Envisioning Universal Compassion:
A "Topian" Worldview
by Joel Federman

Taking Responsibility for the World

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay

On a day-to-day basis, most of us are so caught up in living in the world as it is that we don't have much time or energy to focus on how the world might become better. But, if we take the time to reflect about it, we find that, in each given moment, we have the ability to choose how we want to perceive the world, and how we want to live in it. If we face up to them, we have fundamental choices to make about who we are in the world, what the world means to us, and what kind of world we want to help create.

For many--probably most--people, the reality of those choices are not usually acknowledged consciously, at least not on a daily basis. Such people live according to habit, and exist within choices given to them through mainstream media and educational systems, economic necessity, and immediate need satisfaction. Taking responsibility for the more fundamental levels of choice is thus a "radical" act, if we understand the word "radical" as referring to the core or fundamental meaning of something.

To fully be a human being is to take full responsibility for one's part in the co-creation of the world. This requires that we recognize that the social world is "constructed," that all of the meanings and symbols of our lives, have been created by one person or another at some point in history. It also means that those meanings and understandings can be changed. The world of humanly-constructed symbols and meanings is held in place day to day by mutual agreement, whether conscious or unconscious. Therefore, in a very real sense, the whole world is created new every day, and every day is a new opportunity to re-create the world in line with a new vision, a higher vision, a better vision.


Image: Exhibit at Forum Barcelona 2004

It is thus possible to envision a new world being born out of seeds nurtured since the beginning of time, a world of liberation, of peace, of freedom, of universally celebrated human dignity and rights. (This is not an abstract vision. To read about it being played out in cities all over the world, click here.)

Such a vision is made real by celebrating the highest dimensions of the human potential, and striving to realize that potential in each of our lives and in the life of the world.

Topia

The word "topia" expresses the shared process of realizing the highest dimensions of the human potential, and co-creating a world of liberation, compassion, peace, freedom and universally celebrated human dignity and rights.

Topia is derived from the common word "utopia." "Utopia" literally means "nowhere," or "no place." It is derived from the Greek "ou" meaning "not," and "top(os)" meaning "a place." The word was coined by Sir Thomas More to describe the imaginary ideal society in his novel of the same name. Since then, utopia has come to be used as a generic word for any ideal society. The word "topia" is derived by removing the "ou" from utopia--instead of the utopian "nowhere," the idea of topia implies that we begin realizing our ideals here and now. To be "topian" is to act as if the world we envision as ideal already exists and we are among its first citizens.

The goal of the "topian" is to tip the balance between the world of our ideal thoughts and dreams and the three-dimensional world that we usually call "reality." This is not to say that human beings have a limitless ability to shape the world, though we don't know exactly where the boundary lies between what we can change and what we have to accept. We are constrained by our bodies, though we are just beginning to tap the power of our minds to heal and prevent illnesses and to find states of being that confer great contentment, creativity, and compassion. The human social environment, since we created it in the first place, should be particularly susceptible to change. We conceived the world as it is, and therefore we have the ability to reconceive and to recreate it in accordance with a deeper and better vision.

Each person has their own conception of the ideal world, and therefore of topia, of how their ideal can be made real. If our vision of a just and good world is inclusive of everyone, then in building our notion of topia we have to take into account--or at least create space for--the topias (the ideal dreams) of everyone else. If we do so, we conceive the broadest possible form of topia, a universal topia-- a truly democratic conception of ideal reality.

We're Not at the "End of History," But At the Beginning

The longer the view we take of history, the more myopic becomes the view that we are its high point, or end, and that human beings have no potential for further evolution. If we take a longer view, and put human history squarely in its place relative to the rest of the history of the universe, we find that human existence, let alone recorded history, is a recent event. "The world is very old," as astronomer Carl Sagan reminded us in The Dragons of Eden, "and human beings are very young."

Sagan illustrated the relative age of the universe compared to the youth of our species in an a"cosmic calendar" analogy in which the "fifteen-billion-year lifetime of the universe (or at least its present incarnation since the Big Bang) [is] compressed into the span of a single year." In the resulting cosmic calendar:

Given the historical perspective of Sagan's cosmic calendar, we can see that the human species is in the midst of its early childhood. We are in fact recently evolved from earlier life forms. Further, evolution is an ongoing process. It is continual, and we are part of it. Just as it would be unwise to pass judgment on the potential of individual human beings on the basis of their performance as small children, so it is naive to speak of limits to the human potential while the species is still in its infancy. Our world has not always been this way; it need not always be so. From that perspective arises the promise of topia.

Envisioning Universal Compassion

The topian vision is grounded in a single value, universal compassion, which forms the basis for a broader social and political philosophy. Universal compassion, or the Golden Rule, is an ethic that has been adopted by all major religions, and has been suggested as the basis for an interreligious, transdenominational, global ethic.

A compassionate worldview can be a moral compass for the modern age, in contrast with authoritarian conservatism and postmodern relativism. The logic of compassion requires unconditionality, respect, empathy and altruism, and in turn, provides the basis for a political orientation of toleration, civility, respect for human rights, nonviolence and community.

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