🔵 By Kenneth Zamarron. Photo by lauragrafie.
Submission arrived 14 days late.
It is glorious! It is magnificent! Our own new home – a home wherein we can do as we please, invite only those we wish to see, and bring forth the life we choose. We can build anything we can imagine. the bounding trumpets enliven my heart. We will transform this tract into a Utopia on this blue and green planet of ours. On our land people will be kind, respectful, and caring. They will not label others with such superficial terms as black, brown, red, yellow, or white, but will instead simply be others as fellow human beings each with his or her own intrinsic value and self-worth that does not require any artificial branding, as all of our souls have equal potential.
Moreover, in our Utopia we will practice effective altruism, pursuant to which we will help each other with either our time or our money, and if anyone causes harm to another’s person or possessions, our citizens will vote on an appropriate censure or punishment for such misconduct. There, I will ensure each of us will have meaningful access to the very best doctors, teachers, and craftsmen. I will be our land’s intrepid leader.
I stand akimbo and tall, surveying our land that is invigorated by the warming sun, with wide expanses of forests, grasslands, and lakes as far as one can see.
My senses are alive with both roguish and Arcadian impulses. The expanses before me are both pristine and beyond compare. The cerulean sky abounds with birds of every possible plumage and color. I breathe in deeply and appreciate the wonderfully aromatic admixture of the various grasses, trees, flowers, and water. I hear the sounds of life within which I am immersed and thrin to their perfect harmony.
I realize this is the very epitome of what a city in heaven must be like, and I will be its self-appointed mayor. Our overriding goal will be to live in perfect harmony in this new land, just as new land will be optimally suited to growing all forms of produce and sustaining all types of livestock. I will make every effort to ensure each inhabitant is fully aware that the fertility of our land is the very basis of the life of our people and that without our living in harmony with the land, the land on which we depend will degrade over time.
All over the world for much too long many fellow human beings have witnessed the degradation in their quality of life due to the clear cutting of our forests, the overfishing or our oceans, the erosion of our farmlands, and the pollution of our air and waters. Nevertheless, I will do my level best to ensure as many people as possible understand we can mitigate our most destructive and most counter-productive and practices and being to live in a simpler, more sustainable manner that is less toxic and healthier for both mankind and for nature. I alone will take it upon myself to ensure all of this.
Why am I using the first person pronoun for such significant and wide-ranging assurances? It is the method by which my mind pulses with fictitious yet enervating power that deeds my ravenous, indeed insatiable desire to believe that the singular self can create a Utopian world without any significant input from the collective.
However, it is not egocentric narcissism which all too often leads to a malignant, dystopian state. It is not the I’s which carelessly and continually poison our waters, sky, and land, refusing to change or indeed even acknowledge their horrifically destructive practices. I cannot allow the magnificent land before me to be overtaken by us humans. The more we humans traverse and subdue this land, the more life’s harmonious songs will be replaced by nature’s laments we all too often ignore. This city of heaven, this shining city on a hill can transmogrify into a dystopian hell scape due to our callous and hedonistic ways.
The only certain way to create a true Utopia is with the lower-case “we” in the we-that is, the collective we. It is the collective we who can do our best not to be a nokious weed on this planet that spreads unchecked and destroys everything it touches. It is the collective we who one day soon can leave both the land and the atmosphere with a lighter carbon footprint. It is the collective we who can preserve as much life, land, and water for all life, human and non-human alike, on this wonderful blue and greet planet of ours. It is the collective we who can choose not to endanger all of life, including ourselves. How do we create a Utopia for all life here on earth?
We create a Utopia for all life here on earth by giving space for all of life on this planet, human and non-human like, by not taking more than we absolutely need for ourselves, whether it be land, water, or natural resources and by offering to all other forms or life the respect we demand for ourselves.