Images of the goal of transformation

Suppose you are to develop an image of the aim of social transformation. What will you do? If you are asked to develop the sketch of the desired, future scenario some of the following characteristics may come to your mind:

• Reproduction: This implies a positive rate of growth of population

• Meeting of survival needs of all. This implies that everyone has enough to eat and drink, a decent house, safety and security, and a well developed health system to ensure highest possible longevity adjusted for disability. People live longer and live healthily

• Justice to all

• Equality, i.e., complete absence of gender, caste, racial and economic inequalities.

• Freedom of expression

• Globalization: This implies freedom of movement of capital and labor from any part of the world to any other part of the world.

• Peace: This includes absence of violence in the form of riots, wars, terrorism, etc. This also includes absence of structural violence that may give rise to violence, from time to time.

• A common religion (or equal respect of all religions) and a strong belief in God (or a secular society).

• Equal sharing of power. This implies that all citizens have the same power to influence public policy or any other decision affecting lives of people.

• Identical appearance. This implies that all have the same appearance, nobody looks ugly, and all have charming manners and a pleasing personality. Difference between whites and blacks, short and tall, ugly and beautiful, ignorant and knowledgeable people have vanished.

• Sarvodaya. All people, men and women, do the same kind of work. If they need to do different kinds of works in the interest of social development all of them get equal rewards.

You may like to add some more characteristics to the above list. You may also drop some characteristics if you want to. Which characteristics you want to drop? The purpose is not to propose a utopia of good society but to show how problematic is to operationalize the concept of good society. There is always a conflict between different representations of good society? For example, freedom of expression and belief in one God may not go together. If there is no sexual division of labor and women are not forced to associate with childbearing and rearing the fertility may fall below the replacement level and society may face aging and extinction.