital. Thus, we can train enough doctors: there is no point in their closing out competition (or entering the profession for the wrong motives!) if doctors don't get more of the resources than janitors; if everyone who likes the work and has the talent can train for it.

   I have some ideas on how to get from here to there. Go to the communities with the lowest per capita income - say the poorest 10% - and ask them to submit a list of what they need in order to raise their standard of living to the next 10%. Take enough resources, material, people-power and whatever is required, from the top 1% income group. Then go to the next 10% lowest income communities, and take their requirements from the top 2%, and so on, until we meet in the middle. Which, by the way, will be a higher standard of living than working people have now, and at a fraction of the hours of labour. So the miner can go out painting every afternoon and the surgeon has time to learn a second language. 

Yes, of course. Capitalists are able to become mega-rich because they have access to - and power over - a work force with no other options. That's exactly why they need to destroy the social safety-net.

Coming late to the party:)

It got my historical dithers up so as to pin down points of views that may have inspired cultures to look for new lands beyond the realms of thought each society was used too, and "hoped for" in some better form.

Why quest for new lands, planets for living? 

Bacon's Utopia: The New Atlantis

Quote:

[i]In 1623 Bacon expressed his aspirations and ideals in The New Atlantis. Released in 1627, this was his creation of an ideal land where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendor, piety and public spirit" were the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of Bensalem. In this work, he portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge. The plan and organization of his ideal college, "Solomon's House", envisioned the modern research university in both applied and pure science.[/i]

Tommaso Campanella- See also:The City of the Sun

What contributions were idealistic set before those who signed the documents that one would have found reference from Raphael toward the Stanza's of the signatore's room in Rome?

The Room of the Segnatura contains Raphael's most famous frescoes. Besides being the first work executed by the great artist in the Vatican they mark the beginning of the high Renaissance. The room takes its name from the highest court of the Holy See, the "Segnatura Gratiae et Iustitiae", which was presided over by the pontiff and used to meet in this room around the middle of the 16th century. Originally the room was used by Julius II (pontiff from 1503 to 1513) as a library and private office. The iconographic programme of the frescoes, which were painted between 1508 and 1511, is related to this function. See Raphael Rooms

You had to understand the setting and the historical drama set forth?

School of Athens by Raphael

Quote:

In center, while Plato - with the philosophy of the ideas and theoretical models, he indicates the sky, Aristotle - considered the father of Science, with the philosophy of the forms and the observation of the nature indicates the Earth. Many historians of the Art in the face correspondence of Plato with Leonardo, Heraclitus with Miguel Angel, and Euclides with Twine agree.

So to set this up some background was needed?

Quote:

[b]Plato and Aristotle, Up and Down[/b] by Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. [i]

Rafael has Plato pointing up and Aristotle gesturing down to indicate the difference in their metaphysics. For Plato, true existence is in the World of Forms, in relation to which this world (of Becoming) is a kind of shadow or image of the higher reality. Aristotle, on the other hand, regards individual objects in this world as "primary substance" and dismisses Plato's Forms -- except for God as a pure actuality, without matter.

However, when it comes to ethics and politics, the gestures should be reversed. Plato, like Socrates, believed that to do the good without error, one must know what the good is. Thus, we get the dramatic moment in the Republic where Plato says that philosophers, who have escaped from the Cave and come to understand the higher reality, must be forced to return to this world and rule, so that their wisdom can benefit the state. Aristotle, on the other hand, says that the "good" is simply the goal of various particular activities, without one meaning in Plato's sense. The particular activities of most human affairs involve phronésis, "practical wisdom." This is not sophía, true wisdom, for Aristotle, which involves the theoretical knowledge of the highest things, i.e. the gods, the heavens, and God.

Thus, for philosophy, Aristotle should point up and would represent a contemplative attitude that was certainly more congenial to religious practices in the Middle Ages. By the same token, Aristotle's contribution to what we now think of as science was hampered by his lack of interest in mathematics. Although Aristotle in general had a more empirical and experimental attitude than Plato, modern science did not come into its own until Plato's Pythagorean confidence in the mathematical nature of the world returned with Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. For instance, Aristotle, relying on a theory of opposites that is now only of historical interest, rejected Plato's attempt to match the Platonic Solids with the elements -- while Plato's expectations are realized in mineralogy and crystallography, where the Platonic Solids occur naturally.

Therefore, caution is in order when comparing the meaning of the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle with its significance for their attitudes towards ethics, politics, and science. Indeed, if the opposite of wisdom is, not ignorance, but folly, then Socrates and Plato certainly started off with the better insight.

[/i]

Life Vs Productivity: 'What Would You Live and Die to Protect?

http://www.truth-out.org/life-vs-productivity-what-would-you-live-and-di...

"It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the contant victim of brutal attacks.."

absentia wrote:

Yes, of course. Capitalists are able to become mega-rich because they have access to - and power over - a work force with no other options. That's exactly why they need to destroy the social safety-net.

I think some might argue that there is actually very little preventing anarchy. The proles way outnumber the powerful elite few by some incredibly large number.  And the power mongers know it. It's been one continuous psyop against the proles. We are divided and  conquered only in our minds.