A Deep Life
Imagine a world of many worlds. In some of these worlds people like to collaborate. In some of these worlds, people like to compete. In some of these worlds, everyone is equal. In some of these worlds, there is a strict hierarchy. In some of these worlds, digital technologies and instantaneous access to other people is the fabric of life. In some of these worlds people choose to live like ancient people, regressing back to an immersive consciousness infused with a sense of immediacy and the apprehension of life and consciousness in the surrounding plants and material objects. In some of these worlds people will build artificial consciousnesses so as to enhance the total number of people who get to experience the world. And in some of the worlds, people will decide to become celibate and let their world die into collective memory with their passing. There will be many, many other kinds of worlds as well.
Some of these worlds collaborate with each other, some of these worlds are isolationists. Some of these worlds compete with each other, but only because they each want to.
There is a world that contains all of these worlds. This is the common world. Each world has a say in determining what each of the other worlds does when it is commonly judged that there is a reasonable chance that it will negatively impact some minimum number of the rest of the worlds to some minimum degree.
This world will be a utopia for each and every person in the world. Or at least, given uncertainty and surprise, it will likely be that this world will generate the greatest likelihood of the greatest diversity of sustainabile utopias. In fact, in this world, each world will be a generative incuabator, creating more and more value for its own inhabitants, and thus contributing to a world with ever greater epxerienced value for everyone.
What must be excluded:
However, in the process of generating this world there will be certain rules that must be enforced. There will be certain people for whom this world is not a utopia, and those who hold these values must be recognized to be in conflict with the delightful, generative world. What are these conflicting values:
- that people inside a given world do not enjoy themselves. That is, not that people inside the worlds enjoy not enjoying themselves (i.e. a world of masochists and sadists, which would be a delightful world), but in which people are genuinely held against their will to experience things they do not wish to experince.
- that people do not want to live in a world that generates more and more utopia for more and more people in more and more diverse ways.
Requirements:
There are also some minimum positive requirements of such a world:
- that people in all worlds are fully able to travel freely outside of their own world if they choose (though not necessarily travel inside others’ worlds).
- that people in all worlds are also able to create new worlds of any style of their choosing and in collaboration with anyone else who wishes, as long those worlds are commonly deemed to not negatively impact some minimum number of other worlds to some minimum degree.
- that the infrasture to maintain the commons of the worlds is sustainably maintained however the collective of worlds best sees fit so as to continue to support the further generation of new utopian worlds
Two paths to this world:
One way to create such a world would be to create a benevolent matrix, where each individual or collective of individuals could enter at will a life-like experience generation machine that creates and sustains worlds chosen by the experiencers. If the machine were life-like enough, there would be no significant difference between the not machine generated world and the machine generated world.
Another way to create this world is for all of us to get collectively better at social collaboration so that we could bring it about in the commons world that we currently live in.
Sometimes people feel these worlds to threaten each other. But they do not have to. I advocate for a commons world that contains both. In some worlds people will enter benevolent matrices, and in some worlds people will not.
Why:
If and when this world is created, and if and when those who hold the contrasting values die away, what will be left will be an exceptionally creative common world, bursting at the seems with mutual interest generation and satisfaction in more variety and to a degree never before seen. It will be a strange world, a world full of discovery. It will be a beauitful world.
How:
It seems to me there are several movements already underway that support the creation of these worlds. For now, I will guess at a few of the features that will become necessary to create either or both paths to this world successfully:
- a great deal more wealth. Much more material wealth will be needed in most places for each world to be able to generate lives felt as utopic for its inhabitants
- a commons infrasture and much greater capacity for collective social collaboration to support each of these worlds, especially as their diversity increases. In fact, such social infrasture and would need to grow stronger as diversity amongst the worlds increases in order to support ever increasing diversity
- a shared vision that such a generative and delightful commons world is possible and worth building.