Imagine

With one of the most painful years in memory behind us, and an upcoming year that seems certain to be worse, it’s time to imagine a better world:

• Imagine if people were responsible, self-directed adults who thought for themselves rather than followers who abdicate their responsibilities by worshiping power-grubbing sociopaths and their sacred texts (both religious and political).
• Imagine if religious and political true believers had a live-and-let-live attitude rather than believing that they have the right, or even the duty, to impose their beliefs on others.
• Imagine if people knew how to reason logically and allowed evidence to determine their conclusions rather than engaging in wishful thinking while ignoring inconvenient facts.
• Imagine a world in which there wasn’t an inverse relationship between the usefulness of work and pay for it, a world in which those who do the dirtiest, most necessary work — farm workers, childcare workers, garbage collectors — were the highest paid, and parasitic hedge fund managers, day traders, and lobbyists weren’t paid at all.
• Imagine if people wanted to hear original music or see original artwork rather than hearing or seeing things they’ve heard or seen ten thousand times before.
• Imagine a world in which justice wasn’t a term of vicious mockery (as in “equal justice under the law”).
• Imagine a world in which social isolation wasn’t the norm, in which architecture, housing design and patterns, the transportation system, and the economic system reduced social isolation rather than fostered it.
• Imagine if the Ten Commandments prohibited slavery, torture, and subjugation of women rather than swearing, worshiping graven images, and thought-crime (coveting thy neighbor’s wife or ox).
• Imagine if no one thought they were better than other people simply because they’re “the chosen,” “the elect,” “God’s people.”
• Imagine a world in which some people didn’t make money by locking other people in cages.
• Imagine if ethical conduct in business didn’t put you at a competitive disadvantage.
• Imagine a society based on cooperation, voluntary association, and mutual aid rather than coercion, economic inequality, economic insecurity, and frantic accumulation of material goods (at any cost — to others).
• Imagine an economic system that didn’t provide constant temptation to lie to and to cheat others in the pursuit of profit.
• Imagine if the Catholic, Mormon, and other churches prohibited their members from breeding like rabbits rather than commanding them to worsen the population problem.
• Imagine if the churches emphasized the Golden Rule rather than punishment of those who transgress their “moral” dictates.
• Imagine if the churches’ concept of morality wasn’t focused on controlling the private sex lives of consenting adults  and instead focused on reducing harm to others.
• Imagine if the Democratic Party was actually democratic.
• Imagine if Donald Trump was a compassionate, ethical human being.
• Imagine (and I know this is a stretch) that America really was the land of the free.