Utopian Realism

Meet Felix.

Felix works a job as a police officer.

He pays his taxes, enforces the law and watches the evening news every night.

He is really good at his job and hands out many fines each day in an effort to impress his boss.

He is hoping for a promotion so he can earn more money and support his family better.

Every time he has to vote for a new politician to tell him what he can and can’t do, he’s first to line up for the polling booths.

Felix eats out a lot at fast food restaurants, drinks alcohol and smokes cigarettes.

He takes a lot of medication as he has been diagnosed with many “hereditary” conditions.

He would be considered over weight and not the pinnacle of health.

His doctor doesn't know why his anti depression medication hasn't been working so well recently so suggests an increase of the dose.

A friend sends him the 10 step process to read over.

He takes it seriously as he has been feeling unhappy for a while and slowly begins to see the potential in the idea of Utopia.

After reading the introduction of what is Utopia, he begins to question the things he always believed to be true.

He realises that he hasn’t been in control of his life and he wants to start steering his own ship.

Step 1

He starts with step 1 and commits to work on himself because he believes that there is more to life and he deserves better.

He figures that he can’t keep taking medication to make him happy forever and he needs to do something about it.

After spending some time thinking about step 1 and what he really cares about, he comes to the conclusion that he genuinely cares about the well being of others.

Giving people fines all the time isn't helpful and he realises it’s part of the reason he started taking medication for his depression in the first place.

Step 2

When he fully soaks in step 2 about courage and awareness, he makes the decision to be brave and start considering things he normally would have laughed at and brushed away as ‘crazy conspiracy theories’.

He admits to himself that he used to laugh at those things not because they were funny, but because he was afraid they were true.

He congratulates himself because it took a great deal of courage to accept this.

Step 3 

Once the information in step 3 about sovereignty and responsibility had settled down, he couldn't look at government the same ever again.

He also realised that the way he had been treating people he was meant to serve and protect was just totally wrong.

He made the decision to own his actions and to start treating people better.

He stopped calling his boss ‘boss’ and started calling them their actual name.

He started talking to people instead of handing them fines and figured he had helped more people over the past weeks then had in the past years.

Step 4

By the time he comprehended step 4, the lore of morality and rights, he knew he couldn't continue being a police officer without there being a conflict of interest with who he was and the man he now wanted to be.

It was just too difficult to do the right thing when the organisation he worked for preferred to punish people rather than educate them.

He went out of his way to apologise to many people he now recognised were his victims.

Their acceptance of his apologies eased the huge guilt he now felt.

Step 5

Digging deep into himself was hard.

It brought up a lot of past history for why he did the things he did today.

He vowed to change.

He began to exercise and to eat healthier food.

He started to speak to a counsellor and opened up to his friends about his traumatic childhood.

He even told his doctor he was ready to come off his medications.

His doctor wasn’t happy about this as he was getting a big commission for all the drugs he was prescribing, so Felix found a new doctor who focused on natural health.

He couldn't believe how effective the results were.

He even stopped drinking and quit smoking.

Step 6

When he started sharing his new found ideas, he knew he had formally reached step 6.

He was making new friends and going to meetings about a new Utopian world.

He had started working as a martial arts instructor and was feeling a lot more satisfaction from his work now then when he was a police officer.

He taught his students that you only use physical violence in self defence and never as an aggressor against peaceful people.

He felt he had a lot to make up for all his time in the police force.

Step 7

Felix was excited about step 7.

When the freedom credit launched, he couldn't help but fill his account with referral credits.

He was sharing the idea like wildfire.

He now owned the martial arts studio and was accepting freedom credits from all his students. His students looked up to him as an honorable man to be like.

Half the town was now using freedom credits, making it easy to get food, car parts, hire labour and many other things he needed.

When the national elections came round, he decided to skip it this year and instead went to a community meeting to discuss how they could implement a range of new local facilities that were built by volunteers and funded by donations.

Step 8

With step 8, Felix really started to shine.

He already knew about voluntarism from the community meetings he was attending every week, but he wanted to offer more.

He proposed an idea to form the community protectors, a group of people dedicated to the well being and safety of everyone.

He volunteered to train them weekly in a form of martial arts where you could contain an aggressive opponent with as little damage as possible.

Many members of the police force had followed his lead and quit their jobs.

They too were fed up with being cash collectors for greedy and corrupt politicians.

A few of them even volunteered for the community protectors.

They found the new organisation much more aligned with their attitudes of wanting to maintain the peace and to protect the innocent.

Step 9 

Step 9 had changed Felix and the community.

Decentralisation suited Frocksville.

Most of the town was now using the freedom credit.

The police station was empty, yet the community protectors were everywhere.

The hospitals and doctors studios were quiet, yet the natural health practitioners worked overtime.

The old council based upon politics and theft had fallen apart as a new community council replaced it.

None of the town members paid taxes to the ruling class anymore.

They managed everything in their community through real democracy, volunteers and donations.

All the big corporations were forced to close down as they went out of business and were replaced by small local business’s.

The towns people had started to co-ordinate projects with neighbouring communities who had also become voluntary towns.

Everyone was better off financially and happier than they had ever been.

A real community spirit was in the air of Frocksville.

Step 10

Frocksville had attracted many new people into the town.

They were all keen to get started on step 10, replacing their need for money with intelligent technical designs.

Engineers, scientists and inventors got to work and created amazing machines to automate the food cycle for all the towns people.

All food was now offered free as the majority of the work was handled by machines and the rest was taken care of by volunteers.

Step by step, each area of production and service that could be handled by a machine, was.

The people of frocksville quit doing jobs that they were only doing for money and began to contribute to the town by sharing their passions.

Cleaners became personal trainers.

Truck drivers became camping guides.

Accountants became race car instructors.

Lawyers became swimming coaches.

Retail employees became artists.

Fast food workers became movie directors.

Infantry became construction engineers.

Whenever a sector of labour was replaced by technical automation, that product or service became free for the towns people and any passing visitors.

They had more than enough to share.

The community gradually became less reliant on money as everything they needed and wanted became available for free.

As the idea of their town spread, more and more communities across the world began to copy it’s design.

The people of frocksville had no need for the freedom credit anymore as everything was free, but they still wanted to travel and explore the world.

So they set up an alliance with other communities just like theirs.

Travel between like minded communities was free, no matter where in the country or world they would be.

Accommodation, food, whatever they needed or wanted was provided for free whenever they visited another voluntary community.

Every voluntary and moneyless community treated people like their own.

As more and more towns began to implement their own Utopias, the towns that stayed in dystopia began to fall apart.

They were not getting any tourists and the ruling class raised taxes to make up for it.

Those people began to leave their sinking towns and joined the many new and emerging Utopian societies, contributing their skills wherever they could.

Over time, governments, taxes, politics, police and the legal system was a footnote in the books of history, only to be taught to children of the great mistakes humanity had made in the past and to never again repeat them.

Felix’s family were thrilled to watch him transform from a depressed man working as an enforcer and protector of the greedy and corrupt, to the brilliant and compassionate gentleman he was today.

Felix was never a bad man doing bad things.

He was a good man that had been tricked into doing bad things.