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The Sustainable Society
2003-10-10
The world is characterised by a very strong feeling of responsibility for community. Ethics has replaced religion. The key is human rights and the code words are: “freedom - equality - brotherhood”. What does our world look like in ten years, when the spiritual dimension has developed to practical proposals for humanistic societies?
The sustainable society is founded on ideals. We have a strong sense of community. Fellowship and solidarity with the weak in society has replaced worship of god. We build on the philosophy of enlightenment instead of religious ideas. The ideals about a welfare society based on solidarity have been developed. Society builds strongly on the idea of solidarity with the weakest. Solidarity and responsibility are the words from which we define political goals. We have accomplished a lot since the year of 2002. The welfare society is extended and we pay one percent of gross national production to development aid with a preference of educational projects where we try to pass on our ideals about democracy and solidarity to the third world. We speak a great deal on human rights. Human rights are nearly considered sacred. We focus on everybody’s right to the same goods. Everybody have the right to work, the right to housing, the right to have children, etc. We have a society of rights where the state insures everyone the right to live a good life.
We have problems with the minorities who do not wish to be a part of the welfare society. It is very difficult to find out what to do about that. The newspapers write a lot about a man insisted on his willing to take responsibility for his own family. He is unemployed, but refuses to accept good offers providing him with social housing. He insists on continuing to live in an old summer house without water and electricity facilities. He says that he belongs home with his children. But the welfare society will not allow the children to grow up under such conditions. The children were taken away and placed in a foster family. The man got public funding for a legal process and got the best legal representation because the lawyer sees that his case as very important. Some philosophers state that we have come to a world of “ tyranny of good intentions” where the person who does not show the necessary public sense will be stripped from his right to choose for himself. They claim that the next "good" thing will be forced treatment for lack public sense.
The majority just the best for all - and equal opportunities for all.
The group who worked with this scenario did not think it was likely at all. They based their rebuttal of the scenario on their perception that the world already is so extremely individualistic that it is impossible to see how it would take direction where communality becomes emphasised as a virtue.
In the plenary discussion the majority of participants from the other groups disagreed with this view, and thus it was decided to prepare this scenario too.
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