Fernando Alcoforado*
This article represents the continuation of the article whose title is Como fazer com que as utopias planetárias se realizem visando a construção de um mundo melhor (How to make planetary utopias come true with a view to building a better world) [1]. This article is the twelfth of 12 articles that address the 12 planetary utopias that need to be realized with a view to building a better world and contributing to the achievement of happiness for human beings, individually and collectively. This article aims to demonstrate how the twelfth of the utopias considered, that of achieving happiness for human beings, individually and collectively, can become reality.
The article Como conquistar a felicidade (How to Conquest Happiness) [2] informs that, for our Greek ancestors and philosophers, the search for happiness is the central engine of our lives. Individual happiness is achieved through self-education. Education is the means through which people would be empowered to make the best choices in life. The purpose of Education must be to make the individual acquire skills, develop critical sense, take possession of the scientific and cultural heritage historically built by humanity, but, above all, it must be an instrument to promote the individual’s happiness and happiness collective of the society where he lives. One of the purposes of Education, perhaps the most important, is to offer people opportunities and means to be happy. The world is waiting for a revolution in Education whose main objective is to provide the conditions for achieving happiness for human beings, individually and collectively.
The individual can be guided to be happy with the help of Education aided by Positive Psychology, based on which it is possible to do something more than resolve or alleviate psychological disorders, that is, it aims to make us happy [2]. Positive Psychology works more on the search for happiness than on the study of an individual’s mental illnesses. Positive Psychology is the means through which people would achieve individual happiness, which, ultimately, is the main objective that guides people’s choices in life. In summary, while Education would act to enable people to make the best choices in life, Positive Psychology would reinforce the work of Education in the search for achieving happiness. To be happy, the individual must therefore rely on Education and Positive Psychology. Happiness is an achievement that the individual achieves through self-education. She will never be found outside. To be happy, the individual must seek self-knowledge, including with the help of a psychologist.
Explaining what types of life projects effectively make people happy, and what types of attitudes lead to happiness or make it impossible, is the objective of Positive Psychology, which is limited to identifying what effectively makes people happy. With the help of Education, Positive Psychology explores the importance of individuals knowing how interpret correctly the world and themselves. Part of individuals’ unhappiness results from wrong ways of interpreting things and the world. What happens is that in certain situations we become unhappy because we enter a self-destructive spiral of subtly wrong thoughts about life and ourselves and other thoughts that depress us more and more. Being able to detect and neutralize these thoughts, recognizing that they are pure and simple exaggerations and misinterpretations of things, is a fundamental step towards achieving happiness.
The purpose of life is not only to satisfy our own desires in order to be happy, but also what each of us has to give to the world. Happiness to be complete needs to be shared. Like many other species, humans are gregarious and having bonds of trust and friendship with other people is an important part of happiness. Unfortunately, we live in an era focused on private and subjective life, on exacerbated individualism erected as an absolute value. Without broader concerns, which go beyond the immediate boundaries of the self, family and closest friends, it is difficult to be genuinely happy. Happiness, after all, does not really come all from within — it also comes from surrender to the world. Bertrand Russell made it clear that “happiness should always be considered as a good pursued by everyone” [3].
The analysis of the book A conquista da felicidade (The conquest of Happiness) by Bertrand Russell [3] allows us to see that happiness has a well-traced path, which is the belief in ideals of the pursuit of pleasure and is also the translation of the appetite for life. By appetite to live, we mean interest in the things that life presents to us. For there to be a recovery of the taste for living, Man needs to feel loved. When being loved, Man understands affection as kindness. Happiness should always be considered as a good to be pursued by everyone. This condition will not be achieved in a disintegrating society like the capitalist one in all quadrants of the Earth. This conclusion points to the sense that happiness must be pursued and shared by everyone, which, under current conditions, is impossible to achieve in a society characterized by competition and conflict between human beings such as the capitalist one. In other words, collective happiness will never be achieved under capitalism.
The article A conquista da felicidade segundo grandes pensadores (The conquest of happiness according to great thinkers) [4] informs that Bertrand Russell states that happiness is the elimination of egocentrism. Karl Marx admits that in a society divided into antagonistic classes such as the capitalist one, there is no notion of happiness that serves all these classes equally. Aristotle considers that it is the State’s role to create conditions for citizens to be happy. Aristotle stated that if everyone were part of a just society, with equal rights for all, common happiness would be achieved. Plato understood that the function of the State was to make men good and happy. If everyone were part of a fair society, with equal rights for all, collective happiness and individual happiness could be achieved together. Collective happiness can be conceptualized as the satisfaction of the true needs of all human beings. One of the routes to happiness is to seek to genuinely contribute to the happiness of others. It is one of the functions of the State to create conditions for citizens to be happy.
It can be stated that the collective happiness of the entire world population will occur if humanity is successful in building a better world that will happen in all quadrants of the Earth when the 11 planetary utopias described below become reality:
1. The utopia of world peace to end wars in the world and, above all, avoid the outbreak of the 3rd World War
2. The utopia of full democracy in all countries of the world so that there are no dictatorships and false democracies
3. The utopia of the prevalence of civilizational values throughout the world to eliminate the barbarism that dominates today
4. The utopia of the construction a Welfare State in all countries of the world to eliminate growing global economic and social inequalities and prepare for the construction of democratic socialism throughout the world
5. The utopia of the construction of democratic socialism in all countries to replace the decadent capitalism dominant in the world
6. The utopia of the rational use of the world’s natural resources to end its devastation
7. The utopia of the end of global economic and social chaos with rational economic planning in each country and worldwide
8. The utopia of the construction of green and smart cities in all countries to avoid the existence of increasingly degraded cities in the vast majority of countries in the world
9. The utopia of using science and technology exclusively for the good of humanity to avoid their harmful use
10. The utopia of conquest immortality for human beings to overcome the inevitability of death
11. The utopia of conquest of the survival of humanity by avoiding its extinction in the face of threats to its existence caused by human beings and the forces of nature existing on planet Earth and coming from space
If all the planetary utopias described above are realized in all quadrants of the Earth, they will make the 12th utopia happen with the conquest of collective happiness for the world population and, also, for the achievement of individual happiness for all inhabitants of planet Earth.
REFERENCES
- ALCOFORADO. Fernando. Como fazer com que as utopias planetárias se realizem visando a construção de um mundo melhor. Available on the website <https://www.academia.edu/104881861/COMO_FAZER_COM_QUE_AS_UTOPIAS_PLANET%C3%81RIAS_SE_REALIZEM_VISANDO_A_CONSTRU%C3%87%C3%83O_DE_UM_MUNDO_MELHOR>.
- ALCOFORADO. Fernando. Como conquistar a felicidade. Available on the website <https://www.slideshare.net/falcoforado/como-conquistar-a-felicidade>.
- RUSSELL, Bertrand. A Conquista da Felicidade. Rio: Editora Nova Fronteira, 2015.
- ALCOFORADO. Fernando. A conquista da felicidade segundo grandes pensadores. Available on the website <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/conquista-da-felicidade-segundo-grandes-pensadores-alcoforado/?originalSubdomain=pt>.
* Fernando Alcoforado, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, of the SBPC- Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science and of IPB- Polytechnic Institute of Bahia, engineer from the UFBA Polytechnic School and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, college professor (Engineering, Economy and Administration) and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning, urban planning and energy systems, was Advisor to the Vice President of Engineering and Technology at LIGHT S.A. Electric power distribution company from Rio de Janeiro, Strategic Planning Coordinator of CEPED- Bahia Research and Development Center, Undersecretary of Energy of the State of Bahia, Secretary of Planning of Salvador, is the author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018), Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019), A humanidade ameaçada e as estratégias para sua sobrevivência (Editora Dialética, São Paulo, 2021), A escalada da ciência e da tecnologia e sua contribuição ao progresso e à sobrevivência da humanidade (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2022), a chapter in the book Flood Handbook (CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida United States, 2022) and How to protect human beings from threats to their existence and avoid the extinction of humanity (Generis Publishing, Europe, Republic of Moldova, Chișinău, 2023).
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