Shortly after noon local time. You were up
early, picked up the papers, had breakfast while reading, got fuel for the lawn
mower, strew and raked eight bags of mulch mostly near the back of the deck,
took a needed bath, drove to Ace to get more house keys made and now you are
ready for lunch whenever Carol completes her several projects – drying and
folding clothes and tidying up her bookshelves among them. – Amorella
1224
hours. I fold clothes sometimes. I’m glad the mulch is done though I saved one
bag in the garage for whenever it is needed. I took a pain pill in the middle
of the night and took another one a short time ago. They do help. Drove the car
in some direct sunlight and the front window is awesome, no glare and the heat
is well cut down. Honda’s have a lot more glass than it looks; I am so glad we
had the tinting done. – I put restoring seal on the grout and tile in the
kitchen along the base where it meets the granite. That’s where we see some water
damage in the grout, especially near the sink.
Almost
time for bed. You and Carol had a snack supper and watched the last episode of “Battle
Creek” then you watched the latest episode of “Wayward Pines”. Carol is up
reading and you are thinking about bed. – Amorella
2235
hours. I saw this on Quora tonight and thought of ThreePlanets. Futures Studies
is still out there – dreams, really, but here is what Quora has to say.
** **
Economics: If everybody
in the world had enough money, would there be any people who'd like to do
menial jobs? How would the social and economic structure change in that
situation?
Jordan Phoenix,
Founder, Uncommon Sense
619
upvotes by Zoe Cullen (PhD student in
Economics, Stanford University), Vivake Singh,
Peter Hawkins, Ed Ko, (more)
I'm very happy to have been asked this question; I've gotten
this one dozens of times from different people throughout the years (but this
is the first time on Quora).
Many people who ask this are concerned about how, if poverty
dropped to zero, and everyone was doing what they loved, the boring and
unfulfilling jobs would get done.
To start off, let us note that an estimated 80% of the world lives
off of $10 a day or less, and an estimated one out of two children alive don't
have their basic needs met. If poverty were to drop to zero, that would
represent MASSIVE progress. If everyone is so happy that no one wants to do the
menial jobs, this would be an amazing problem to have. I dream of having to
find the solution to this problem within my lifetime. And trust that there are
many possible solutions to this so-called problem.
1. Social progress happens in waves. Billions of people aren't transformed from slum
dwellers to middle class citizens at the flip of a light switch. It takes time
and effort. Let's say that, at a given point in time in the future, through a
miracle of modern collaboration amongst humanity, 90% of the estimated three
billion people living off of $2.50 a day or less worldwide move into
prosperity. Due to the forces of economic supply and demand, if there were a
shortage of people willing to be sanitation workers, the salary for this job
would skyrocket. This would allow people in dire straits to work this job for
only a few short years in order to save up enough money to do what they really
want to do. Problem solved.
2. A draft. In
several smaller countries today, military service is mandatory for a brief
period of time for all citizens. This ensures that there is never a shortage of
people in defense. In a world moving towards a level of equality that has never
been seen before, there could be a short stint of service by which every citizen
develops the humility of understanding what it's like to work at an undesirable
job. Problem solved.
3. Everyone is different. We all have different interests and passions. Some people love
to write. Some people love to invent. Some people love to sing, to build, some
people love math. One person's menial job is another person's dream. This is
not true for 100% of jobs, true; but with seven billion very different people
living on this rock, you'd be surprised at what different people enjoy.
4. Technological progress. We underestimate the level of technological advancements that
we are capable of sometimes. If someone tried to explain to us that we would
not need school anymore 40 years ago because we could learn 90%+ of what we
needed to virtually on internet platforms called Quora, Google, Youtube, and
Khan Academy, you'd think they were insane. And yet here we are. Who said there
needs to be a garbage worker? We can invent self-driving garbage trucks that
automate the entire process.
Or, we can evolve to a level by which we eliminate 99% of our
waste products. It's hard to recognize in modern society, but garbage is not a
natural outcome. It's a design flaw based upon outdated systems from the
industrial revolution when we were unaware that humanity was capable of
creating such widespread pollution of the air, water and soil. It is possible
to reduce all of our waste. Food waste and toilet waste can be composted to
create fresh fertilizer to grow fruits and vegetables. Packaging can be made
out of bio-degradable materials (or we could take personal measures to lessen
the stranglehold of the vice grip that consumerism has over our lives). 3-D
printer accessory machines can melt down plastics or broken items to turn them
into new items that we download the blueprints for.
Robots have
already taken away the need for several cashiers in supermarkets and movers in
online shipping and fulfillment company warehouses. There are vacuum cleaners
that run automatically and understand the dimensions required to clean the
whole room.
Call me optimistic, but I firmly believe that as a whole, we are
smart enough to invent new ideas and lifestyles that drastically reduce the
need for menial jobs. This is the easy part. The hard part is getting people to
accept each others' differences and care about others enough to work together
to end poverty and get to this point.
"But who's going to work at McDonalds?"
I have a better question: Who said McDonalds is an essential
component of the survival of our species? Perhaps we'd be better off without
it.
5. Self-sufficiency. And finally, when humanity does evolve to the point where we
break out of the chains of poverty, if for some odd reason, we find ourselves
stuck - high salaries can't convince people to take menial jobs for a short
time, a draft is vetoed, and the collective human wisdom with all of the free
time available is unable to produce the technological advances necessary to
eliminate menial jobs...
THEN PEOPLE CAN CLEAN THEIR OWN FUCKING TOILETS!
Thank you, and goodnight.
Selected and
edited from - http://www.quoraDOTcom
** **
Better off without McDonald’s, what does
that tell you, boy? – Amorella
2239
hours. This reminds me of the latest “Wayward Pines” episode where the main
character sees how the little town survives from outside the place. It reminds
me of a book by the fellow who wrote Boys from Brazil, Ira Levin; This
Perfect Day. It seems to me I used this in my Social Commentary quarter course
at Indian Hill way back.
** **
This Perfect Day
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This Perfect Day (1970), by Ira
Levin, is a heroic science fiction novel about a technocratic dystopia. It is
often compared to Nineteen Eighty-Four
and Brave New World. Levin won a Prometheus Award in 1992 for this novel. .
. .
[Levin also wrote Rosemary's Baby.] - rho
Plot backstory
The
world is managed by a central computer called UniComp, which has been
programmed to keep every single human on the surface of the earth in check.
People are continually drugged by means of monthly treatments (delivered via
transdermal spray or jet injector) so that they will remain satisfied and
cooperative "Family members". They are told where to live, when to
eat, whom to marry, when to reproduce, and for which job they will be trained.
Everyone is assigned a counselor who acts somewhat like a mentor, confessor,
and parole agent; violations against 'brothers' and 'sisters' by themselves and
others are expected to be reported at a weekly confession.
Everyone
wears a permanent identifying bracelet which interfaces with access points that
act as scanners, which tell the "Family members" where they are allowed
to go and what they are allowed to do. Around the age of 62, every person dies,
presumably from an overdose of the treatment liquids; almost anything in them
is poisonous if an excess dose is given. Now and then, someone dies at 61 or
63, so no one is too suspicious of the regularity. Even opposition against such
a life by those few who happen to be resistant to the drugs, or those who
purposely change their behavior to avoid strong doses of some of the drugs in
the monthly treatment, and who consequently wake up to a day which for them
turns out to be anything but perfect, is dealt with by the programmers of
UniComp. These long-lived men and women, in their underground hideaway,
constitute the real, albeit invisible, world government. They live in absolute
luxury and choose their own members through a form of meritocracy. In part,
people who choose, through evasion and modifying their own behavior, to leave
the main Family are subtly re-directed to "nature preserves" of
imperfect life on islands. These, however, have been put in place by the
programmers as a place to isolate trouble-making Family members. The top minds
among the outcasts are further manipulated into joining the programmers to help
them maintain the equilibrium in the "perfect" world of UniComp and
The Family.
Even the
basic facts of nature are subject to the programmers' will – men do not grow
facial hair, women do not develop breasts, and it rains only at night. Dampers
even control the movement of tectonic plates. Reference is made in the story to
permanent settlements on Mars and even to interstellar space exploration; these
outposts have their own equivalents of UniComp.
The full
rhyme, sung by children bouncing a ball (similar to a Clapping game):
Christ,
Marx, Wood and Wei,
Led us
to this perfect day.
Marx,
Wood, Wei and Christ,
All but
Wei were sacrificed.
Wood,
Wei, Christ and Marx,
Gave us
lovely schools and parks.
Wei,
Christ, Marx and Wood,
Made us
humble, made us good.
Wei Li
Chun is the name of the person who started the
Unification, and, unbeknownst to all but the programmers and their attendants,
remains alive as the head of the programmers, extending his lifespan by having
his head transplanted onto successive youthful bodies. Bob Wood is
mentioned throughout the novel, but never explained in detail. A painting is
mentioned depicting Wood presenting the Unification Treaty—he may be a
political leader executing the ideas of Wei. In one conversation in which the
protagonist discusses his discovery that people once had varying life spans, one
character comments that controlling people's life spans is the ultimate
realization of the thinking of Wei and Wood. The historical Karl Marx is also
unusually thought of as a martyr, possibly suggesting the distortion of history
(a common theme in the genre) or that this world is the future of an
alternative history, although maybe sacrificed is simply a poetic
synonym for dead.
Uniformity
is the defining feature; there is only one language and all ethnic groups have
been eugenically merged into one race called "The Family". There are
only four personal names for men (Bob, Jesus, Karl and Li)
and four for women (Anna, Mary, Peace and Yin).
Instead of surnames, individuals are distinguished by a nine-character
alphanumeric code, their "nameber" (a neologism from
"name" and "number"), e.g. WL35S7497. Everyone eats
"totalcakes", drinks "cokes", wears exactly the same thing
and is satisfied – every day.
Plot summary
Li
RM35M4419, nicknamed "Chip" (as in "chip off the old
block") by his nonconformist grandfather Jan, is a typical child Member
who, through a mistake in genetic programming, has one green eye. Through his
grandfather's encouragement, he learns how to play a game of "wanting
things," including imagining what career he might pick if he had the
choice. Chip is told by his adviser that "picking" and
"choice" are manifestations of selfishness, and he tries to forget
his dreams.
As Chip
grows up and begins his career, he is mostly a good citizen, but commits minor
subversive acts, such as procuring art materials for another
"nonconformist" member who was denied them. His occasional oddities
attract the attention of a secret group of Members who, like Chip, are also
nonconformists. There he meets King, a Medicenter chief who obtains members’
records for potential future recruitment to the group, King's beautiful
girlfriend Lilac, a strong-willed and inquisitive woman with unusually dark
skin, and Snowflake, a rare albino member. These members teach Chip how to get
his treatments reduced so that he can feel more and stronger emotions. Chip
begins an affair with Snowflake, but is really attracted to Lilac.
Chip and
Lilac begin to search through old museum maps and soon discover islands around
the world that have disappeared from their modern map. They begin to wonder if
perhaps other "incurable" members like themselves have escaped to
these islands. King tells them that the idea is nonsense, but Chip soon learns
that King has already interacted with some "incurables" and that they
are indeed real. Before he can tell Lilac, Chip's ruse is discovered by his
adviser. He and all the other members of the group are captured and treated
back into docility.
Some
years later, Chip's regular treatment is delayed by an earthquake. In the
meanwhile, he begins to "wake up" again and remembers Lilac and the
islands. He is able to shield his arm from the treatment nozzle and becomes
fully awake for the first time. He locates Lilac again and kidnaps her. At
first she fights him, but as she too becomes more "awake," she
remembers the islands and comes willingly. Finding a convenient abandoned boat
on the beach, they head for the nearest island of incurables, Majorca. There
they learn that UniComp, as a last resort, has planted fail-safes that
eventually lead all incurables to these islands, where they will be trapped
forever away from the treated population.
Chip
conceives of a plan—destroy the computer, UniComp, by blowing up its
refrigeration system. He recruits other incurables to join him, and they make
their way to the mainland. Just as they reach UniComp, one of the incurables
leads them to a secret luxurious underground city beneath UniComp, where they
are met by Wei, one of the original planners of the Unification. Wei and the
other "programmers" who live in UniComp have arranged this test so
that the most daring and resourceful incurables will make their way to UniComp,
where they, too, will live in luxury as programmers.
Chip is initially wary, but after a time, he seems to
settle into the programmers' society. But when a new group of incurables
arrive, Chip steals their explosives and completes his mission to blow up
UniComp, killing Wei in the process. Before he returns to Majorca, signs of a
new life have already begun: rain begins to fall in the daytime, and members
who were scheduled to die do not.
Selected and edited from Wikipedia
** **
2258
hours. I am surprised I remembered the author and title, but I did. According
to Wikipedia the article has some problems but I chose to ignore them to share;
plus it give me more than enough background to remind me why I enjoyed the book
so much.
Utopias do not exist do they, boy? Amorella
2302
hours. Not even in our story’s HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither. Accidents happen, even
without humans, errors are made in the natural settings of physics and metaphysics.
That’s how I see it in real life, fiction's not that much different.
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