User:Woozle/My Left Wing/Revolution 2.0 Outline RFC/destination

The question here is: Where are we trying to get to?

There are actually two parts to this:

• What's the first serious change we'd all like to see happen as a result of our efforts?
• Where are we going with this -- what's the underlying change that we want to see in society, and what should society be like when we're more or less done changing it?

I've addressed the first part of this here.

The second part is an important question we will need to discuss eventually. I do want to start people thinking about it, however, because understanding each other's visions of the future will be crucial to working together harmoniously -- and because one of the major obstacles I keep running into is people who don't think things ever will change, or ever can change.

I'm not going to get into the evidence here (though I'm willing to do that elsewhere), because people who believe things can't change seem to be pretty much locked into that idea. They seem to like it too much, for some reason. They don't even want to put any effort towards changing things.

They may be right -- but someone who won't even try certainly isn't going to be part of any revolution, so there's really no point in engaging with them until we have something of concrete value to negotiate with, something to appeal to their self-interest. They're part of the precipitate. We can move on without them.

As for me: I want a sane civilization.

I want to be able to get on board an airplane without being more terrified of the security procedures than of being in a skinny metal tube traveling 400 MPH with other people who might just possibly want to blow it up. I want no more torture and no more offshore detainments and no more arbitrarily-classified evidence. I want no more "war on terror", no more "war on drugs"; the only war I want is a "war on stupid excuses"... and maybe a "war on using the word war as a metaphor", because it really gives people bad ideas about how to solve problems.

I want no more sending people out to kill other people because it makes a good excuse to give money to war contractors who contribute to election campaigns for the people who start wars.

Really, there just shouldn't be any more wars. Societies that are educated and prosperous have much better ways of negotiating for resources; societies that aren't educated and prosperous aren't really a threat, no matter how much Congress would like us to think so.

I want the military to be primarily a rescue-and-rebuilding force -- like the Army Corps of Engineers, or like the USS Enterprise (NC-1701 and suffixes through D). I'd like to be proud of what they do, because generally speaking they are really great people who work hard and put their lives on the line.

I want every society in the world to be able to effectively neutralize psychopaths before they get anywhere near having authority over anything more dangerous than a trash bag. I want everyone's basic needs to be taken care of, even if they're "just lazy" (which I doubt) -- especially in countries like the US where there is no shortage of resources and more than enough transportation capability to distribute it.

I also want a spacefaring civilization.

I want self-sufficient colonies off Earth -- partly just in case, partly just for the exploration. I want solar power satellites and space elevators and five-mile-long space stations full of forests and rivers, and colonies on the moon and the asteroids, and people exploring as far away as we can possibly explore.

When the generations that come after us worry about "danger", I want it to be from natural hazards instead of from other people. If it's personal danger, it should be because of how boldly they dared to explore, not because they went into a bad neighborhood or accidentally pissed off a cop or got caught being blatantly foreign near a battlefield somewhere. If it's danger to humanity, it should be because of unexpected and unforeseen phenomena we learned about through our explorations, not from things we could have dealt with if only people had paid attention to the evidence and the rational arguments.

That's what motivates me, that's the future that seems worth a fight.

What future do you think would be worth a fight, and are you ready to do something about it?