Partway To Perfect

essay

I've been railing on and on about how our current society needs improvement. I maintain that is still the case, but now I believe I have been a little hard on our system... there are many aspects of today's society which are more than halfway to the Perfect World we'd all like to see. So this post is dedicated to all those things which would remain unchanged in the Perfect World of our future.

Now And In The Future:

Libraries lend books to anyone, for free.

Any injured person will be helped, even by a stranger.

Condiments are free at restaurants.

Recycling is important to us.

We think kittens are adorable.

Children are our future.

We are curious about everything and want to learn everything.

There is free public education for children.

We appreciate beauty, art, music and culture.

We love love.

If you are lost, there will be people trying to find you.

Sometimes, all we want to do is to keep having sex.

Artists of every coat create with impulsive dispensation.

People are trained to put out fires and do it for free.

We dream of a future free of fear, pain, danger and war.

There are innumerable flavors of ice cream.

Teachers continue to educate.

Inventors design our future.

Music lifts our souls and swells our bliss.

We will complain about the weather.

Man's best friend will still be dogs.

We will watch what we eat, for our health and our physique.

We will explore, investigate, examine, analyze and probe our environment for knowledge.

We will search the world for our soul mates.

We will relish flavors, and sounds, and visions, and scents... and touch.

Children will want always one more cookie.

Actually, in order to be the best we can, we're not not going to change that much... we're already pretty far along. And the things we need to change, we want to change... so we already have a strong desire to improve. It's that last, huge step we have to take that scares us the most.

What's holding us back?

Trust.

We are scared to trust. We think if we hold our arms apart in welcome, someone will come along and steal our rings and wristwatches.

And you know, somebody may do just that. Sadly, there are many people who have been repeatedly hurt by the mindless cruelty of our society, and they're looking for any chance to exact some revenge.

We have to purge these feelings from our society before we can trust enough to take that final step. Although I would prefer it, I maintain that we're not going to be able to fix all of our broken citizens for all the reasons I have mentioned in posts prior to this one (go ahead and catch up... I'll wait).

While it is not impossible for a person to make a radical 180 degree shift in their thinking, it must come from within. They need to already be feeling deep dissatisfaction with their lives and be experiencing a longing for change. Finally, there has to be near continuous reinforcement to prevent backsliding. Difficult as hell, yes; but not impossible.

Regardless of which way we choose to care for our troubled citizenry, one day it ceases to become an issue-- all the other changes our representatives have enacted have begun to yield their expected results. Reducing greed by rewarding selflessness, capping upper income potential to a much more reasonable figure, eliminating poverty, educating everyone to their potential and preventing the cold cruelties currently rampant on our streets will serve to build hope and reassure success. Slowly we will replenish our ranks with young and hopeful faces fresh out of podschool. Each generation will produce fewer troubled adults. At an indeterminate time in the future we can begin to think of again holding out those arms and this time, be certain of getting a hug instead.

Copyright 2009 Bruce Ian Friedman