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INVITATION TO CO-CREATE
THE IDEAL UNIVERSAL SOCIETY

What does the Ideal Universal Society look like?

 

Would you like to participate in co-creating a society that benefits everyone? 

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Do we, the people, have a similar imagination of the ideal society?  

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Is what we desire for ourselves also what we desire for our family, our friends, our colleagues, the people in our town or city, County, State, and Nation, even the whole world?  

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Do our answers indicate that perhaps it is worth pursuing the idea that it would be fruitful to imagine the ideal together?

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The Union team proposes that we think about the ideal universal society in terms of three ideals, namely Freedom, Justice, and Collaborative Community.

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Freedom: Do we desire to be free, at liberty, to pursue our calling in life, what we desire our life to count for, our life’s purpose and mission in the way that inspires us and we see fit, with the opportunity to develop mastery in doing it?  

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Justice: Do we desire to pursue our mission in a society that we feel is just, that honors virtue and talent, and remedies harms?   

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Collaborative Community: Would we like to be cooperating voluntarily as inspired with other people to provide the necessities and luxuries of life in a fair and sustainable manner?

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The Union team proposes that the three ideals of Freedom, Justice, and Collaborative Community belong in the three domains of Culture, Governance, and Economics.

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Culture consists of the realms:

- Science (the seeking of truth)

- Art (the creation of beauty)

- Education/Spirituality/Religion (the values and ideals of goodness out of which we live).

 

Truth, Beauty, and Goodness 

are what we all strive for.

 

Governance encompasses the Legislative (Funding), Executive (Implementation), and Judicial (Justice) functions.

 

Economics involves managing our resources to address our needs and desires. This encompasses production, distribution, and consumption.

 

This is the basis of Rudolf Steiner’s 

Threefold Social Order.

 

“Threefolding” coordinates the ideals of Freedom, Justice, and Cooperation into domains, namely Culture, Governance, and Economics, believed to be appropriate to each ideal so that they cooperate. 

 

Otherwise, these ideals could create confusion and conflict, whereas freedom could adversely affect equality, justice could adversely affect freedom, and no one necessarily cooperates to manage our resources for the good of all. 

 

Consider how our current paradigm distorts the ideals of Freedom in the domain of Culture, Justice/Equivalence in the domain of Governance, and Community/Collaboration in the domain of Economics. 

 

Instead of our culture being free, it is unduly influenced by special interests and government influences and controls. 

 

Instead of a government of, by, and for “we, the people” based on our common sense of justice, it is a plutocracy:  governance by the moneyed class.

 

Instead of our economic system being cooperative and collaborative so as to responsibly manage our resources for the benefit of all, it is based on competition; a profit motive that tends to externalize costs onto the society and the environment; rampant consumerism; usury; and corruption.

 

Freedom, Justice, Community – Are these the ideals that we desire for ourselves and everyone else?  

 

Are these the ideals that we would like to inform the society that we live in?  

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Would we like to be able to honestly say:  “My community is as it should be and I am doing my part to make it so”?  

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Rudolf Steiner put it very well:  “A healthy social life is found only when, in the mirror of each soul, the whole community finds itself reflected, and when, in the whole community, the virtue of each one is living.”  

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How about:  “The ideal universal society is one in which the individual honors and is inspired by the community, and the community honors and is inspired by the individual.”  

What are your ideals?

 

When thinking about your ideals, where in each of the three domains of Culture, Governance, or Economics would you place them? 

 

Freedom is an unalienable right. It is not created by government, but exists anterior to it. Governments are created to secure our unalienable rights, as declared in the promise of the Declaration of Independence:  

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

 

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

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Should society be organized to protect our right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, along with all our other unenumerated rights, as long as we do no harm?  

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Should the means we use to protect our rights assure they are respected?  

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If our lives are to be secure in pursuing Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, what of the money we need to live?

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What if we do not have to earn the money we need to live?  Will we be at Liberty to Pursue Happiness?  

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Is succeeding with our life’s purpose what reliably makes us happy?

 

Is the problem in the money?

 

Is the source of our societal problems the money?

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Does the necessity to earn our living distort our human nature?

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Do the problems of society stem from not understanding the nature of money and silently consenting to having to “earn our living” by doing what someone who has money wants us to do, the way they want us to do it, when they want us to do it, for the amount of money we have to accept?

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Is having to “earn” one’s living a form of coercion we do not immediately recognize?

What if we did not have to earn our living?  What if we voluntarily brought our interests, talents, and capacities to bear in accomplishing our calling and contributing to society?

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What if we, the people, learned how to issue the money for what we agree would be good?

 

Money and Rights

 

What if we distributed the money supply in an equitable fashion to secure our right to Life?

If we have an unearned income sufficient for each of us to live at a reasonable standard of living, would we be at Liberty to Pursue the Happiness that comes from succeeding with our life’s purpose?  

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What if there were no compulsion to spend our time and energy doing what someone who has money wants us to do, the way they want us to do it, when they want us to do it, just because we need the money to live?  

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If we have a right to the money we need to live, and we have a right to the capital our capacities warrant, would everything we do be a voluntary, freely undertaken initiative to express our love for and contribute to our family, our community, and our fellow human beings throughout the world?  

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Could Life be truly satisfying and could we live in a just and sustainable abundance?

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Ideal Universal Society

 

What if we cooperate and collaborate together to create a Common Good Community that could decide to give everyone the money we need to live as our right to the equitable distribution of the wealth we all create together, and access to the capital our capacities warrant so that we may:

 

- pursue our transcendent purpose

 

- bring our service and contribution to expression

 

- make a meaningful difference in our communities and the world

 

- create the conditions wherein we desire to live; the society to benefit everyone; The World We Know In Our Hearts Is Possible; a free, peaceful, healthy, just, collaborative, life-empowering, and regenerative world where we all thrive.

 

What of Community-Created Credit?  What of the Common Good payment system?

 

Would you like to research and share your findings about how we might govern ourselves and how we might decide together what is good; what will contribute to an ideal universal society?

 

How shall we ensure consent-based self-governance?

 

What of Dynamic Governance/Sociocracy?

 

What of the Jeffersonian Ward Republic?

 

What shall our values, principles, and standards be? 

 

Check out the Massachusetts Republic website for some insight into what the Union Team has come up with so far.

 

How shall we foster harmonious relations, address grievances, and adjudicate harm?

 

What of:

 

What would happen if we, the people, reclaim our right to consent-based self-governance and the right to issue the money for what we agree would be good?  Would we co-create and fund the world we know in our hearts is possible, the ideal universal society?  What does the ideal universal society look like to you?  Please share with us on Sundays at 7 PM on Zoom!


 

School of Athens

Mind mapping

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