The future is something that both scares people and inspires them. No matter how badly a person feels, he or she will always have a dream for the future.  The two most common examples of non-selfish, non-materialistic dreams are world peace and an end to word hunger. If a magician were to suddenly wave his wand, and make hunger end and peace reign, would it really help? How long would it last? My dream is much more complicated than any of those wishes. I dream of a day when the whole attitude or personality of the human race would change. I dream of a day when people will be happy, peaceful and giving. If our war-like, self centred personas could be eliminated, I believe that the world would be a much better place.

Everyone from Lenin to the Hippies quickly found out that just because they had a dream for the world, didn’t mean that it would work. This explains why I don’t want to merely install peace or end hunger. Take world hunger for example. Giving everyone food and ending hunger is merely putting a stopper on the problem, not eliminating the factors which caused it. People are not starving in Third world countries, or in First world countries, because of a food shortage. There is enough food available in the world to feed everyone nicely. Only the greedy selfishness of corporations and businesses keep these people pushed down to a lower level of subsistence. If everyone was suddenly given enough food to sustain themselves at an appropriate level, the same greedy people, with the same greedy tendencies, would still exist. The circuits in the human brain which make some people strive to be better than their neighbours would still exist. Some people would still attempt to get more than their share of the food, even if they did not need it. Even if no magician appeared to banish hunger, without the greedy, materialistic bone in humans, people would be more willing to share what they have, thereby eliminating hunger by themselves.

World peace would be the inevitable conclusion if human kind changed. If everyone was happy with what they had and did not want for anything else, there would be no reason for violence. War is not just about the times when two countries pull out their heavy artillery and begin to bombard one another. Every time one person is killed by another, anytime a house is vandalized or broken into, anytime someone is raped, war is being raged. Without the push inherent in humans to be better than their neighbours and to have what their neighbour has, needless theft would be halted. Without a few individuals pushing down the people from above, and with everyone sharing, no one would be forced to steal to survive. Thus by simply changing human nature, theft would disappear. In the same sweep, battles over territory would also be erased. Cases of murders, rape and abuse could also be eliminated if people were happier. People who are happy have higher self-esteem and do not have to degrade or dominate others in order to make themselves feel superior.

Even though I know that I may never see a time when the human race changes enough to fulfill my dreams, I still hope that it may happen. It is my hope that if humanity became happier, more peaceful, more giving and less greedy, everything from world peace to the end of world hunger would naturally occur. Although my dream may sound far fetched, every decade people have grown in their understanding of the need for these attributes. Every year, as humans continue to destroy each other and the world, more people try to live as far away from this self-centred and materialistic society as they possibly can, making my dream come true, at least in small drops.