In a good world we try to be a bit, or a lot, more like the Ekho. Actually we are already like him, simulating via our bodies and imagination what it is like to be others. So we really only need a small push 😊
Does this mean we strive for positive valence, or for tranquility? I don't know, but if I had to guess, it would be tranquility 🕊️✌🏼.
Strange as it may sound, almost no one dreams, initiates, or maps out possibilities for a good world for all beings. A world with significantly less suffering at the macro, bird’s-eye level. Visions stop at "humanity", animals within human civilization, all biological beings, or some other discrimination. If we don’t dare to dream of a world of well-being for all sentient beings, it doesn’t stand a chance. Even the Buddha and his followers falls into this; They may speak of the liberation of all living beings, but it remains an abstract notion, not a vision for which anyone is carving a direct path. What is the path? practical, realistic, feasable and effective, to improve the lives of all beings? Effective altruism is almost the only movement I know that is really working on this systematically.
I think the animal rights movement lacks vision and visionaries, especially for creating a good world that includes wild animals.
We need to think about alignment of most powerful beings, moral agents, on the planet: human alignment, AI alignment, future ASI alignment, god alignment. God alignment? .
Tikon Olam, the Jewish proverb which means "healing the world", is there because the world is broken. If the world is broken, the root is broken; laws of physics, nature, "god", evolution, whatever you call it, the cause for global trends, the drift of big history, is not ethical, since it not not moving towards improving experiences. In other words, we need to align god. If god is aligned, everything else follows. That sounds easy to do...
How do we create a world which is a game of proliferating better experiences, not replicating memes with no regard for what that meme does to experience? I have no idea, but at least it is worth having this idea in mind, since if we don't dare to dream of a truly good big history trend, how can it ever be? If we don't invasion, have imaginary scenarios of a truly good world, how can it ever be? and practically, we can find ways to workaround the big dream, get closer to it from this aspect or another.
For example, we can also pursue alignment at less fundamental levels, not the laws of physics but global mechanisms, and this is already being done to an extent. God alignment can give us a new lens to look through. Maybe I am wrong, it is just an intuition I have, I have not through this through thoroughly.
Maybe it is impossible to align the world, it seems likely to me that this is the case, but our understanding is extremely limited. We should at least dream about it, and I have not found even one example of such a dream. A fiction book, a tale, something?
The area of losing the pedestal of the most intelligent species to AI (and maybe also the most powerful) demands humanity entering a third evolution. From out early evolution of survival, to the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure, to stewardship: compassion and activism.
From all the civilizations I came across in my journeys, I know there is another way for a species that gained power far beyond any other, to exist. That is, to co-exist with the rest of sentientity. Seeing yourself as the keepers of the garden will make your whole education, religion, science, economy, culture and spirituality (in Echo's language it is called selfness or momentuality) to change, and consequently behavior and technology will shift too.
Create a compassionate-based civilization, a welfare state to all the feeling ones, while looking boldly inside and outside. Your beliefs, language and social structures will be barriers for such a new civilization to materialize. Current civilization is based on killing: the place where you dwell is build on a graveyard, you way of getting around from place to place is by violence. You can't imagine a different way to live and die.
Nevertheless, I think planet earth can become abundant with joy and scarce with pain and fear. For that to happen, human animals must release themselves from the mother of all discriminations. There is a way, here and now, to do good.
