A Walk in the Socialist Garden

This passage is meant to be a transcript of speculation, and not of inquisition. Almighty father, I ask that you do not smite me just yet. Although, if you do plan on it, allow me, for one last time, to retire to the baths with a glass of whiskey. Bubbles, of course. Spare my readers too! - they know nothing of what they are about to read. And please do not send any of your silly winged angels or those damned Mormons who keep advertising your new book!

Without bragging, I’d like to emphatically remind everybody of the doings and the misdoings of the Catholic Church. When Galileo brought forth the most advanced calculations and scientific observations at the time, you would think that the Catholic Church had welcomed him to engage in the act of discussion. Discussion for academic enrichment and or enlightenment. You would think that the Pope was an accepting, welcoming, humble servant of the Lord, but you’d be incorrect. Instead, he was a cranky old motherfucker that kept yelling, ‘How many times do I tell you that the goddamn Sun goes around the Earth?’

Now keep in mind that they almost turned Galileo into ash and into a stench that ought to have reeked all the way from the Vatican to the Venice. Which, if you really think about it, neither shampoo, nor soap were invented back then. Neither were perfume bottles, nor mints. This was a time so far back from today, that burning stuff wasn’t even really a problem that had consequences. It was those good ol’ days before the liberal media started shaming people. This was even before the conservatives shamed people. And apart from your allogio being decorated and redecorated with flowers and different flowers, there really wasn’t much else to do.

Back to the Vatican; the Pope, and all of his fellow brethren were cheapskates, if anything. They didn’t want to listen to what Galileo had to say, even if it meant disrespecting him. Undoubtedly, Galileo had little influence over the public, in comparison to the clergymen. Neither were the attires working him any favours. Think about this. You see a guy standing on a soapbox in the town square, in rags with holes and tears, and he’s got a large beard and grey unkempt hair. He’s going on about how the Bible is a total lie, and that the Earth is one of many large balls of mass that go around the sun. On the other side of the street, you see a pompous priest, who keeps blackmailing and reminding you of the consequences of believing in the words of the filthy bearded bloke. The clergyman had it on good authority that you ought to spend your future in hell. But Galileo had his suspicions of the convolutions of Catholicism. That didn’t stop the priest from yapping too. ‘Fellow Christians, believe not in what ye hear! Of lunacy is this man! He needs Jesus as do you all!’ ‘Oh shut the fuck up you unholy dick! He uses your money to ornate himself. These clergymen don’t know what germs are, what atoms are, or when the Sun really goes at night!’

Of course, the easy option was to paint Galileo a lunatic, even though Italy was a keen era at the time, evidenced by all the keen things you would have seen had you lived there then. It was very likely that somebody or the other was going to look at Galileo’s findings through the lens of the allegory of Plato’s cave. This man was speaking absolute nonsense, the type of nonsense that made you wonder if he actually had some new information, information so advanced that the very quality of it makes it appear fabricated! It’s a simple logical train that forms the gateway between optimism and pessimism. In fact, you could even say that it was what separated the conservatives and the liberals.

A walk in the socialist garden is very reminiscing of olden Italy. There is nothing really to do, apart from eating, drinking, walking, and talking. It gets repetitive only if you cut out the talking. But much of the life here is about things like drama, narratives, and literature. You can spend your entire life engaging only in gossip, and the by the end of it, you’d still have plenty to say. Everybody here in the garden - there is a connection between, else it is yet to be established. Everyone wears brightly coloured clothes with frills and fur. Cuff links are a thing here for the men. The women tuck flowers in the curls of their “updo’s”. The vast number of teas available; pretty much everyone is a hard tea-drinker with a lust for them all. Grasslands for pets, boomerangs, and catch. Trees for climbing and building hideouts. Campfires by the cobble grounds on the far side of the garden. Endless number of canvases, paints and dyes available; instruments too - a hub for artists. Common baths and saunas, almost like ancient Greece or Egypt. Stone and marble, and chisels for sculptures, and endless paper for the poets. The buildings are only for luncheon or supper, or using the bathrooms, and the bedrooms are only used at night by the faithful sleepers. On the other side of Mount Eerie, the suburbs with family homes. All the single people that live on this side are horny all the time and are fucking out in the open - under the banyan trees, in the hedge mazes, by the rocky banks of the river, against the ceramic fountains even. Sometimes you’d see couples do it in the smaller lake - the one atop Hill Gestas. Everyone is horny all the time, and nobody’s interested in commitment of any kind.

And that’s not even the best part of it. The main benefit of the fawn lifestyle is that there is no work that people have to do. Meals are produced magically. Meats, cheeses, grains; you name it, there’s an endless supply of it. Drinks, including wines, lagers and bitters, or fruit juices, all produced freshly, and available all day and night, all through the year. This garden is unlike any other that has existed. If you think about how life was in the old world, a visit to any ordinary garden was an escape from the pains of life. A few hours to get away from it all, but then you’re very quickly reminded of that damned expense report you ought to have on the boss’s desk by the morning. You weren’t free to eat, drink, and fuck all the time. But in the socialist garden, you are. And, you aren’t confined to the garden. You are free to leave, if you intend to pursue ambition by entering the “metropolis” territory of the country. Many did and still do, which is why the garden is never overpopulated. It is also so mindbogglingly enormous that everybody is always able to find a quiet field just for themselves.

The veterans of the country in the metropolis, also do not have to produce food, produce drink or anything. They have the same stuff, but it’s just a different lifestyle. They chose not to “celebrate” as much as the socialists in the garden, because it took time away from their work and endeavours. But in this world, you have smartphones, advanced computers, electric cars and hoverboards, monorails, and all the fancy tech things you could possibly imagine - none of which are in the garden. People here wear suits, often black or grey. The men have little electronic metal clasps on their shirts that automatically adjusted the cuffs. The women typically have a tiny metal robot, hidden in their hair buns, which automatically do the various hairstyles for them. A different hairstyle for business meetings, a different one for eating, and for sleeping, the robot detaches itself and automatically flies over to a nearby charging station for the night. This is the world where technology thrives.

Both these worlds exist at the same time, and neither one interferes with the other. People are free to move between them, but seldom do as the rhythm is too different. Many decades ago, humanity on Earth was at such an underdeveloped stage, that only one of the two worlds was a possible reality. Some countries chose to be capitalist, while others were socialist. Some were gardens, others were metropolises. It took until one fine day when some of the brightest minds at the time, (perhaps even brighter than Galileo), had decided to formulate a plan, and have one final say on whether capitalism or socialism was the way forward. The minds and hearts of the socialists were in no bad place - the intent was pure, but the means were flawed. Capitalism had no flaws in its means, except for the difficulty, and hence the malevolence that rose with it.

The totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany, Lenin and Stalin’s USSR, Venezuela and China, were all attempts at socialism; all of which had crumbled due to the simple flaw in the theory of Marxism, communism and socialism. Governmental ownership of property and assets, as well as control and policies, prevented people from following their own self-interest, neither were there any moral values set forth by economic systems. Such was the theory, and it went against Adam Smith’s great vision in The Wealth of Nations. The problem persisted, through every socialist country there was - that too much labour was required to provide for the nation as a whole. The emphasis on the idea of “brotherhood” proved the flaws of collectivism and how it was really nothing but a death-wish for society, fuelled by the inequality.

Humanity, over 50 years since the dissolution of Stalin’s USSR, had finally begun rebuilding socialism - a nation with an endless supply of food. Advancements in technology, artificial intelligence, and automation had brought humanity to the point where every task requiring manual labour and or mechanical work had been replicated by a machine that had a self reliant energy system. Once every couple years, you’d have to change a couple cables, but that was as far as it went. Manual labour, for something as mundane as farming, became something robots did. Tilling, irrigating, and even being a scarecrow - the robots could do it all. And while more farms continued getting more robots, humanity’s ability to harvest more energy from the sun increased drastically. It was endless and free, and still is till this day. Now, that’s a coupon with no expiration date.

People also weren’t too happy with the idea of receiving ‘basic, bland food’ from a government they paid hefty taxes to. But when the prospect of a socialist future became a possible reality, everyone rallied to the common cause. And not the type of socialism people were previously told of. This new future was one where literally not a single human had to work in order to continue living. Of course, people could work, but the majority of people liked the idea of just eating delicacies and being able to fuck all day. What this started was a self-sustaining system of automation, where food and water were taken care of for everybody. But this shift in lifestyle was so different from human history, that it had posed perhaps the biggest philosophical problem humanity had faced, since the start of the millennium.

The capitalist world had allowed society to come to the point where iPhones and Starbucks lattes were being produced. People were interested in new technology, new ideas, innovations and inventions. But a change in the very way of life had completely changed the way in which people think. The allegory of Plato’s cave perhaps best expressed the problem, where humanity, if we hadn’t left the cave, would never imagine, think of, or even believe the things we see outside the cave. That is to say, had humans only continued being a species that farmed and lived, we wouldn’t have even dreamt of the possibility of something like Tesla vehicles existing. Humanity had, in pursuit of capitalism, manifested a system of living where creativity had become a requirement of survival. What if humans were already living in a socialist world where there was no reason to discover more things or to create new stuff? It would be akin to how tribal communities live, cutoff from the rest of the world as they chose not to buy-in to the system of required innovation. But wouldn’t socialism just be a system of existence and not of growth? Eerie, how humans have the thirst for discovery and innovation.

The most interesting revelation was that at this fork in the road where the very supposition of the future had become apparent as a truthful reality of the past. Why people wanted to work and innovate, instead of fucking all day - nobody had the answer. In fact, a book had the answer. What a strange coincidence it must be, that humans are dissatisfied with simple existence, almost as if at the beginning of time their forefather had eaten the wrong apple - the one was supposed to doom all of humanity. Had Adam not eaten the apple, humans would have lived in the Garden of Eden, with all the endless food and water, and there was no need to work.

But humans have come far from ‘falling from grace’. Humans had come to the point where men and women are equals, unlike Adam and Eve. Where Christ wasn’t the only God, and people could also live without religion. Where you can eat whatever you want, have whatever hairstyle you want, and fuck without needing to marry first. We’ve understood that knowledge and learning are fundamental for survival, so we’ve built schools and universities, to mass produce high thinking individuals. We’ve taught ourselves the price system, and the ability to quantify emotion. We’ve taught ourselves economics, the scarcity of resources and other such invisible rules and laws of the planet that govern us all. And even with all of these limiting factors, these rules and regulations, we were able to create the most perfect system, while our destiny was cursed.

It is quite an extraordinary feat to achieve - for us to have been kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and then for us to have said, ‘fuck you, we’ll build ourselves a Garden of Eden’. When God and Satan had laid the options out in front of Adam, there was a third option, that Adam didn’t know of at the time. The third, is the world of today, where both the socialist garden and the capitalist metropolis co-exist. People are free to choose between the two. There is no crime, there is no theft, there is no deceit, there is no malevolence, as we have eliminated the incentive for any of those things. We’ve done away with the Biblical telling of the collective, and have put the individual forward. Today’s world is a wonderful place.

Looking back in retrospect, it is funny how the biggest debate in the history of humanity was the very last debate we had had - the argument between the left and right aisles of politics. It basically was people arguing which of the two apples was better for Adam to eat. That’s all politics had been since the end of the two world wars, till the Great Awakening, when we had decided to end the bickering, and work together for a future of today. How’s that for humanity, God?