9. The Ergonotopy - Utopian Stage
9.1 Ergonotopy has nothing to do with Ergonocracy
It is critical to emphasise that Ergonotopy has nothing to do with Ergonocracy. Ergonotopy is an imaginary, utopian world, while Ergonocracy models are practical, objective and ready to be implemented in planned phases whenever citizens decide to do so.
As stated before, Ergonocracy has no specific final purpose. Although Ergonotopy may be understood as a logical, long term continuation of Ergonocracy trends, it is not its final purpose. Therefore, a practical approach to the implementation of Ergonotopy, is not presented, especially because it requires resources and technologies that may never be available, making it impossible to estimate how long it will take to reach this level.
Every philosophic system has its own utopian counterpoint and Ergonocracy is no exception.
If conditions for the implementation of Ergonocracy ever exist, the only recommendation is to let it develop, grow and mature over time, as one of Ergonocracy’s aims is to prepare political, social, economic and technological structures to help to set the conditions for Ergonotopy.
However, it is up to each people’s country to decide wht the future of Ergonocracy will be. This is what Ergonocracy is all about: allowing people to decide their own destinies instead of entrusting their leaders to do so.
9.2 What is Ergonotopy all about?
Characterisation
Ergonotopy is basically a utopian scenario describing a possible ideal future. It presents a set of utopian goals for humanity’s distant future, a time when everything that is bad about human life will have been eliminated.
The key idea is that in a world that will have become highly welcoming to human beings, we will all have present only the best in ourselves. There will no longer be a climate conducive to evil acts or intentions and therefore all rules and restrictions will have ceased to exist.
In order to this utopian scenario to occur, all barriers and negative constraints to human life will have to be eliminated, such as illness, ageing, death, etc. This will call for a complete change of the individual and society along with the development of a set of technical, technological, medical, economic, sociological and individual achievements resulting from bold and daring inventions. Thus, it is highly unlikely that Ergonotopy will ever come to pass.
Concept of social maturity vs. imposed behaviour
For Ergonotopy to occur, human beings will also have to reach a high level of maturity. For the overwhelming majority of people alive today, this level of maturity is almost impossible to achieve, as it involves a sustained and permanent type of maturity which can only sustain itself if individuals, in their daily lives and in their relationships with others, share feelings of peace, security, harmony, humanity and empathy with their peers. It is, thus, a concept of social maturity that requires the elimination of most characteristics that make us vile and mean, an extremely utopian notion.
Once again, this concept of social maturity is a return to our roots, to the concept of the tribe, to a time when tribal members were the only help and protection that an individual could count on in life - a time, therefore, when strong, solid relationships were forged.
In the systems within which we have been living for the past ten thousand years (post-tribal systems) we observe that our behaviour is usually restricted by a set of social constraints, which have the effect of changing our natural behavioural tendencies. Therefore, we are not able to be ourselves, as we are taught from an early age to behave in a predetermined manner and to use accepted conduct. This is probably why, if we observe our behaviour as a species, we could conclude that we behave much like children, engaging in tantrums, fantasies and irrational fears. Some of us even show a need to be reprimanded so that we will behave properly. Others feel the need to be followers and to trust someone as a leader, so we can feel protected and secure within the community.
Furthermore, we note that most people behave within society’s defined limits only because they are afraid:
It is in this sense that the concept of social maturity was mentioned: in reality, humans should behave correctly because it is the right thing to do and not because we are afraid of getting caught or being punished.
Our level of maturity is not a direct result of the amount of time we have been alive. In effect, it is something much deeper that some people naturally have, consisting of a mixture of self-control and a developed sense of identification with others. Some people call these humanitarian feelings; we prefer to call this phenomenon social maturity.
Indeed, Ergonotopy could only be implemented in a social context in which all citizens had this level of social maturity. They should strive to fulfil the objective of maintaining cordial relations with their peers and exhibit a high level of tolerance level towards the actions of others.
Elimination of all laws and judicial castrations
If what is described in the last paragraphs was possible to achieve, laws or rules should no longer be necessary, as citizens will have already achieved a high level of social maturity that could take the pressure off all relationships and minimise most conflicts. Therefore, citizens should tend to be naturally and instinctively responsible, caring and assertive.
Thus, judicial castrations should no longer be necessary, undoubtedly the most audacious and utopian goal in Ergonotopy. This would make the ultimate libertarian dream possible.
The ancient Golden Rule
In this context, human beings should put into practice the ancient Golden Rule115 or the ethic of reciprocity principle that states: “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you” . The idea should be to turn this concept into a natural, widespread deciding rule that, although never forced, should standardise behaviour and apply to all society from early childhood. In other words, this concept is much the same as the principle of Fraternity116, whose widespread application should be the next natural step after the application of the Golden Rule. All of these ideas are, of course, utopian concepts.
9.3 Barriers that limit human beings
It should be remembered, once again, that Ergonotopy envisions the elimination of all harm and all barriers that are inherent in human life and that contribute to making us unhappy. As previously mentioned, for this Ergonotopy utopian reality to be implemented, if all of these (economic) barriers are eliminated, should mean that a vast set of requirements will be met. These will come about as the result of bold and daring inventions that could help eradicate the following barriers that limit our lives:
Health and medical barriers: Human beings are fragile, vulnerable to all sorts of diseases and to the ageing process.
These barriers impinge on our evolution as human beings and are responsible for our low level of social maturity. It is believed that, once these barriers are destroyed, relationships between humans will eventually become harmonious and people will no longer feel the need to hate or envy other human beings.
Furthermore, if one had the opportunity to see his or her lifespan significantly increase and if the resources at their disposal become increasingly abundant, the trend will be for human beings to gradually achieve an individual and collective conscience - social maturity - that was much more highly developed, leading to a status quo where all acts of malice could gradually become rare. Only then will it be possible to envision the possibility of implementing Ergonotopy concepts. Ergonotopy describes a type of society where crimes should become unthinkable and where neither laws nor judges will be necessary.
9.4 Actions that should be taken in order to eliminate these barriers
In terms of individuals, it is essential to make human beings less aggressive, less frustrated, less insecure and more identifiable with their fellow human beings. As previously mentioned, the constraints that may be responsible for an individual’s anti-social behaviour are the so-called negative externalities, restrictions on individual freedoms, and especially the inequality factor, which can generate feelings of envy and injustice. Furthermore, it should also be considered as important the weaknesses resulting from the fear of pain, death and being left alone without support.
In order to eliminate all these different types of barriers, many technological developments at various levels are required. Below, we present some basic requirements: Education should function in a very different way, with a strong focus on each pupil’s creativity and self-confidence. On the other hand, pupils should be taught all practical information that is useful for everyday life.
Industry: The necessary incentives should be put into practice, so that all repetitive unskilled tasks could be performed by machines and robots.
In terms of Social organisation a few concepts will have to change:
Regarding this last point, w.r.t. “Work barriers”: It is important to emphasise that with the implementation of Ergonotopy, virtually all slave classes should be abolished so that no human being would be condemned to an undesirable life of “forced labour”.
This is what has happened to the overwhelming majority of people throughout history, because the sad reality is that for most human beings, their disadvantaged and undesirable work conditions have always led them to feel extremely dependent on their small salary, the only guarantee of survival for them and their families.
Thus, according to Ergonotopy, it is crucial to present a solution for those who are prepared to live a more humble life, but one that is free from work. In this case, they should adhere to the statute of “Mandrions” which will be described in detail later.
In order for this situation to be sustainable, the economic system will have to be extremely efficient and globally equipped with automated mechanisms.
Related to some of the previously referred to concepts of social maturity and the Golden Rule, there is another important principle - The Principle of Fraternity. As many people know, it refers to the motto of the French Revolution: “Freedom, Equality and Fraternity” which inspired many later regimes, including some representative democratic regimes. Admittedly, it has also inspired the concept of Ergonocracy.
Analysing each one of these three ideas, it is seen that freedom is probably the one that is most widely implemented, although from a philosophical point of view, it cannot be said that today’s regimes strive to take people’s freedom to its full potential.
In most representative democratic countries the principle of equality is only partially respected, in terms of equal rights, regardless of race, creed or gender. At least this is what can be read in constitutions and it is what politicians say. Economically and socially, it is detected that equality has never been either a concern or a purpose, and it is usually associated with an extreme left-wing agenda. However, this should be better appraised, as many recent authors have concluded that countries with a high level of inequality are more likely to experience difficult crises118.
With regard to the principle of fraternity, it is easy to see that it is the most subjective of the abovementioned requirements. It is extremely difficult to establish any kind of legislation around this issue. Of course, most countries' constitutions make a point of trying to defend and assist the neediest in their communities, but it must be agreed that this resembles charity more than fraternity. The term fraternity is much stronger and very rarely have there been concrete examples of this.
The truth is that fraternity is an individual voluntary feeling and this is why such a purpose has never been objectively defined. Most regimes and ideologies are directed towards society as a whole. In fact, feelings of fraternity are like those of brotherhood and are thus more altruistic. It is the action of seeing a perfect stranger in a dangerous situation and immediately deciding to help him or her. It is doing the right thing because people like helping their neighbours and not because they have any personal interest in doing so119. For anything like this to happen, each individual needs to really feel as if they identify with those around them.
For all these reasons, the principle of fraternity is one of the cornerstones of Ergonotopy. If there are no rules, then a strong notion of ethics among individuals is needed so that they can control their own behaviour.
9.6 Derivative effects of Ergonotopy
Ergonotopy could be considered an era of dignity in which most human beings would be aware of their own actions and willing to take full responsibility for them.
There should be no place for hatred or envy. People should feel that they had time to correct every mistake. Citizens should accept their new semi-eternal status, being aware that it will bring them additional responsibilities, including genuine respect for all living creatures. Society should no longer tolerate any forms of castration, violence, discrimination or torture of any living being on the planet.
In other words, greater freedom necessarily implies greater awareness as well as responsibility.
Throughout such a process, human beings will have to change significantly. It is difficult to foresee all the transformations that may occur. Let us examine a few possible scenarios:
Changes in terms of Eating Habits
It is likely that people with greater awareness and sensibility will tend to understand that what happens in slaughterhouses is neither dignifying for human beings nor the animals they eat.
Therefore, it is likely that more people will become vegetarians and thus avoid eating meat.
In fact, people are beginning to realise that livestock farming is a cruel business for all the living beings involved.
Although animals may be well treated, the truth is that they live outside their natural habitat and are kept alive only to grow and fatten up in order to be slaughtered. No living being should be allowed to capture and keep another living being against its will, as it is devoid of dignity for both predator and prey.
This should have additional advantages in terms of public health, for example. Furthermore, this way, we could be abandoning the dynamics of predator vs. prey. The consumption of meat stimulates our predatory instincts, which is something undesirable in a harmonious society. Besides that, at an unconscious level, people should be guaranteeing that in a possible reincarnation - nobody can prove that this does not exist - they should never become a victim of this type of killing.
However, according to Ergonotopy’s basic configuration, there should be no prohibitions, so the way to assure this goal, in the first phase, will be to heavily increase taxes on animal-based products.
To mitigate the effects of this restriction, and given the fact that during this period the necessary technology may be obtained, vegetal food that tastes and looks like meat could be produced. Another aspect to take into account will be the definition of each individual’s dietary intake in order to guarantee that people get their necessary supply of nutrients.
Changes in terms of human reproduction
In a world where most people could see their life expectancy increase two or three fold, this means that the world population could consequently increase at a much faster rate, creating a sustainability problem in terms of the planet’s resources. In a further chapter, two possible solutions to this problem will be analysed.
Changes in terms of money, being linked to energy
Throughout time, humans have evolved with regard to money and means of exchange. In a simplified way, it can say that there have been six distinct phases:
As was discussed in a previous chapter, with the implementation of Ergonocracy, it could be the start of a new phase - the Seventh Phase - where money may only exist in its digital form. However, during this stage, currency will not be indexed to any other currency or commodity. It should be much the same as it is now in the Sixth Phase, i.e. it will still depend on the citizen’s trust in the system, as money may not have any intrinsic value.
With Ergonotopy, another phase - the Eighth Phase - could be entered where money could continue to exist only in digital form, but should start to have intrinsic value, as monetary units will be directly linked to energy units.
It could be a return to our roots, as in the Second and Fifth Phases, where a currency unit corresponded to something that effectively had value in and of itself and such a unit was not a mere representation of value.
At this stage, it is interesting to note that although money could be virtual, or digital, its value on the other hand should be real, unlike the case of Phase Six, which is exactly the opposite, i.e. money is real (as in paper bills and coins), but its value is merely virtual.
It should be emphasised that this system could help improve people’s confidence and trust in the economy, as money will start having a real reserve value represented by energy units.
Thus, the amount of money should correlate to the amount of energy available. i.e. each unit of currency should represent a fraction of the total potential capacity of energy production in the Global Community during a given period of time, inherently representing a time unit.
As a consequence, the energy sector should have to be owned by the Global Community, this being the only exception, as all other economic sectors will be privately owned.
This model will only become feasible when certain technological means are at our disposal. The most important of these requirements is the ability to have at least one technologically cheap, efficient and clean means of producing electrical energy.
Matter printers and their implications in this model
The Ergonotopy model, explained in the previous chapter, may gain another dimension, which could be an extraordinary human accomplishment, if we can get hold of the long-promised technology that aims to produce final goods directly from energy123. This presents a radical technological revolution in the concept of matter printers124.
The concept is simple: just as a text file is created and printed, the idea is that a file could be created with the intended item and the matter printer could produce it.
And more importantly, if this process is ever feasible, the reverse is also true, of course. Thus, the basic and intuitive principle is this: money equals energy, which equals matter. Logically, matter (material goods) can be produced by spending either energy or money. Indeed, man can get things by spending energy (if he has the necessary technology) or just by spending money.
With this model, the Global Community will no longer have to raise taxes. It will eliminate the monopoly on the power to produce energy. This is not guaranteed, but with this model it could even be possible to eliminate all taxes, as all energy units (currency) should be allocated to financing all public budgets, although man does not yet have the means to determine if this will be enough to supply all monetary resources.
With any extraordinary need for financing, the Global Community should have two options:
The first solution will be better, as long as the monetary system is able to accommodate the extra pressure, in other words, if the economy is able to effectively use the extra energy produced so that the economic system could remain balanced in such a way that either the numerator or the denominator in this ratio could be increased in the same proportion. If this is not likely to occur, the solution will be to increase taxes, as the most important precaution is avoiding the usual consequences in terms of inflation, which usually happens when there is an unreasonable money supply surplus in the economy. Increasing taxes will be equivalent to using the existing monetary resources, without increasing the total monetary currency.
If this is seen in a more philosophical light, time is the only real scarce commodity that human beings have. The money that is spent, results from the time that is devoted to working in order to earn this money.
Thus, if time results in money and if money is used to purchase all necessary goods and services, which in turn result directly from energy (matter printers), one may conclude that all these are interconnected, namely: goods = time x energy = money.
Changes in terms of job tasks to be performed
Once at the Ergonotopy stage, human beings should only take on tasks that involve thought, strategy, creativity, management, art, sports and human relations. By then, all manual or repetitive low added value production tasks should have been abolished except for those related to traditional crafts of artistic value. Thus, it should be desirable for all basic, routine tasks to be done by machines in accordance with a highly intensive production automation economy model.
The impact of this principle on the services sector could lead to several interesting challenges leading to the creation of mechanisms that are destined to simulate human contact. For example, imagine a restaurant where, next to the tables, a human-like robot could take your order and automatically communicate it to the kitchen staff. Then, the dishes and beverages could be automatically delivered to the diners on a type of conveyor belt system, which could be linked to all the tables. When the food reached the intended table, the belt may stop moving and the “robot” may ask the diners to take their dishes.
Changes in terms of average working time
A purely idealistic approach recognises that human beings should not have to work more than six hours per day, ideally four. In fact, if eight hours are reserved for sleep, plus eight hours for work, this will only leave eight hours per day for doing all other necessary tasks, such as commuting to and from work, eating, washing and bathing, taking care of physiological needs, family obligations, grocery shopping, etc. Thus, very little time will be left for cultural activities, sports, leisure, and socialising, which are also essential and necessary for a well-balanced and harmonious lifestyle.
In today’s economic systems, it is impossible to implement this reduction in working hours because man lives in an era where productivity is key, and there is a highly competitive spirit among companies and countries.
In fact, some countries continue to massively export products and services by using an inexhaustible and cheap labour force that lacks basic rights. Regrettably, there is a sad tendency to decrease labour rights in western countries, apparently in order to help companies stay in business and to help pay off excessive national debts. In other words, the mistakes of a few greedy powerful decision-makers will have to be paid for by the vast majority of financially burdened citizens, which is nothing new.
In such a context, the tendency is to increase the average number of working hours instead of decreasing it, as should be the case.
It cannot really be said what may effectively happen if Ergonocracy (not Ergonotopy) were implemented. According to the Ergonocracy Economic mo