In a perfect world



By John Kaminski
skylax@comcast.net




{Editor’s note: This story first appeared in 1991 in Leisure Weekly,
Keene, NH, USA, where the author was once managing editor.]




A good society is a means to a good life for those who compose it; not
something having a kind of excellence on its own account.
— Bertrand Russell




In a perfect world, there would be no soldiers, no police, no crime, no
hatred, no oil spills. A ritually stabilized world population,
structured so each person connected with an actualized family unit,
would have behaviorally internalized integrity and civility and this
was reflected in friendly social behavior and totally amiable
international relations.

In a perfect world people, would live closer to the land, leave a
lighter footprint on the epidermis of the planet. One thinks of
Indians, gliding across a world with a much lighter footfall, as a
higher form of civilization — big-picture-wise — than our own.

One recent story postulated that the collective sound made by the human
race — think of jet engines and nuclear tests, please — is having a
disintegrating effect on the tectonic structure of the planet.
Planetary harmonics would be a hot occupation in a perfect world.

One also thinks of ancient Greeks, who regarded the planet as a living
organism — a “zoon” — to be thought of in the second person — as a
“you” rather than an “it.” If you go back far enough in ancient
history, you come to a time when speech and logic had no third person.
The ability to conceptualize comes, as revealed in Homer, accompanied
by rationalized hallucinations for that substantial part of human
existence that cannot be named very accurately.

It was something called thumos that men felt upon going into the battle
for Troy, an emotion something akin to heart, spirit, and soul, and it
drove men to kill. In a perfect world this “thumos” would have been
completely ritualized into games and nontoxic religious/philosophical
practices.

Aggression, in a perfect world, would be unacceptable behavior,
especially since a planetary legal network was in perfect working
order, untainted by commercial corruption. In a perfect world the
dilemma of aggression and sexuality would still not have been
completely worked out.

In a perfect world, the unchallenged distortion now extant in society
in the matter of self-advantage would have been unlearned and in its
place, the maxim “you may not live this life for yourself” would have
been imbued in public consciousness. Jesus and Sartre agreed on this
one.

There would be no cops because everybody would be their own police
chief, with a responsibility for oneself that does not reflect true
responsibility until it demonstrably and positively affects someone
else, on a continuing basis. Heck, who’d have time for crime.

There would be no war because everybody would have enough to eat, the
world government saw to it. Those xenophobes who saw world government
as a threat to their own selfish aggrandizement were laughed into
babbling anonymity long ago.

In a perfect world, would be crystal clear that all humans are one
family, no matter what the color of their skin, the cut of their hair,
or the name of the God they pray to.

Ah, but in a perfect world, the name of the Gods they prayed to would
all be understood as synonyms. Not only that, but in a perfect world,
God would have regained her female element, so that respect for this
lush, bounteous cushion upon which we live would have overshdowed the
fashionable, testosteronic bloodlust which had once oppressed the
masses and turned the planet into a toilet.

The key part to creating a perfect world is very much like the creation
of the United States of America: principles codified for the common
good. It’s striking to realize the sincere human dignity of our
founding mothers and fathers, particularly compared to the sterile,
shrill pronouncements of our current establishment. This is what is
missing. I keep saying it. I won’t change.

What is missing from our current structure of government is something
you can find in your home. The presence of kids practically guarantees
you have it. You can put any name you want on it — I like real life.
Some would call it love.

That’s what’s missing from the forces flushing the world down the
sewer. This is not a planet to be covered with asphalt and riddled with
electronic impulses and funky chemicals. It’s our home, and damned if —
really — we know the first thing about it.

In a perfect world this would be obvious, and the respect accorded to
every aspect of our environment would, of course, be second nature.

And we would run our governments and businesses as if they were built
to serve the home, because they were. And because of this, we would
have more time to tell our children that we love them.

In a perfect world we would understand all the larger implications of
our actions. We would be much more sensitive. We would understand that
nobody ever learned anything by winning all the time. We would
understand that profit in one sense is always loss in another. We would
not drink Cokes and Pepsis.

In a perfect world, a kind of tripartite schizophrenia would govern
social thought and legal sanctions: in addition to mental and physical
concerns, the human personality would include another category of
thinking. You could call it spiritual, but that word has long since
become too freighted due to the efforts of establishment religions —
ineffable is a better word.

So many of the things in life we truly want — love, children, and safe
home, a community of friends in which one can take sincere pride — all
are ineffable. You can’t quite reach out and touch them, but you sure
can feel them in the silence of your heart.

In a perfect world, every action would be precipitated by first
thinking of such things, ineffable things.

In a perfect world, the government would have the ultimate
responsibility of eliminating misery. Corporations which manufactured
products useful to humanity would pay taxes three times lower that
corporations that made money merely by shuffling more money.

In a perfect world, children would not aspire to be Operation Desert
Storm warriors and trade playing cards glorifying unmentioned
slaughter. Instead, they would aspire to be healers; the untamably
aggressive would be architects.

In a perfect world, people would write a lot about what a perfect world
really means. The government would not be afraid of new ideas because
it was simply a collection of them anyway. A government afraid of new
ideas is generally a government with something to hide.

In a perfect world, everyone would vote and no one would run for any
office. In a perfect world, all officials served only one term at
anything because it was obvious, as the Greeks had known, that
government service required no special attributes and that one person
could do these jobs as well as another. Problems are inevitable when
people stay too long in power.

And above all else in a perfect world, we would have learned that we
may not fear what we may not avoid, because all those things are only
creatures of our own creation.



John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida whose
Internet essays are seen on hundreds of websites around the world. He
is the author of “America’s Autopsy Report,” “The Perfect Enemy,” and
“The Day America Died: Why You Shouldn’t Believe the Official Story of
What Happened on September 11, 2001.” His latest collection of essays,
“Recipe for Extinction,” can be preordered (late February publication)
at http://www.johnkaminski.com/