The Um-Helat Thought Experiment

The Perfect Society Dilemma

Imagine a society that has achieved true equality, prosperity, and harmony for all its citizens. In this society, there is no poverty, no discrimination, and no systemic oppression. Everyone has access to excellent education, healthcare, and opportunities for self-fulfillment. The citizens are happy, productive, and deeply connected to their community.

Now, consider that this society discovers a way to observe other, less advanced societies - including our own. They can see our struggles, our conflicts, our inequalities, and our suffering. They can also see how our ideas and beliefs perpetuate these problems.

Here’s the dilemma: This perfect society realizes that exposure to the ideas and beliefs from these less advanced societies could potentially destabilize their own. The concept that some people are inherently worth less than others, or that it’s acceptable for some to prosper while others suffer, is so foreign and dangerous to them that it acts almost like a virus in their collective consciousness.

So, we must ask:

1. Does this perfect society have an obligation to try to help or influence the less advanced societies they observe?

2. If not, do they have the right to completely isolate themselves to preserve their way of life?

3. If they choose isolation, how far can they ethically go to prevent the spread of “dangerous” ideas from outside? Is it justifiable to imprison or even execute citizens who access and spread this information?

4. If some citizens, upon learning about other societies, begin to question or rebel against their own society’s strictures, how should this be handled? Is it ethical to forcibly “re-educate” them or remove them from society?

5. Can a society truly be considered perfect or ethical if it must resort to extreme measures to maintain its status quo?

6. Is the happiness and wellbeing of the majority worth the suppression or elimination of a few dissenters?

7. At what point does the preservation of a utopia become dystopian in itself?

This thought experiment forces us to grapple with the tension between individual freedom and collective good, the ethics of intervention versus isolation, and the question of whether a perfect society can exist if it requires imperfect methods to sustain itself. It challenges our notions of progress, ethics, and the very nature of utopia.

In exploring these questions, we might find ourselves imagining a world like Um-Helat - a place of joy and equality that nonetheless harbors a dark secret, where the pursuit of perfection comes at a troubling cost.