The education system teaches people the knowledge they need in their lives. The question is, do we need everything we are taught? No, we need just a part of it. Schools have always been under the control of authorities and follow their interests, not the interests of the people.
As a result, we have way too much knowledge imposed on us by authorities, which secures their positions in society. Most of this knowledge is false. The essential function of education today is not acquiring knowledge but learning obedience to authorities.
Students have to accept false knowledge if they want to get a permit to work. That is how generations have acquired the wrong knowledge. Such knowledge damages the process of students’ thinking, which alienates them from reality, and prevents the development of society. Schools are factories for producing social powerlessness.
We must get rid of the false knowledge the system of education provides. Furthermore, the authorities prevent the introduction of any knowledge to schools that might undermine their power in society. Such knowledge may improve society, and we need to teach it.
Development of natural and social sciences
Natural sciences create knowledge about the physical world. They serve today’s elite well so that they are allowed to develop freely as much as they can. The natural sciences are beneficial to the whole society. Natural sciences are extremely developed compared to social sciences.
Social sciences exist to analyze and improve human society. But social sciences cannot do this because every improvement of society requires taking power from the elite, and the elite does not allow it. As a result, social scientists have built misdeveloped political, economic, and other sciences that benefit the elite and cannot improve society.
Our culture is based on the power of authorities. Under the pressure of the elite, social sciences have never determined the nature of society correctly. Social science has failed to answer the fundamental question: What constitutes a good and bad society? The answer to this question is not only crucial for the development of society, but it is also simple.
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Equal human rights are the answer to all social problems. Equal human rights have never existed in the history of humankind, and this is the only reason societies were never good. Social scientists do understand a formal need for equal human rights presented in the UN declaration of human rights.
But this declaration is entirely non-binding. The elite prevent anything more than that, and as a result, social scientists do not understand the scope of the need for equal human rights. The lack of equal human rights prevents the progress of politics, economics, and humankind. By ignoring equal human rights, social scientists ignore the only chance of establishing a bright future of humanity.
Equal human rights mean that whatever is allowed to somebody in society must be allowed to everybody else, and vice versa, what is forbidden to somebody must be forbidden to everybody.
Once society understands it, people will demand acceptance of equal human rights, which will take power from authorities. Once equal human rights are established, society will become unavoidably good. I have defined equal human rights in the one-page article Equal Human Rights will Build a Good Society Unconditionally.
System of government, education and nature of economics
Political sciences study systems of government. It has established liberal democracy as a pinnacle of its development. Liberal democracy enables people to elect politicians who are supposed to represent their interests. But in fact, liberal democracy follows the best interests of the elite and not of people.
Politicians need money to be elected, and they can get it almost only from the elite. By accepting the money from the elite, politicians have to follow the interests of the elite. The elite use politicians to oppress and exploit people the same way dictators did. Such democracy is, in reality, a hidden dictatorship.
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There is an escape for the problems of democracy; we can hardly see because the elite has deceived us. Throughout history, the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” has sometimes established similar social environments as equal human rights would.
So far, it was just a moral principle based on conscious of people, some followed and some not. Those who accepted it contributed to the betterment of society. However, most of the people, most of the time, did not follow the golden rule.
As a result, society was predominately evil throughout history. We can create a good society by enforcing the golden rule. It is possible by giving power to the people through the acceptance of equal human rights.
We can do it very simply. Let’s give everyone an equal right to evaluate five people positively or negatively every month for whatever they are doing. Let a positive evaluation brings a small award to the assessed person, and a negative assessment brings a small punishment. Then everyone will work hard to beautify the lives of other people and not hurt them.
This simple measure will fix social problems. It will create what social sciences were never able to do – a good society. I have called such political reform democratic anarchy and presented it extensively in the article Democratic Anarchy is the Future of Democracy.
My experience in spreading this idea tells me that people have difficulties in accepting democratic anarchy due to the alienation coming from authoritative education. This prevents the progress of society. Once equal human rights are accepted by society, society will improve significantly.
Then social sciences will lose its importance. I believe they would be needed as much we need science for walking or talking. The equal power in the hands of people will reduce the significance of laws as well. As society develops, democratic anarchy might make laws obsolete.
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Economic sciences study the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. They will be strongly affected by equal human rights as well, and this will bring vast improvement to the economy.
Firstly, equal human rights would require the right to work and earn money for all people. It is the fundamental human right. Full employment will be implemented by shortening work hours of all employed people until unemployment is eliminated.
Then the development of the economy will raise the demand for workers. Employers will compete with each other to get workers, and this would raise worker salaries. Politics may create underemployment by shortening work hours, which would accelerate the increase in workers’ wages.
What an equal economy looks like
This will bring justice to the economy. People will be able to spend more, which will grow the economy and benefits to all. I wrote more about it in the article Full Employment is a Turning Point of Capitalism.
The future economy will necessarily develop the market of work. The development of equal human rights will establish the work competition among workers for every public work post at any time.
It will be possible by building a much more efficient form of work responsibility than capitalism can provide. I have defined the future of the economy in my book Humanism. It will be simple and effective.
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No economy can be more productive than the one where each job gets the best available worker. In the future, capitalism will not be able to compete with this kind of market of work, so it will go down in history. Then a much better future of humankind will begin. People will become good economists just because they live in a new social system. Economic science will probably not be needed in the future as well.
In the future, bureaucratic educational requirements for doing jobs will not be needed. Education will not be obligatory for getting jobs because the new system will establish such a great responsibility of workers that they would not dare to compete for the work they are not qualified for.
Let students decide what knowledge they need for doing the job they want, and this will tell us what science will survive. I wrote more about the future of education in the article: My clash with sciences.
The author is an architect, computer programmer, and philosopher who has worked on how to create a good society for 37 years. Results of his work are presented on his web sites www.sarovic.com and www.sarovic.or. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.