If you take the time to imagine it, the perfect society is a bit surreal compared to our lives. Most of the human universals will still play out. People will still work, play, eat, make friends, poop, clean things, learn, and build. But, the way everyone performs tasks requires a different motivation than whatever presently drives us.
In summary, everyone must love each other for a perfect society to work. Otherwise, any efforts toward that endeavor will devolve into a leftist totalitarian dictatorship.
Law & Order
Misunderstandings frequently create conflicts. But, if everyone loves each other, they’d presume the best of the other person and the conflicts would never be prolonged, suppressed, or devolve into violence. Everyone would sort out their issues as quickly as possible.
Laws would only serve to enforce common sense and self-respect, and would rarely be broken intentionally. Thus, the laws would exist as a fail-safe for everything else.
The laws would have a natural hierarchy of power leading up to the top, where we’d have a perfect moral decider. As of right now, we don’t have a viable solution for whatever would make those perfect moral decisions.
One notable difference to laws compared to our society, though, will be its severity. Falsely stating what you’ve seen, intentionally misspeaking or misusing words, and turning a blind eye to evil will be as punishable as much more serious crimes like physical abuse or rape. The reason for the odd punishment will be to prevent people from falling into patterns of moral decay that do lead to worse evil.
Law enforcement would still exist in some form, but wouldn’t need near as much power to contain people, since people would meet rebellion with enough love to prevent any significant damage.
Motivation
Our current society forms from decisions we make for self-love (i.e., economic gain, military strength, ego projects). Thus, capitalism works more than socialism. In a perfect society, everyone would do all the claimed actions of socialism, but with the motivational sincerity of capitalism.
The entire culture would encourage and support each person to act in love beyond themselves. Thus, people would make all creations, even things like plumbing or scientific discoveries, strictly to solve others’ problems.
However, selflessness is still a choice, so selfish people would still exist. They’d be the equivalent of today’s “village idiots”. Many of them would submit themselves to vices, and the destructive nature of their lifestyles would impede their ability to succeed.
The concept of money would be gone. Since nobody would care to stockpile power, the only “currency” people would honor would be their reputations. But, since everyone would understand how artificially inflating their reputation could harm others, nobody would deceive anyone else.
Culture
Groups would converge strictly for clear purposes. As people started specializing, the lack of political battles would mean a significant segment of the group would simply break off any time a divergent task was needed. No group, therefore, would ever surpass about 150 people.
Each group would exist with its own distinct variety of cultural elements. There would be a wide variety of customs, rituals, habits, and expected behaviors. However, while our society accepts and often empowers evil, all the various people groups would hate evil.
The cultures of all people groups in a perfect society would be within a specific range:
- Conflict Style – Everyone would be graciously confrontational, since they’d have no fear that other people would become offended or distort the truth.
- Context Level – It would vary broadly by everyone’s preference. However, everyone would patiently lower their context as they saw others not quite understanding the higher context.
- Individualism/Collectivism – While everyone would be held personally responsible for their decisions, they’d focus on the best interests of all humanity. Privacy wouldn’t matter much, but would always be respected.
- Masculinity/Femininity – Everyone would be as results-oriented or harmony-oriented as they wanted. However, everyone would also patiently endure others’ different approach to tasks. Men would be compassionate toward women, women would respect men.
- Power Distance – Every single group would have zero power distance. While everyone would respect each other’s unique abilities and strengths, nobody would be considered “lesser” simply by having less power or authority.
- Time Flexibility – There’d be a broad range based on the urgency of the tasks to be performed, but people would generally be patient for everything.
- Time Orientation – Everyone would have the wisdom to look far into the future about their decisions, but be considerate of others’ short-term pain. While not everyone would be able to imagine large-scale consequences, everyone would respect and carefully consider the views of the people with the most foresight.
- Principles/Applications – We’d see the full range of principles versus implementations.
- Uncertainty Avoidance – Everyone, by knowing everyone else loved them, would be significantly more comfortable with uncertainty than we are today. However, some people would still accept the unknown more than others.
People would largely move faster and get more things done, since they wouldn’t have to deal with others pushing in crowds or byproducts of self-interested, destructive behaviors like traffic jams.
The implications of this culture would mean that young people will respect their elders’ superior experience, and elders will consider the value of new trends. Thus, everyone would adopt better trends that added more value (because the young heeded the old), and more quickly (because the old considered the young).
Cross-culturally, the love of other people (including complete outsiders) would overlook distinctive differences in customs or approach. They’ll trust outsiders more, and will treat it strictly as an opportunity to learn. In fact, that person’s unique culture will often form an unfettered trend to transform the host group as they observe the stranger.
Cross-pollination of cultural values will be frequent. People who travel among groups (such as couriers) will frequently spread the culture through informal stories of other cultures and places, with their ideas representing as new trends among those cultures.
Language
The language would be the same, though each group will go through a metamorphosis of language as specializations and geography require it. But, the cultural cross-pollination above will prevent any group across the world from ever entirely splintering from the rest. Literacy will be ubiquitous, but not necessary to find a place in society.
Work
Everyone would work. Not everyone would produce the same, but everyone would gain from the increase. The harder workers would receive more honor, and they would share that extra honor with everyone else.
Presently, there’s zero work for particularly unintelligent people. The more we specialize, the worse it gets, since specialties require intelligence. In a perfect society, the people who develop their specialization would find creative solutions to create meaningful alternate work for the less intelligent.
Exchanges would be dramatically different than we’re accustomed to. Someone would make something that someone else wanted. The receiving person wouldn’t pay for it, but they’d be grateful, along with everyone else. Thus, if the creator ever needed or wanted for anything, they could freely take it, but would also love everyone else to the point that they’d consider others’ needs as well (i.e., give up what they had or not take something if it would otherwise deprive someone else of their needs).
Property ownership would still exist, but conflicts over it wouldn’t be as toxic. The purpose of property would be less about power and more about responsibility. Someone would have a well, for example, who was responsible for keeping it cleared, but everyone would profit from the well-being cleared, and they’d often gift the owner out of gratitude.
When people would build, they’ll have the time to do things right, so the architecture would blend beautifully with the natural scenery. We’d see the wide variety of domiciles there that we see now, likely wider from all the expanded understanding of each person.
We’d see most of the same specializations as engineering, architecture, and customer service, but with a few notable exceptions:
- Money-based services, such as gambling and stock trading, wouldn’t exist.
- Since people would rarely break the law, law enforcement and lawyers, as well as paramilitary groups, wouldn’t be nearly as necessary.
- Trust-based services like security guards and cybersecurity wouldn’t be necessary because everyone would generally respect each other’s property.
There’d be no power games to gain more work, since the purpose would be strictly out of love for everyone else, and people would simply adapt to the shortage of available work.
People would be more patient in their work, and everyone else patient with them as they worked. People would only move slowly to get the job done right, not out of laziness, since they’d understand the importance of their job. There’d be no pressure to cut corners or rush deadlines, so safety risks from those created things would be rare or nonexistent. Useless jobs wouldn’t exist because nobody would have any need to appear busy.
To advertise work, a person would only need word-of-mouth. Everyone else, in their love for others, would be constantly trying to connect two people they knew, but wouldn’t try to profit off the exchange.
Marketplaces would look dramatically different from what we have now. Instead of people screaming for attention or obstructing the view with advertising, they’d only attempt to indicate their services clearly or heighten the customer’s enjoyment of their product. In the case of similar vendors, passersby would visit the least-visited services to consume.
Naturally, some people will always do a better job than others. Because of love on both the customers’ and vendors’ side, the customer would gently point out precisely how a product is inferior, and the vendor would have the humility to change what they do or how they do it. Often, the inferior vendor would go as far as asking the more skilled vendor for advice, who would gladly and openly give it.
If the market for something ever over-saturates, whatever it is, then everyone in that community will work together to consider how to resolve it. Typically, there’ll be another group elsewhere that could use that service, or maybe there’s a specific specialization the vendor could focus on instead.
Since people wouldn’t be lazy or conceited to receive correction, they wouldn’t need managers, with the possible exception of massive projects. However, managers of large projects would serve more as record-keepers and convenient points of contact with others than taskmasters.
Whenever someone could not find work, for whatever reason, there would be a public allowance for them for all the resources they’d need to survive (e.g., food, shelter, internet). However, they’d only be permitted to take what they required, and they’d never receive a money-based allowance (since it would inevitably cause economic inflation and dilute the value it would give to the needy).
Creativity
Every person would work diligently to create, but those creations would be designed to give honor and glory to others.
Thus, while a film may have opening credits with someone’s name, the personality of the creator and the power through influence that creator could gain would never get in the way of the creation’s message.
The choice of stories wouldn’t be driven by the sensational or shocking, but instead upon a love of improving society through inspiring virtue. People who heroically save others, live by good values, give meaning to others, and do remarkably unpleasant jobs will receive most of the attention.
We’d make creations individually for people. While we’d scale them for others, we’d never over-build to render that thing stale or unpopular. Very often, the creator would hand off the trend to someone else, who would put their spin on it and bring fresh life to the idea.
In our society, we frequently must trade elegance for speed: ugly and fast versus good and slow. Since everyone will be more patient out of love, nobody will rush anyone, and it’d all be elegant.
Risks would be easier to take as well. The entire community would be behind them, and that person would give credit in turn. Thus, the rocket scientist would have the support of the farmer, and everyone in the group would receive the praise.
Everyone would work their job with the understanding that it may change someday. They’d also not be afraid of survival exclusively through doing that role. They’d always be ready to delegate their role or stop it as the situation changes.
Recreation
We’d create all sorts of things like what we see today for recreation. However, those creations would be driven strictly by a desire to grow others’ understanding, provoke others to morality, and enrich their lives. Our pastimes would be the ultimate convergence of education and entertainment.
Beyond films and books, we’d design and share electronic games, sophisticated sports, and elaborate toys. There’d be competitions and tournaments for just about anything anyone wanted, as long as there were a few people to have fun competing with.
We’d naturally all enjoy the good life, resting before we were burned out from overwork.
Education
There would be no “formal” education, since people would naturally educate others with their lifestyles.
Children would still need to learn, but they’d do it from a desire and not merely out of compulsion. Parents would bring their child into their trade initially, but would empower their children toward their natural talents and desires. This would often mean sending their adolescent to a different social group entirely.
The educators would be masters of their craft. Anyone who educated would do it because they were the best at it, not because of a formalized committee, but out of the entire group agreeing from observing reality. Every master at a craft would fully reproduce their skills in their pupils, who would regularly out-succeed them.
Technology
People would share information willingly. This would include technological developments, scientific discoveries, and creative tricks.
Since nobody would fear losing power or influence from others “stealing” information, the collective of human understanding would develop within weeks instead of years.
Technology would develop much more quickly than we’re accustomed to because people who invent things would quickly give away their developments, empowering other people to build on that existing development.
If multiple people were working on the same problem, they’d quickly do one of the following:
- One of them ceases to build anymore, then gives all their resources to the other with their complete moral support.
- They both combine their efforts, with each one specializing in their natural abilities.
Inventors’ love for others would mean they’d carefully consider the ecological impact of their creations on the environment. Thus, while inventions would start as messy and polluting, people would go out of their way to create safer, healthier versions of everything.
While some people may not believe that groups under 150 can accomplish monumental things, we can see that small groups accomplish the biggest things. Nuclear power, hydroelectric dams, and skyscrapers would be accomplished by relatively small groups of people compared to what we’re accustomed to.
Inventors will also lovingly consider the people who repair things as much as the people who consume them. This will create a few technological standards:
- There will always be easy-to-read diagrams inside every mass-produced mechanism.
- Most elements like pipe fittings and wall panels will be easily attachable and quick-release, meaning that changing it will be comparable to swapping a light bulb.
- Interchangeable parts like bolts and latches will fit in many places, meaning most people with a junk drawer can find what they need.
- There’s no planned obsolescence to mandate people to get more of something, so some technologies can stay reliable for decades.
Some technologies, naturally, go obsolete. This would render job roles obsolete as well (e.g., autonomous vehicles removes the need for drivers). At that point, several things would happen almost at once:
- The creator of the invention would propose alternative roles to assist in the transition.
- The community of people around that worker, out of gratitude for the importance of their past role, would assist that person to another role they’d like.
- The person with the obsolete role would happily find something else to do, since they’d be happy the work was getting done better and faster with automation than they could have ever done by themselves.
Not Possible
To accomplish this society, everyone would have to be loving. Otherwise, all the trusting people will be used and abused by a select few who can distort how everyone sees reality.
We’re stuck with the unpleasant reality now. It can’t get better until we change human nature to be more loving, and the only solutions that can do it come through religious doctrines. Without that love, it’ll become another complicated dictatorship by a new name.
The most clear evidence of this comes through how we presently have all the technology available to easily cure many human afflictions (many diseases, hunger, etc.) but haven’t done it yet. The only reliable way it gets done is through capitalism, which is clear evidence of a lack of inherent virtue in any typical person. Even scaling up through the Kardashev Scale will create a fiction that looks more like Warhammer 40K than Star Trek.
The leftists and libertarians both have a theory that there’s a group that “distorts” the natural flow of human nature (the capitalists for the leftists, and the legislators for the libertarians). However, neither of them are indicating particularly where those antagonists came from.
Of course, I have my views on attaining the perfect society, but it’s certainly religious.