Resistance to progress or achieving goals sometimes comes in the form of an expression of exasperation at the size of the objective or task ahead, and one of the common walls built up to enable this indolence is the phrase that begins, “in an ideal world…”. In an ideal world basically means what you are saying is good, but we can’t do it because of this or that. But if it’s good, why make excuses? Why not just bring down those barriers and make the world more ideal today, rather than in the future?

I gave this a lot of thought and concluded that we do live in an ideal world, and once we realise this and change our mindset we would be on our way to making quicker leaps and bounds as a human race. We most definitely live in an ideal world when you look at it from the lens of a long period of time. For example, three hundred years ago a slave owner’s child would have grown up establishing a strong bond with certain slaves in the estate and would have been saddened to see the conditions they lived in and how they were treated. They would have asked their father, why can’t slavery stop because they are being treated badly and their father would have said, in an ideal world there would be no slavery, but we don’t live in an ideal world. Three hundred years later the thought of slavery is completely incomprehensible and abhorrent to most people today.

It’s still less than 100 years since women in the UK were first given the vote in 1918, and that was just for those over 30 who owned property! It wasn’t until 1928 that all women over the age of 21 were given the vote. Considering there are some people alive today who were born or even a few years old in 1918, we are not even talking about some ancient history so far removed from the present day. There are pictures and videos of the suffragettes we can watch of them protesting and throwing themselves under horse carriages in the fight for their right to vote. I’m sure at the time some people would have said, in an ideal world it would be nice for women to have the vote, but we don’t live in an ideal world and the system must be the way it is in order to protect society and so that men can make the right decisions for their women. After all women were considered as chattel by law until the late 1970s. This was in most of our lifetimes and the mentality has completely changed now. Are we not living in a more ideal world today than 40 years ago?

I won’t even go into the Married Women’s Property Act 1870 where women could finally keep their wages and own property in their own name. I’ve come across women who said that in the 1990s they would receive phone calls from a utility company for example and the person on the other end, often a woman themselves, would ask to speak to the man of the house in the automatic assumption that the men were the ones that pay all the bills. I’m sure if that were to happen today there would be a very stern letter of complaint reaching the management of such an organisation, and the Twitteratti would also have something to say about it, and the company’s name would take a serious battering. So, the world is more ideal today compared to just 20 years ago.

These are just a few simple, blatant examples that most of us can recognise and appreciate which I’ve used to make the point, but there are so many other examples out there that many of us are aware of but feel a bit powerless to do anything about for now.

In an ideal world there would be no hunger, there would be no crime. In an ideal world, we would all treat each other with respect and acknowledge the reality that if we all had similar opportunities, the less fortunate amongst us would probably do very well indeed. The movie Trading Places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd brilliantly illustrates this. Why do we have to wait for another hundred years to radically make the world more ideal if we are aware of the many issues that cause human strife currently? We know that the imaginary lines created by people far less literate than most of us are today is giving people in many “countries” a raw deal in life compared to others. The internet has practically destroyed the class system and continues to give opportunities to people who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to amass great wealth and success via traditional education systems.

The key to realising this progress in my view is respect. From historical times to present day, the more respect shown by people of different countries to one another, the more peaceful they are between each other and within each other. Yes, it’s true that levels of development and knowledge vary from country to country, but like the teacher who shows respect to their students, they get back a lot of respect and admiration in return, making the imparting of knowledge a simpler process. But if you look down on people because you feel you know a lot more than them and should impose your values upon them, they become resentful towards you and will be happy to wallow in their ignorance for longer so long as you have nothing to do with them, making an ideal world take longer to reach.

We all have different points of view of what the right thing should be and therein lies a conflict in itself, but I think for those genuinely serious about making the world a better place for all, the barometer to use in knowing whether you are on the right side of history is if an emotion you feel when taking your stance is of hatred or love. If you say that something is the right thing and you say so with hatred in your heart, then you might be lying to yourself and others as to the motives behind what you are propagating for. But if there is an emotion of love in your heart when taking up a stance about how the world should be, then you are probably more likely to be on the right side of history and progress.

So, policies need to be developed which promote fairness worldwide as opposed to one-upmanship between countries. We need to be less incogitant and a bit more considerate of one another. I’m optimistic because we are certainly in a better place today than ever before generally speaking, but we still have a long way to go. We can either use our awareness to accelerate the process of societal progress so that we can enjoy the benefits today, or wait for our children or grandchildren to enjoy those benefits instead. In any case I believe we will get to Elysium one day, I just much rather it be sooner rather than later.