Better-World-O-Matic

I think about "saving the world" quite often, but I really mean "make the world a better place". That has a much more positive connotation. But of course, "a better place" can be interpreted many different ways, and can be different depending on who you talk to.

Who really doesn't want the world to be a better place? The real question is: what would make the world better? The other question is: how do you involve everyone so that the "better world" is somewhere that everyone wants to be? That of course, creates another question: is it possible for everyone to be happy with the world?

Is it possible for everyone to be happy with the world?
Say we could create an computer program that would rearrange the world into exactly the way we wanted it. We could remove war and replant rainforests in a single install. How would you form a committee to make the decisions on what to do/not do. If that seems easy (get rid of bad things and add good things), then why can't we do that in our actual world? If that seems hard (very complex decisions), why does that happen? If we can figure out why, we can make a lot more progress and/or realize that we're working towards an impossible goal.

My guess is that it would be hard. Replanting rainforests sounds easy, but our program would have to reclaim the land from the farmers who cut the trees down to grow more food for our constantly growing human population. I'd hate to the be the one to create flow charts for the program. So who decides that we need to limit our population? Who decides that it's wrong or right for people to cut down trees to grow food? What happens with the farmers if they can't run their farms anymore?

How do you involve everyone so that the "better world" is somewhere that everyone wants to be?
We'll probably never get 100% agreement that we need to stop expanding the human race. Therefore, we can't decide that more agriculture to support hungry people (literally, as in people without food) is good or bad. As a result, we don't know if we should be cutting down rainforests to grow more food.

The answer to both of the above question is that you will never make everyone happy. Glenn Beck (the king of negativity) is a good example of a normal human, times 100 of course. Deep inside, everyone wants the world to be the way they think is best. Give a person unbiased facts (don't watch Fox) and they will use that information coupled with their experiences to come up with an opinion. If Glen Beck got what he wanted, he would screw over lots of other people in the world. If everyone got what they wanted, our personal desires would conflict with a lot of other people's.

This is the problem we have with our country currently. Everyone thinks they deserve what they want, and they don't care that it is negatively impacting other earthlings. We use and throw away electronics without thinking, while people in China deal with the toxic chemicals. We drive SUV's and mow down forests for our cul-de-sacs while native animals get driven away on paths toward extinction.

I guess the solution is to get everyone to realize that we all have to make sacrifices. No one is better than anyone else, even if you have more money and a fancy job title. If we all learned that we need to give up a little for the greater good, we'd be a lot better off. Alternatively, you can keep thinking that everyone's ability to make a better life for themselves means you can turn your back on those that clearly aren't getting a fair shot. I know what I vote for.