Can We Really Achieve To Have An Ideal Society?

Essay #57

Topic 3

“Socrates: The ideal society we have described can never grow into reality or see the light
of the day, and there will be no end to the troubles if state, or indeed of humanity itself, till
philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really
and truly become philosophers” –Plato, The Republic

Why Plato said that we will never be able to have an ideal society? To truly understand
this question we have to go deeper in the true behavior of the human being, that’s
because the manners and ways of living may have changed in throughout the past
centuries. But in the real nature of the mankind, it’s clear that there will always be people
that don’t care for one another and just act in a selfish way. And that’s the major
problematic in any society at any time in history. There have always been those who truly
seek a great amount of wealth and power, and that’s why they tend say that the objective
always justifies the ways of acting. If that statement is valid, anyone who thinks they have
a good reason can do anything even cruel and acts of selfishness just to overcome any
situation that it’s between them and their own goals without caring for anyone or anything
that is in between.

Throughout the history there have been some examples of people that make Plato still be
right about his statement in The Republic. For example Hitler, he wanted to unify Germany
and be the most overpowered country en the entire world, also he believe that the only
way of achieving his goal was by only having a pure raze, so then he decided to take out
the Jews. That caused a massive genocide and indirectly pushed away the ideal society.
But, what’s the ideal society? To answer this simple but yet deep question we have to go
further and really understand the needs of the entire population, so then we can generalize
what are the standards of an “ideal society”.

To fully understand the pillars of the so called “ideal society”, we have to make sure we
know three things. What are the basic needs of the people? What things tend to make the
people to be happier? How much a good ruler does impacts the ways of living of the
people? So, the basic needs of a community relay mostly on how the country develops in
the economic way. So they can fulfill the needs of a good alimentation, having access to
standard education and being able to then, get a job and completing a cycle of having a
family, giving them, food, shelter and education. If this was a viable way of living in at least
an entire country, then there would be no necessity to be violent, or having crime, because
every person would have all their needs covered.
But to fully achieve the “ideal society”, there’s the need to satisfy all the pillars. So then, if
there are no people with needs to supply, we can go further and investigate the impact of a
good ruler and a bad ruler in the ways of behaving and living of the society. Plato stated
that we wouldn’t have an “ideal society” until we truly had philosophers as rulers, and we
can analyze that, the statement is way deeper that it seems and that’s because nowadays
people don’t understand the how a philosopher can develop an excellent leadership
because of his ability of questioning how and why the mechanisms of the society works.
Normally a bad ruler won’t question anything, and he/she won’t care for the people basic
needs. He/she will only care for the amount of wealth they are receiving while the entire
community sinks down.

On the other hand, a good ruler can influence in a good way the ways of living and
development of a society, that’s because he/she will not seek their own wealth, without
first, helping his/her people to achieve and satisfy their necessities. If a good ruler also
questions if he/she is making decisions that will benefit the entire population or not, and
become philosophers that seek to fully understand the functionality of the society, they can
then apply any philosophical method to their ruling status and then overcome any problem
they can face. Once a society has a good ruler and they can auto satisfy their needs and
necessities, we can move further the last pillar of an ideal society. What are the true things
that satisfy and make the people happy?

What facts do we know about happiness? For example in 2014 Costa Rica was awarded
for being the happiest country in the world but in reality, what do we know? We know little
about happiness, and that’s because it’s really subjective to state if a person is happy or
not. But based on the standards that we nowadays have, happiness is all about
succeeding in our goals and dreams. Also it has been proved that when a person seeks
the happiness for someone else, they tend to feel happier than before. So making charity,
being around people that feel happy and achieving goals are ways people can be happier.
But this seems quite simple, so why can’t everyone be happy at the same time? Well
there’s one thing that will always interfere in the way to success and happiness. And that’s
the human nature, because everyone at some point in their lives have felt any kind of
jealousy or any other sort of dislike for other people’s success.
It’s not our fault but it resides in the real nature of the mankind. Because since the
beginning of structured communities there has always been a sense of competition and
rivalry when someone feels oppressed, attacked or intimidated by anyone else. That is the
main reason we, as a group of people can never be happy as a whole. Whenever
someone else seems to be happier, or more successful than us, we tend to be intimidated
and never focus on our own goals and reality. That’s also an issue that modern society
inculcates us. “You have to compare to others reality and happiness to conclude if you are
happy or not”. The media pollutes our minds so we think that we don’t have any happiness
at all. And that’s the major problematic we face to overcome the necessities and become
happier, and as a whole group of persons, become a society, and then an ideal society.

The problem is that perfect rulers, doesn’t exist. So only people who truly seek for political
power will achieve it, because people who only want help each other and satisfy an entire
society needs, will not be selfish and then will not acquire the power they need to impact
the world in the way it’s necessary to be. The problem is that we can’t satisfy every human
necessity in a community. There is corruption; there will always be people with more
influence than others. There are people that do not want to work and improve at any way
the society and place where they live. There will always be people who want the easy
manner of achieving their goals, justifying their actions by saying that they are necessary
to conquer their plans. There will always be a young and reckless group of people that are
opposed to the change, opposed to the improvement and will slow the construction of an
ideal society.

The problem is that when a good philosopher, thinker, leader or a simple person that has
the complete will of doing the right change and movements to improve the society, they
are oppressed until they can’t fight anymore, and we as humans only recognize an error
until it’s too late. We don’t encourage ourselves to make the right decision that will benefit
everyone. We tend to act in a selfish manner and only seek our own wealth and stability,
without thinking if our actions could damage another person’s happiness and wealth. That
selfish way of acting is what stops any step we have taken in the search of an ideal
society. We can then assure that everyone blames the government or any other sort or
rulers and leaders, but people never really understand is that the real problematic is not in
our leaders, but in the decisions that we, as a group of uneducated people tend to make
while we are blinded by the false promises this selfish people make, just to conquer the
power and benefit without limits.
Only then we can conclude that all the problems mentioned above, can only indicate that
the real issue with not achieving an ideal society, only reside in us, the humans, we as a
raze could never see the light of a perfect and utopic society just because our nature will
oppose to anything similar to that dream. And everything will tear apart by the simple fact
that we aren’t able to grab the necessary responsibilities to make that ideal society true.
As a democracy, a word that comes from the Greek: Demos (that means power) and
Cracy (that means people or community). We aren’t able to make decisions that benefit all
of us. Every action that we nowadays take, affects our imminent future and will either, take
us closer to our goal of achieving an ideal society of will sink us down and destroy our
hopes and dreams of a flawless world.

As we go further we can realize that the problem isn’t in the rulers and people who leads
us, is in the way we want to make things perfect. It’s something that is more than a dream,
it’s impossible, but we can assure something and as Immanuel Kant said: “We see the
things, not as they are, but as how we are.” So this can lead us to believe that we can
already be living in an ideal society because there is not an absolute truth for everything.
So as we start to visualize ourselves in an utopic world and we do not let the fears and bad
actions of others to interrupt our own happiness we can then, achieve our ideal society,
adapting it to the real world, so we can develop goodness around us, and if people around
us, start to think in the same way, we can accomplish a little part of an ideal society, but
still have achieved a major goal, that has been wanted since the beginning of the
structured communities.

The ideal society will not depend on the leaders then, or won’t depend on how good at
philosophy they are. It will depend exclusively on how we, as a group of self-aware
consciousness people, take the best of relative truth we experience each day, and transmit
positive actions to our surroundings, disposing all the selfishness thoughts that will only
affect other people perception of happiness, leading them to not being able to live in an
ideal society. Concluding, there will always be a bunch of leaders and people who seek to
acquire power, it could be for their own benefit or looking to improve the world. But we
never have to rely on how one person thinks to let us guide, we have to be sure that the
person who guides us, thinks like us, and looks for the benefit of the people. Also if we do
not agree with someone else’s opinion, it’s worthless to discuss and cause a problem. If
we follow these easy steps we can definitely achieve our own and complex ideal society.

Always remembering to question why and how everything works, and being able to
analyze the things by who you are and not by what they are meant to be. This is how we
can succeed to have an ideal society in our own relative truth, because there will never be
an absolute truth.