If I Ruled The World
What would atheists do if they were omnipotent like God? Would they prevent natural calamities and all the bad things in the world?
Suppose I, as an omnipotent being, decided to eliminate all natural disasters, all crime, all diseases, all war.
Great! Now everyone can live happily to over 100 years old without any suffering. But now there’s a problem. The population rapidly passes 8 billion, then 10 billion, then 15 billion, and it’s still rising. Now there isn’t enough food to feed everyone and people are starting to die off from starvation.
I have a few options here.
- I could make the earth bigger, thus providing more resources. But this will only delay the problem and the population will continue to grow until again, it outstrips the resources of this bigger planet.
- I give them the technology to build spaceships and reach other planets to colonise. But again, we’ll run into the same problem when all other available life-sustaining planets are full. And on top of that, the human race has now wiped out every other sentinent species in the known universe.
- I change human biology so that they no longer need food or water to survive. So now there’s no need to preserve agricultural land any more, and the entire Earth is covered with concrete cities. I’d better make it so they don’t need oxygen either, because that won’t last too long with no plants. And now the human race has wiped out every other living species on Earth.
- Or I could just make everyone infertile. No babies, no population growth.
None of these options are feasible, so I look at the problem from the other side. How can I control population without causing suffering?
I don’t want to bring back war or diseases because these will inevitably cause suffering. But I need to ensure that people die of something, and that the birth rate never outstrips the death rate.
So here’s my solution, in two parts. First, all women will be fertile only at the moment of their choosing, and will be capable of up to three births, but no more. I’d make it two, but that would assume that every woman has two children; by allowing for three, it covers the shortfall from others who only want one, or none at all. There will be no unwanted births; if she doesn’t want a baby, none will be conceived. (Sorry, guys, you don’t get a say in this, unless you want me to make you able to get pregnant too).
Second, everyone dies on the day of their one hundredth birthday. Not a day before and not a day after. And they will remain perfectly fit and healthy until the last day, when they finally fall peacefully asleep and never wake. The transition to this fixed lifespan will be difficult and there will be some inevitable suffering while people get used to the idea, but after a generation or so, it will become part of world culture; everyone will be able to prepare for this inevitable day of death, there will be no sudden surprises.
There’s one more thing I need to do. By making the planet perfect, with exactly the amount of resources required to sustain the population, I can ensure that everyone has access to all that they need. Food, water, space to live, etc. However, greed means that without control, these resources would fall into the hands of those in power, leaving the majority of the population in poverty, thus causing more suffering.
So I will need to permanently eliminate all hate, greed, selfishness and power-seeking from human thought. People will simply not have any concept of these things. The natural state of being will be to share all that you have with everyone else. This will have several significant effects.
- There’s no longer any such thing as the “third world”. All areas of Earth will be as fertile and resource-rich as everywhere else. This will raise the quality of life in countries that are currently poorer, to the level of the West.
- No more need for money. Because everyone else will give you everything that you need, there will no longer be any need to buy anything. The concepts of wealth and poverty will disappear. The role of government will be solely to ensure equal distribution of resources.
- There will still need to be jobs, because infrastructure still needs to be maintained, there will still be manufacturing, services and entertainment. People will do these jobs voluntarily; even the unpleasant ones, because their heightened sense of altruism will make even the most unpleasant job much more psychologically rewarding.
- Many jobs will disappear; there will be no need for police, military, prisons, emergency services, doctors, lawyers, insurance etc, because there is no crime, war, accidents, illness or disasters. So there will be more people doing fewer jobs for less time per week, more jobs relating to the arts and to leisure pastimes because people have more free time to spend.
- More free time and no urgent need to earn money will lead to more people continuing in further education for a longer period of time. People will therefore be better-educated and over time, intelligence will increase. Belief in crackpot conspiracy theories will disappear.
- Racism, sexism, homophobia, and all other forms of bigotry and prejudice will disappear. Religions may still exist but they will revert back to how they were intended to be in the first place; preaching love for all. Buddhism may disappear altogether because suffering has been eliminated. There will be no hate or conflict between different religions.
By this time, people should be fairly self-sufficient in continuing this new existence without suffering, so I’ll be able to sit back and relax, with no further role to play besides ensuring that planetary resources are replenished as and when required.
(Files this away in “story ideas” folder).