My Personal Utopia
This book is titled Personal Utopia. All chapters before this chapter have been a tour of the idea of Personal Utopia. All those chapters are the equivalent of one single introductory chapter to this book. All subsequent chapters after this chapter are appendices to this book. This chapter titled My Personal Utopia is the contents of this book. Surprised? Read on.
The Intro Tour
The intro tour of personal utopia is truly for those who have never been introduced to the ideas of "a good life" and "utopia". If a person already knows about it, the tour is not really necessary.
The introductory tour also functions as an introduction to using a chatbook. A chatbook provides value to the author and the reader, and using it well is a new learning experience.
About My Personal Utopia
Everyone wishes for a good life. But in all fairness and considering all circumstances, one may not get the perfect good life that one desires. What one can get, considering fairness and all circumstances, is ideal, and is called Personal Utopia.
The word ideal, in this context, means "the best possible that it can be". The only possible improvement to the nature of ideal is to improve the circumstances. Some circumstances can be improved and some can't. So, there are limits to this improvement. Accepting these limits is ideal; that is, it is the best possible thing that one can do.
My Personal Utopia is a book that each one of us writes. Some may write it down on paper, some may write it in electronic files, and some others may just keep it in their head; but, we all write it.
Each one of us documents in their own My Personal Utopia the good life that they wished for, worked for, and ultimately got.
Some write just a few scribbles in their My Personal Utopia book. Some others write a few pages. Some may write hundreds of pages, and a rare few write thousands of pages of well-crafted epics.
In writing their own My Personal Utopia book, some people accept the difference between perfect and ideal, and are satisfied with the ideal.
All these My Personal Utopia books are always kept private. Naturally; since the contents of these books are such that they cannot be made entirely public.
However, parts of these books can be made public. Some people publish glimpses of from their My Personal Utopia book. Usually you see these glimpses being published as books under the generic category of autobiography.
Is your My Personal Utopia book elaborate and well thought out?
About Circumstances
Improving personal circumstances is usually solely up to the individual. It requires effort.
Sometimes, personal circumstances are improved by sheer luck. For example, winning a lottery. But, the probability of this happening for a specific individual is very small. So, can't rely on it.
Improving social circumstances is always up to all individuals collectively. All efforts to this end are part of the general idea of "social utopia" or simply "utopia".
So, effort is required to improve circumstances. And even then, for reasons well beyond our control, those efforts may not yield success.
The Appendices
Fortunately or unfortunately (as per your perspective), no one can be told how to lead a good life; We all have to find it out by investigating about it and living it.
Almost all knowledge that is necessary for a person to lead a good life (and have Personal Utopia) is already written. People have been writing about it for thousands of years. My estimate is that we have more than 99% of the required knowledge. So, anyone who seeks all that existing knowledge and gets to 99% personal utopia, are will be in a very good situation.
However, one can point out potentially useful information, knowledge, ideas, and concepts.
Over the years I have been taking notes. The notes have been in various forms. Over the last few years I have been trying to systematize those notes. With the latest advances in AI, especially the large language models, and the AI based chat bots, I saw an opportunity to convert my notes into something that I can share with everybody. This book is the result of that opportunity and desire. Actually, it's an ongoing project of mine. I have not managed to convert all my notes into appendices for this book. Over the course of next few years, I may finish it. Finishing is not important. Sharing what I can is useful.
Since, I am primarily sharing notes, most of the content this book is in the appendices.
When you read the appendices, you will notice that I am writing in the first person. Writing in the first person is purely a literary device. It is meant to make the conversation with the AI chat bot more like a chat. So, in the appendices, when you see something like "I am planning to do such and such a thing", then know that it is just a hypothetical. I personally may or may not have been planning to do such and such thing when I was writing that specific line.
A question that would be high on a reader's mind is: "What is the point of having a book with one or two real chapters and rest appendices?". Here is the answer:
The real problem is in finding "pointers" to all that knowledge. Pointers cannot be considered as "core content", hence they are in the appendices.
Almost all content in the appendices is a pointer to something that is already known. That implies that there is some content in those appendices that I consider original. I can't be sure that such content is indeed original, because I have not read everything. So, such plausibly original content can stay as just a note.
Here are reasons for sharing these notes:
- It helps me when I revisit my notes, remind myself about those ideas, and cleanup my own notes about those ideas.
- By sharing the cleaned up notes, if I can help someone, then why not? Why miss the opportunity?
- The possibility of helping someone motivates me to revisit my notes, remind myself about those ideas, and clean them up.