What is it? How close are we? What needs to be done to get there?
The purpose of life for most everyone would be seeking happiness and I think the same goes for all of society. Believe it or not, I think we're closer to utopia than people realize.
Utopia is the ideal, perfect society of the future that we all strive for, but what makes up a Utopian society? I think it would comprise of these few things: (1)complete and total freedom, (2)no economy, (3)no crime, (4)no discrimination, and (5)no countries (world 'government'). {(6)Suggestions?}
(1)Complete freedom would include the ability to do literally anything you wanted, even kill a person. *Gasp* "How is that Utopian?" you might be asking yourself. Well, I believe with future cloning technology and whatever other techniques we may develop that I couldn't possibly imagine, murder wouldn't be an issue...or at least death wouldn't. You could be reborn exactly how you were before you died. This could be done by the use of 'cyberbrains' (yourself in the body and mind of a robot), but perhaps there are biological ways of accomplishing this as well.
(2)No economy would mean everything you might ever want is free. No more money and no more buying and selling. I think with 3d printing tech we can eventually print out whatever we want whether it be, a chair, food, a car, another 3d printer, or anything. The only thing limiting this is the amount of matter we have available, but the Earth is a big place and it's very small compared to just about everything else in the universe.
(3)No crime seems like it might contradict complete freedom. If you have the freedom to kill, rape, and steal, then how do you stop crime? The trick would be to make criminal behavior no longer a crime or to fix everyone's psychology in some way so that criminal tendencies don't exist. This seems a bit inhumane, though, to alter the way people think. However, what's the alternative? Put the person in jail for the rest of their life where they'll live with other disturbed individuals, or take them to a psychologist to permanently fix whatever is wrong and send them back into the real world? Technology and advances in psychology should allow us to literally wipe out extreme behavior (and I don't mean wipe your very humanity away or whatever makes you who you are as an individual). The other suggestion I made, "make criminal behavior no longer a crime" is in reference to above when I stated we could clone someone if they were killed, so murder wouldn't even be a crime anymore.
(4)No discrimination falls under the same category as no crime. Either the psychology of discriminatory people will need to be changed or everyone in society will evolve over time to be more acceptable towards all people, much the way our morality has evolved.
(5)No countries would lie somewhat in the complete freedom and no discrimination area as well. The world could not be separated because this would contradict the no discrimination aspect. The government system wouldn't be like anything today because we would literally have no or very few issues to solve. There wouldn't be a need for politics in a place where nothing needs to be debated.
So, you must be wondering now why I think we're closer to Utopia than most people probably think. Well, mostly due to technology and machines, we don't hardly have to do any farming, mining, or anything by our own backbreaking work anymore. With continuously more powerful computing power each year, eventually we'll have reliable robotics. 3D Printing isn't a very difficult technology, either. So, I think within my lifetime, maybe when I'm 80 or something, we may just reach a point where Utopia is a real possibility.
P.S. I realize there may be a hell of a lot more involved in creating a Utopian society, but the majority of issues can be solved by advances in technology.
