What if you had a magic lantern, and were granted any three wishes you liked? Me, I thought about improving the world, but I suppose I could have put some personal stuff in there.
The thought I wanted to pass along, though, is this: simply because you effect, by magic, some change in the world, does not mean you get what you intended. For example, say you wanted to end poverty. Poof!!! Everyone now lives in a 5 rooms mansion. Now, the struggling working family that was held together in part by economic necessity falls apart. Divorces abound. Nobody has to work anymore, so nobody knows what to do. People start having mass orgies in the streets, which are effective for a time, but which grow tedious. Eventually, people retreat to their mansions, and drink all day. Many take up drugs. Everything decays.
Or say you determined everyone should be smart. Poof!!! It happens. What now? What have you done to dumb people? They are no longer who they were before. They don’t recognize themselves. Could you not argue that in some important respect you have killed them?
Is this a stupid argument? You decide.
As I look at the world, though, I never see lines. I see patterns, evolving over time. If you have ever seen a fractal generate, that, in my view, is the most accurate picture of how life actually works. You have an initial input, but where it moves from initiation is something you just have to see, and which is very hard to predict.
Net, net: I am not certain that an omnipotent person granted three wishes would NECESSARILY improve the world, even if that was their intention. I think this is roughly what Lao Tzu had in mind when he said he didn’t think the earth could be improved. Obviously, you can buy a hungry man some bread and wine–and in some cases you should–but you are not improving the “world” per se. You are doing your job. You have taken an abstraction and generated a concrete reality. Those realities are what matter.
Few thoughts. I’m watching Tarkovsky’s “Stalker”, and these thoughts popped in my head. I’ll likely have more to say after a bit.