Uthopia

It has often been said that Utopian societies are an impossibility. That the so-called "human condition" and man's "inhumanity to man" will preclude it. Well why? Or rather when your philosophy 101 professor asks the classic question "why?" The classic answer is or should be "why not!" If we can conceive of it, if we can dream it, we can do it, we can make it happen. Nothing is impossible.

The first problem is the "One man's heaven is another man's hell" problem. A Christian utopia may not jive with a Muslim utopia and so on. Would a world without war be a Utopia to a career soldier? Would a world without disease or death be a Utopia to physicians and healers? What about police? They lose in a world without crime. No death puts a period to the funeral and cemetary industries as well. Healing and medicine will not totally end as new problems will always arise, and an immortal is not necessarily invulnerable, accidents and injuries can still happen, though some projections of nanotech suggest a near instantaneous repair capacity from even the most devastating of traumas. Military people can always keep the training alive, the discipline as a sort of sport and a backup just in case we ever again run into another society that does not view peace and prosperity as a good thing. Police could merge with the military. The combined police and military could be modeled on old Taoist Monestaries with a little modern science included. Those are some ideas. As to those who feel the need to die in order to adhere to some religious belief or other, I suppose death could be allowed for those who desire it for a time. But I remember a quote (by someone whose name I can't remember) that goes something like: "Each death diminishes us all...".

As a utopian society progresses it reaches a point where an outside observer can not tell a very high tech society from a low tech one. You might see people riding horses over a roadless terrain when you first arrive and think this is a low tech culture, but when our immortal utopian denizens want to go somewhere a long distance away in a great hurry, they dismount their horses and hop in an aircar with hyperdrive and can be halfway around their paradisical world in a very short time. One could conceiveably commute from one side of the world or other if work in this society continues. But the way people work and earn "wealth" will change. Wealth is a state of contrast. One is "wealthy" in comparison to many who are not, like "the "poor." Now a Utopian society is probably not a communistic society. A Utopian society run by sage immortals does not have a government system that is overly complex as most of the current functions of governments are met by strong independent capable individuals. "Oh No!" You mean politicians will be displaced in a Utopian society! Oh, horrors what will we ever do for lurid entertainment?!"

A Utopian world will have some sort of loosely structured central world government, but not a government like any that exist on Earth presently. It would be more of a central council for solving world- affecting problems like weather and incoming asteroids and young races whose technological developments have outpaced