A perfect society would be one where one does not need to ask for comfort, but gets comforted. People sense it. they see your pain, and rush to help. In this society people would be sensitive to the needs of others as they are of their own. Everyone shares and has enough prosperity to look after themselves. The differences in economic status remains, but only, as an aspect of society so that people have a chance to look after and serve each other.
Why do humans form societies in the first place ?
Only us humans have the ability to think of the other, and we do not want to live in the competitive spirit like animals do. We do not want to apply "Survival of the Fittest" to ourselves or to anyone else. This is primarily why we have governments and authorities, to help those in need, to act non profitably, so that every member of the society can have a happy life, a prosperous and joyous life.
On the other hand, societies today are increasingly becoming focused on the Self - self greed, self possession, self wealth, self benefit. There is only one thing missing - Self satisfaction. That is because, we are only pleasing our body and mind, but going against the soul, undermining it every moment. We choose jobs for money, we choose relationships seeing external beauty and charisma, we choose people based on marketing skills rather than inner qualities of goodness. No matter how much one has today, it never seems enough, so they try to grab more and more and even try to snatch what others have.
Animals form groups, but cannot form societies, because they live in the moment of present fear. On the other hand humans can imagine fear.
Animals therefore get satiated with little. When they're hungry, they eat, when they're thirsty, they drink, and when there is a drought, they migrate or die. Humans, on the other hand, imagine the possibilities of drought in the future. This is the imaginary fear I'm talking about. This gives rise to one habbit - to save / to store, which gives the rise to storing money and valuables as well. Animals never save for days to come. The lion fights with the hyenas to eat, and once full leaves the rest for the hyenas. The lion doesn't have the capacity to think that if he saves the remaining meat, he won't have to hunt another day. But we humans can sense that, which is why we create societies and systems - to save.
Animals are innocent, they don't have greed, materialism, etc. They have to struggle for each meal. Humans in general do feel bad about struggling with another human or animal for food. We have the immense capacity to give and share. But even after having that capacity and understanding of sharing, when we don't share, it makes us worse than animals. Because then we aren't willing to share for survival like animals, but because of greed. That leads a person to accumulate more and more and more... more than what they need to possibly consume in most cases.
To avoid this, societies form cultures and teachings.
Culture of a society, is basically norms that we imply first on ourselves, then our family / home, kids, our relatives, our neighborhood, and so on. These norms are there to help us survive in our society that we have formed. That's why each society has its own cultures. They are initiated with one thing in mind, to save, to share, to secure, and be prosperous and happy.
Now whether they are aimed at that or not, remains to be seen.
Clearly, a lot of people today want more and more to be stored and secured around them, but aren't willing to share, even on a personal level. Could it be a reason why first our relations, and thus our societies are falling apart? People are unhappy, angry, unfaithful, unwilling, anti-social these days.
The Three Cases :
Let's take an example : Imagine that you have a beautiful car. You have employed a chauffeur / driver to take you around. You are quite a busy man and thus you ask your driver to do a lot of tasks like pick up your kid from school, run errands, do paperwork and other general running around. You know that your car is literally with your driver the whole day, and you can't keep a track of how much fuel he uses or maybe he wastes fuel in some ways. Now you know that the driver is a good person but is careless. Now there are many situations that might follow as a result in different types of societies:
1. A society with dying goodness :
You might start to keep a check on the fuel reading and try to catch him red handed. The driver scorns at your miserliness and revolts by wasting even more fuel and finding excuses to fool you. You might fire him when it gets out of hand. He might break your windshield or abuse.
2. A society where some people are good :
You know that the driver is over spending some of your fuel, but you can afford it, so you let it be. You know that the driver is otherwise a good man, runs around all day for you, so you don't wanna disturb the faithful bond. The driver respects you utterly, but keeps misusing the freedom.
3. A Perfect Society :
You don't wanna disturb the relation because he is a faithful & hard working driver, maybe a little careless, but that's okay. Even the driver realizes after a point that it is his "Dharma" (duty) to take care of his employer's belongings, as he is the one who provides for the driver. Thus the driver becomes careful to not spend too much fuel. The trust between the two of you only grows. You look after him, and he looks after you. Forgiveness is forefront. Appreciation of values rather than material wealth in such a society is common.
Can Laws make a good society ?
Laws are ideally always made to govern the misuse, misconduct, violation, etc of an entity (person or animal) or group of entities by another entity or group of entities through any means.
The point to be noted is that laws need to come into existence only when something wrong is being done. So it needs to be presumed that wrong doing has already crept into the society.
Yes laws definitely help to stop the wrong doing / ills, but they most of the times, they are not made understanding the root of the problem. That's because laws are based on a punishment module, not on an educative module. For example, you can put a person in jail & fine him for domestic violence, even send him force fully into counselling, but no law takes measures to correct that behavior from where it starts.
This is where education plays its part. In ancient India, under the "Gurukul" system, children were taught the values of life, harmony and respect, rather than books on science and literature, in the initial years. The Guru(teacher) inculcated these values through individual experiences of each child, much in the way grandparents and parents would teach their own kid.
In modern education systems, we have made moral science into a subject and do not emphasize that it is the only factor that actually governs our lives and societies till the end of times. It is about how we think of and deal with people.
In the Vedic culture, till about the end of teenage years, the student only learnt good moral values like - Why should one donate and give, the keys to happiness, how to judge what path to take etc. It was only after that the student became confident and decided on which career path to follow. You see, career was only a part of life and not the whole life itself. There were universities for medicine, architecture, literature, astronomy, engineering, agriculture, chemical sciences, etc. But schools were generally for basic core values.
The point is that in the growth years, the student isn't taught competition, but rather taught how to respect others, build values, and so whatever career path they chose later on, they were able to do things for the society with harmony rather than being materialistic all the time.
This in turn ensured the prosperity of everyone. Today, wealth and resources are largely, and quite stupidly I would say, accumulated in only a few hands. It is insane, how these people would behave clinging on to their wealth. And worse is that we have made these people our role models (the industrialists and businessmen who have earned a lot of money). No wonder every individual today wants to walk that path. They want to focus on the result of work(money and success) rather than the work itself. So obviously, they will chose greedy ways, and those who still won't be able to earn much (there'll always be such people in society) will take their frustration & anger out through unnecessary violence and similar bad habits.
What kind of a society do we want ?
There is some wisdom in ancient texts. People of Indian subcontinent were most spiritual, most prosperous, and most progressive for a large part of the history that we know of. It is only the degradation (like caste system and greed) brought in by elements of societies that snowballed into foreigners taking over and being able to deceive these people, and rob them of their natural prosperity.
Under the foreign rule, the ancient value based education system was banned, by law. The sustainable nature of industry and agriculture were destroyed, by uncaring atitude of the new ruling government. The ecosystem was tormented (ponds and lakes dried leading to famines and death) by policy making. People were made homeless by grabbing land under Law. This has happened in each and every culture across the world.
So think,
Will making laws help make a perfect society, when the laws are being influenced by the most powerful and greedy themselves. I feel, we need to ignore those and focus on our own kids and neighborhoods. For example, let the government build schools and define examination, but we need to concentrate on what real education our children are getting. Are we educating to make children run after money and success, or are we educating them so that they can love and share and live life peacefully and happily, even in difficult times.
Keep Thinking
OMCULTR
