Ideologies and Ultimate Goals
Response to Kimstu, Dewey, and Minty Green
The goal of every human life can be summed up in one word: happiness. You may prefer a different word, but to me “happiness” is the best choice. Every human being wants to live a happy, satisfying, fulfilling, life.
What is happiness?
Happiness always has 2 questions: A who and a what.
Who
Who needs to be happy for you to be happy?
Many people cannot be happy unless certain other people they care about are also happy. For instance a mother may not be able to be happy unless her children and loved ones are happy and healthy. Or perhaps many minority advocates cannot be happy unless their peer group is freed from oppression. Or an Iraqi immigrant may not be able to say they are fully happy until they know their country is free from the rule of a harsh ruthless dictator. And finally, some people may not give a squat about other people and their happiness revolves only around the state of their individual life.
What
What will make you happy? What do you and the people you care about need to be happy? This too varies from person to person, but most people I believe have the same fundamental needs to be happy. In fact, I believe the ingredients to happiness are summed up quite nicely with 2 words: Wealth and Wisdom.
The wealth needed for happiness is basically everything you need that money can buy: food, shelter, safety, security, power over your life, freedom to do what you wish, space within which to live, and free time to explore and enjoy life.
The wisdom needed for happiness is that which money cannot buy. Wisdom is knowledge of what is most important. The specific details of what wisdom is can only be determined by each and every individual conscious being. We may try to engrave and capture wisdom within words and symbols, but wisdom cannot be captured within words anymore than it can be bought with money. Wisdom is the answer to all the most important questions a person needs to address in order to live a happy life. The first task on ones quest for wisdom is to determine exactly what those questions are.
The Purpose of an Ideology
The purpose of an ideology is to be a blue print for the structure and organization of society. Every ideology, and every person who voices a political opinion, should be able to sum up at least a rough approximation of how every person’s need for at least an opportunity to live a happy life shall be met (or not) if society were structured the way they want.
If you are a socialist, you should be able to summarize how your ideology manages every individual person’s need to pursue happiness. How does your ideology manage every person’s basic needs to acquire wealth and wisdom?
Ideology and the Acquisition of Wealth
To begin with, how will people in a society built upon your ideology gain and use wealth? How much safety, security, power, freedom, space, and free time, shall every person in your society have? How will such things vary among the population? Will everyone have all of these things in precisely equal amounts? Will every member of your society have an equal opportunity to acquire these things?
Ideology and the Acquisition of Wisdom
One must also ask how an ideology relates to every persons need for wisdom. Would a society structured according to the blueprint of your ideology give people the maximum freedom to choose the meaning of their individual life? Or would the government define much of life for every member? Will the government tell people what to believe or will it simply facilitate every person’s ability to learn and choose their beliefs on their own? Will people have the freedom to say whatever they wish or will the state limit every person’s ability to express their individual wisdom? Will every member have an equal opportunity to learn, grow, and acquire wisdom?
The Ultimate Goal of an Ideology
If you fight for a particular ideology, whether it is an established school of thought or a philosophy all your own, your ideology does have an ultimate design for society. This ultimate design is the “utopia” of that ideology in the sense it is the world you want based upon that ideology. It may not be utopia in the sense that it is an impossible place where everyone is perfectly happy and there is no fighting or suffering, but it will be utopia in the sense it is the best society we can build based upon your ideology.
This is not to imply that once that design is implemented all work stops. Just as when you design a car, you must then use the car, maintain the car, and most importantly, modify the car if your needs, desires, priorities, or the world itself changes.
What is the ultimate form of society your ideology aims to achieve? The easiest way to recognize the answer to this question is to imagine you had the power to restructure society today or found one from scratch. Imagine everyone in your society respected your opinion and would be more than happy to word or reword the constitution (and laws) exactly as you would wish. If you had this power (and you were able to resist the temptation to become a dictator) exactly how would you structure society? Describe it. Exactly how would it work?
After you describe the utopia of your ideology, I would ask you this question: in the utopia of your ideology, does every person have a reasonable opportunity to acquire wealth and wisdom? In the utopia of your ideology, does every person have a reasonable opportunity to live a happy life? And perhaps most importantly, to what extent is this opportunity equal?
These three questions are to me the most important and essential questions one can ask of any ideology. For these three questions measure the ultimate successfulness or failure of an ideology in relation to that one single thing every person cares about most: happiness. In fact, for me these three questions sum up the fundamental problem an ideology is made to solve. To me the goal is to construct a society in which every person has an equal opportunity to live a happy life.
Kimstu and Dewey, I wrote this essay in response to your comments, but I guess it boils down to this:
To me, every individual human life boils down to one simple desire: the desire for happiness. The exact details and the nature of happiness is something we each must define for ourselves. Consequently, people need as much freedom as possible to live their life as they choose.
When choosing or building or measuring the value of an ideology, the question to me is always, “How does that ideology relate to every person’s desire for a happy life?”
Kimstu, you say that constructing a society entails “a whole lot of varied (and sometimes contradictory) objectives and constraints”. Then how do you choose what those objectives and constraints will be?
I choose the objectives and constraints that best achieve the goal of a society in which all members have an as equal as possible opportunity for happiness, while balancing the goal for equality with the desire for maximum individual freedom.
How do you choose the objectives and constraints for designing a society? (In other words how do you choose the objectives and constraints entailed in your ideology?)
Some other questions which may be easier to answer, which again basically ask the same thing:
Do you want to live in a society in which some people have all the power and others have little or none?
Do you want to live in a society where many people are disadvantaged?
Do you want to live in a society where people are not equal?
Do you want to live in a society in which you know on the day of a child’s birth the exact odds that child has of growing up happy vs. growing up to be a career criminal? Moreover, is it ok if many children are born with a 90% chance of growing up healthy and well off and many children are born with a 90% chance of poverty, illiteracy, and a criminal record? I would argue you know these odds based upon the income level of his parents.
Or do you want to live in a society where every child born has, if not an equal opportunity for happiness, at least an equal enough opportunity for happiness? And if so, what is equal enough?
