Self-evident truths
On what bases
should a society
be built, and what
should guide us?
For this question,
you know, there have
been numerous proposals
so far.
It is not the
purpose of this text to analyse these
proposals and find the
best and most workable.
Just so that we
begin to think about it ourselves,
I would suggest setting
two goals.
To consider that
our actions must be
directed to the
following two axioms:
1. The human species should continue to exist
and evolve.
2. Each person should spend his life on earth
happily.
Axioms need no
justification.
They are self-evident.
But if you
absolutely insist that I justify them,
I would say for the
first one: that it is necessary.
Because the
solution that our species becomes
extinct is no solution
and because the development
that this species has
made until now has been so
stunning that it would
be very interesting to see
how this progress
continues.
For the second
axiom the justification is just as easy too:
everybody prefers to be
happy instead of unhappy, and
the same should apply
to everyone.
Based on these two
axioms we can find
the solution for any
problem that exists,
and any problem that
might arise.
Of course it is
not entirely clear, and we need to discuss the meaning
of "happy" in
the second axiom and the meaning of "evolve" in the first.
Let's start from
the first axiom and the concept of evolution.
I think we can
agree that we have the right to call progress the change
that took place in our
species (since we began to use our hands and our
brains to find more
food and to obtain greater security) with the "positive
associations" that
this term has.
We showed a
continuous improvement in our attitude
towards
the other species, the environment and nature.
This
development is
the
fruit of our labour.
It
hasn't been donated
to
us by somebody.
Neither did it
fall into
our lap by accident.
We have worked at it with
our hands and our brains.
And more especially with the latter.
It was a
completely different evolution
from the evolution of
the other species.
There you have to
wait till a good attribute appears by
chance (among the
thousands of bad qualities, which
also continually appear
randomly) and then becomes
established through
natural selection.
This is a very
good way for development,
I can't say the
contrary. You see all the
species around you that
evolved just with
that method. But it
takes a very long time.
Some million
years.
We reversed the
rules of the game.
We did not wait
for the influence
of the environment upon
us,
we influenced the
environment.
We made decisions
that changed
the situation and
improved our
position much more
quickly.
A
thousand times faster.
We moved from the
order
of millions of years to
the
order of thousands of
years.
We
made inventions.
Inventions that
allowed us to achieve
the same result (to
produce the same
products), with less
effort and less work.
But by working
less we had the time to think more,
that is, make more
inventions to reduce even further
our work, so that we
think even more ...
― But
this is a vicious circle!
This is the cause of
our population explosion.
The cause of all evil
is our ingenuity.
Indeed it is so.
The population
explosion is due to our
ingenuity.
Now is the time,
if we still remain rational beings, to
stop the explosion and
bring our population into balance.
For this purpose
the second axiom will help us.
The first axiom,
which determines evolution, gave
us the start, the
rising leg of the population curve.
The second, which
requires happiness
for all people, will
lead us into balance.
Just that here
again we have an ambiguity:
what is happiness?
The ancient
philosophers (such as Epicurus, for example)
were concerned with
such questions and each presents a
different opinion. If
we look now at the analysis of these views,
we will be hopelessly
entangled, and this would contribute
nothing to our purpose.
So, let us see
things
in the simplistic
method
we used so far.