Utopia

Hi, I’m Ben: a planet lover, sailor and student of earth sciences who aims to explore whether humanity can evolve to exist in harmony with the universe. This blog aims to answer this question through exploring the topics of earth science, neuroscience, philosophy and happiness. This is my first ever blog post, an experiment of pushing myself out of my comfort pit (a topic for another blog post someday).

Can we find Utopia?

Firstly, what is Utopia? The oxford definition of Utopia is: “an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.” In this case, lets refer to Utopia as a place. Can Utopia be the planet on which we live? I believe this planet is already perfect. When you are up in the mountains, out at sea or walking through the forest and pause for a moment, doesn’t the stillness of nature give you peace and reminds you the planet is perfect?

Ok, what about Utopia as a “state of things”? Well, if we refer to humanity as a state of things I find it hard to say that at this present moment humanity is perfect. In our pursuit of progress we seem hell bent on our own destruction!

You may think that the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and UN (United Nations) have everything figured out when it comes to sustainability and sustainable development. If they have, why did greenhouse gas emissions bounce back to new peaks in 2021 beyond pre pandemic levels[1]? Why is there still war, suffering, inequality and poverty across the globe? We have come a long way as humanity, especially in equality, poverty and health but there is still work to do. We are cooking our planet, destroying our biodiversity and polluting our planet. To what end?

It is not the destruction of our planet, our planet will be fine (it is perfect). It is the death of ourselves. This is a topic for a future blog post.

This is actually summarised very well by one of the greatest philosophers, Plato 360 BC, with his story of Atlantis. I first came across this on the documentary of Ancient Apocalypse by Graham Hancock on Netflix[2], well worth a watch! The story of Atlantis was first told by an Egyptian priest and it’s is documented by Plato in his passage of Critias[3]. In this interesting piece not only does Plato describe that Atlantis was destroyed by an earthquake, but it was destroyed because, to quote Graham Hancock: “Atlantis fell out of harmony with the Universe”. Plato describes how at the start of Atlantis people were content, in harmony and they were not intoxicated by luxury or wealth. However, human tendencies took over, full of greed for wealth and material gain, and the gods destroyed Atlantis. If we strip away the mythological parts of the story, the core of it sounds very similar to where we are heading.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, a famous astrophysicist, recently said on an interesting podcast[4] that he believes if an Alien species would visit the planet Earth they would look at the war, inequality, suffering and the tribal division we have establish among us, and conclude there is no intelligent life on Earth.

Can humanity evolve to be in harmony with the universe? Honestly, I don’t know the answer in the reality of our modern world, and that’s why I decide to investigate. Please let me know if you liked it and comment with ideas or topics you would like discussed/researched.

[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-co2-emissions-in-2021- [2]https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81211003 [3]https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/plato/critias.htm [4] https://open.spotify.com/episode/4IvsgLCHMP85iJBgbIVmM6