Front Matter and Contents >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume XII, Number Nine, March 2026

Volume XII, No. 9                                      

March 2026

 

Journal of the K-12 Revolution:

Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota

 

Creating the Perfect Society:

Contemplating the Role Of Public Education

               

A Five-Article Series

 

 

A Publication of the New Salem Educational Initiative

 

Gary Marvin Davison, Editor

 

Creating the Perfect Society:

Contemplating the Role of Public Education

 

A Five-Article Series        

          

Gary Marvin Davison

New Salem Educational Initiative

Copyright © 2026

 

 

Contents

 

Introduction

 

Creating the Perfect Society:

Contemplating the Role Of Public Education

 

Article #1

 

Features of the Perfect Society

 

Article #2

 

Religion, Spirituality, and Ethics in the Perfect Society

 

Article #3

 

Remembering Societal Perfection as Envisioned by Thomas More in Utopia (1516)

 

Article #4

 

A Consideration of Edward Bellamy’s Vision of Societal Perfection as Presented in Looking Backward (Published in 1887)

 

Article #5

 

The Operant Determinants of Human Behavior:  Implications for Creating the Perfect Society

Introduction >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume XII, Number Nine, March 2026

Creating the Perfect Society:

Contemplating the Role Of Public Education

  

Three months ago, in reading Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward [originally published in 1887]; H. G. V. Ogden, translator (Garden City, NY, Dover Publications, 1996), I was impressed with Bellamy’s refusal to accept life as perceptible at present and to advance a vision for developing the ideal society.

 

Considering Bellamy’s vision reinforced at a high degree of magnitude a propensity that I have always had to look beyond what is to envision what can be.  But reading Bellamy moved me to consider such aspects of life as violence, war, and economic inequity---  often considered degradations that can at best be ameliorated---  to be unacceptable conditions of life that could be eliminated if we only mustered the courage, intellect, and activism to work toward the extinction of those conditions that make this one earthly sojourn so excruciating for the majority of our fellows on the globe.

 

In this edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, I 1) review the seminal vision of the perfect society found in Thomas More’s Utopia [originally published in 1516]; H. G. V. Ogden, translator (New York:  Appleton-Crofts, 1949);  2) consider Bellamy’s vision in Looking Backward;  3) advance my own vision of the ideal society;  4) consider specifically the nature of religion, spirituality, and ethics in the perfect society;  5) and explore the operant determinants of human behavior that must be recognized and applied in public education for the development of human beings whose decisions, cultivated by environment rather than made under the illusion of free will, might actually create the perfect society.

 

Never have I produced a more important series of articles, to which I urge readers now to consider in the succeeding pages.   

 

Article #1 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume XII, Number Nine, March 2026

Remembering Societal Perfection as Envisioned by Thomas More in Utopia (1516)

 

Consider here the fictional society of perfection described by Thomas More in Utopia. 

 

The fictional society extolled was revealed by one Raphael, an acquaintance of More’s friend, the diplomat Peter Giles, in an excursion that More and Giles took to Antwerp, Belgium.  Raphael was along on the 1497 voyage of Amerigo Vespucci before at one point venturing forth from the main group with his own party, discovering among other peoples the highly admirable Utopians.

The island of Utopia is 200 miles long and rather circular, the width being about the same distance of 200 miles.  The country was established by a King Utopus (also known as Abraxas).

There is no private property in Utopia.  Each citizen moves to a new house every ten years.   People rarely cook main meals but rather share meals in a common mess hall with those in their same group of 30 households;  those households are led by an official known as a syphogrant or phylarch, with every group of ten phylarchs having administrative superiors known as a chief phylarch (or tranibor),  The syhphogrants number 200 in all;  these select a prince (monarch) as the chief ruler of Utopia.  Three senators from each city gather in a Senate that apparently is the only legislative body.  Laws are few and clear enough that those of the literate populace, devoted to and delighted in learning, are able to represent themselves in any of the few legal cases, including those limited cases of criminal contravention of the law:  There are no lawyers.

 

The people, both women and men, are engaged vocationally mainly in agriculture but each person also specializes in a trade;  men dominate in the trades requiring physical strength, with women tending to pursue traditionally feminine occupations in the production of textiles and other household goods.  The people make no fuss over clothing, wearing loose-fitting garments (mostly of leather) that are durable, lasting for approximately seven years.  

 

Utopian society is highly patriarchal.  Reference to governmental organization implies exclusive leadership by men.  Men clearly head the households.  Premarital sexual relations are discouraged and even punished by law, for men as well as women.  Marriages are monogamous.  Divorce is rare, occurring mainly in the case of adultery and only very seldom because of mutual discontent with the marital union.  A first case of adultery is severely penalized;  any second case is punished by death.

People of Utopia are eager readers and learners who before contact with Raphael and his party had come to many of the same philosophical conclusions as the Greeks;  they avidly responded intellectually to the philosophical ideas of Plato and especially Aristotle; the historical accounts of Thucydides and Herodotus;  the medical treatises of Galen and Hippocrates;  and to natural scientists such as Theophrastus (On Plants);  brought by Raphael and the others.

 

Those of Utopia take great care in matters of nutrition and health, with an emphasis on prevention.  Euthanasia is encouraged and when selected by the gravely ill person supported with comforting environments at the end of life.

 

Good citizenship and behavior are cultivated by intellectually stimulating education and vigorous discussion of public affairs and morality.  Public honors are extended to and statues are built honoring paragons.

 

Prevention over intervention is emphasized in foreign affairs, as well.  War is studiously avoided but all male citizens are prepared to serve as soldiers as necessary, although if war looms service is voluntary until the numbers required demand conscription.  To avoid the latter circumstance, Utopians employ mercenaries, especially those drawn from a particularly ferocious people known as the Zapoletes.   The Utopians go to war only if their well-fortified island is attacked or if other peoples request their assistance in deposing a tyrant;  in repelling an unwarranted invasion;  or for other morally compelling reasons.

 

Religion of the Utopians before the arrival of Raphael and group included those who were animists or who worshipped legendary heroes, but most worshipped a Supreme Deity or Divine Nature named Mithra.  Many Utopians were receptive to Christianity, recognizing many similarities between their original theism and the religion brought by Raphael and crew.  Different religions are tolerated as long as a paramount deity and an afterlife are recognized.  Those who are given to lives dominated by good works and vigorous labor are admired, as is the monastic life of meditative devotion.  Each city has thirteen priests who preside over services and consider an important responsibility the cultivation of  character in male children.  Utopian religion incudes no animal sacrifice.  Incense is utilized and rituals are performed for creating an atmosphere of spirituality and holy solemnity.  Priests may marry; women may serve as priests but tend to do so only if elderly or widowed.  The first and last days of the month are observed as holidays of reflection on events and behaviors of the month past and contemplation of the best moral responses and productive activities in the month ahead.  The last day of the month also includes spiritual confession to priests, but also by wives to their husbands and children to their parents.

 

Though room for individual preferences and talents abides, the collective spirit dominates life on Utopia.  At the end of More’s book, Raphael extols the economically egalitarian ideal and the unmonetized economy of the Utopians and discusses at length the multifaceted harm caused by the economic equality and the pursuit of money prevailing in Europe.

Article #2 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume XII, Number Nine, March 2026

A Consideration of Edward Bellamy’s Vision of Societal Perfection as Presented in Looking Backward (Published in 1887)

 

 

Here I consider Edward Bellamy’s vision of societal perfection in his Looking Backward (published in 1887).

 

Two questions are of interest: 

 

1)  Is Bellamy’s vision realistic:   Could a heavily centralized socialist system ever create favorable

conditions for humankind?

 

2)  Is Belamy’s vision ideal:  Would his prescriptions for a highly educated, completely egalitarian socialist society be the best for humanity?  

 

...........................................................................

 

1)  Is Bellamy’s vision realistic:  Could a heavily centralized socialist system ever create favorable conditions for humankind?

 

One cannot ignore that the two prime attempts to establish centralized governments in behalf of the masses did not work out well:  1)  Stalin represents the specter of the dictator who appropriates the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat for the benefit of his personal position and unopposed agenda of industrialization;  2)  Mao started with considerable promise in creating the Jiangxi soviets, superintending the Long March, moving between the Caves of Yen’an and village peasantry in planning the civil war, and overseeing cooperativization during the 1950s but succumbed to deadly romantic fantasy during the last decade and a half of his life.

 

But those implicit objections by example could be challenged by the circumstances in Bellamy’s (via the character, Dr. Leete) account of an American society that had reached a highly developed stage of industrialization, therefore had the large proletarian class that Russia and China did not and, experiencing prospect for class conflict predicted by Marx, opted to resolve the contradictions of the prevailing substructure and superstructure by installing a dictatorship of the masses, no longer proletarian but rather classless as society organically became egalitarian:  Citizens were remunerated equally in a demonetized economy;  those citizens were highly educated in the liberal and vocational arts;  and, subject to certain agreed-upon conditions of labor and life, also enjoyed many personal options that tended toward high-level aesthetic pursuits.

 

One could argue that under those circumstances, a centralized government would be so imbued with the values of egalitarian altruism that leaders would naturally serve the public with integrity and competence.

 

For me, the key would be a highly educated populace that had, through discussion and agreement, to a person achieved the necessary level of knowledge and morality (with only a few exceptions of those who as in Belamy’s society had to be further convinced or humanely sequestered if according to biological constitution not able to cooperate).

 

This circumstance, if ever achievable, would necessitate educational improvements that would in my view take at least two centuries into the future.

 

And the achievement of the requisite level of education and such a society would be so difficult as to call into question the probability of the Bellamy vision ever being possible.

Ultimately, then, while amply considering conditions for success, my answer to the first question is that no, Bellamy’s vision is not realistic and that a heavily centralized socialist egalitarian system could not be achieved.

 

...........................................................................

 

2)  Is Bellamy’s vision ideal:  Would his prescriptions for a highly educated, completely egalitarian socialist society be the best for humanity?  

 

Much of the Bellamy vision is appealing:  demonetized economy that gives full rein to one’s professional or vocational or professional inclinations;  high level of education that induces the populace to live according to an exalted aesthetic;  the perfectly egalitarian ideal that recognizes the equal dignity of all labor and remunerates accordingly;  the elimination of international tensions and violence both domestic and worldwide.

 

Bellamy challenges us to consider why we would tolerate so many conditions of life so detrimental to fully realized happiness.  I heavily identify with the propensity to question life as it is.

Attitudinal improvement, though, would have to advance toward a more perfectly nonpatriarchal society than presented by Bellamy.

 

Vexing tensions pertinent to race and ethnicity would have to be resolved;  Bellamy mentions race and ethnicity not at all.

 

Also, Bellamy’s society maintains a level of regimentation making necessary all citizens jettisoning individuality in embracing two years spent at the lower levels of the industrial army;  the agreement of people vocationally to retire most commonly by 45 or at times by 55 years of age;  and accepting the goods manufactured by centralized design as fulfilling all human wants.

 

I am continuing to think through the matter of Belamy’s vision as ideal, assuming that the matters of gender and ethnicity could be worked out satisfactorily.

 

As stated, and even if improved by addressing gender and ethnicity---  and for all of the appealing aspects---  I am not ready to declare agreement with Bellamy’s vision as constituting the ideal society.

 

...........................................................................

 

Here I raise questions that I discussed a few moons back in the aftermath of reading two of Lane Kenworthy’s excellent books:  Social Democratic America;  and Is Democratic Socialism Necessary? 

The first book pursued a line of argument asserting that the United States has under the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack Obama followed more slowly the path trod by the European, particularly Nordic, nations toward social democracy and will ultimately fully create such a society.  

 

The second book asks the question, “Is democratic socialism, technically defined as entailing 67% government control over industries and enterprises, necessary---  or is social democracy that combines the welfare state with a mostly capitalist economy enough?”

 

Kenworthy argues for the latter premise, essentially maintaining that the Nordic social democracies feature an admirable level of cooperative spirit while giving rein to individual and business initiative.

At this juncture, after much pertinent rumination, I agree with Kenworthy.

 

Certainly, the societies created by the Nordic social democracies, take humanity a long way toward the ideal society.  Perhaps the dialectic processes of societal evolution could take humanity even further toward the communal, egalitarian ideal.  But the path laid by the Nordic democracies would provide a mighty fine promontory for admiring the view.  And at this moment in time, I find appealing the combination of communal spirit with space for considerable individuality.

 

Another observation at this point would be that while I admire the desire of some to eliminate middlepersons so as to bring consumer and producer closer together in cooperative and communal spirit, I am more concerned with the creation of knowledgeable and moral people via fact-heavy education with energetic discussion of political and ethical issues.

 

Some seek to create a model communal enterprise.

 

I seek to create a model public school district.

Article #3 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume XII, Number Nine, March 2026

Features of the Perfect Society

 

In this article, I present the nature of the truly perfect society, as opposed to the entirely admirable Nordic model that would have to be adopted and followed for many years before societal perfection could ever realistically be pursued, I noting also that Taiwanese society has already gone very far in acquiring the most important features of the Nordic model and has many of the traits of communality and social cohesion to be attained as precursor to the advent of the ideal social formation.

 

Edward Bellamy, in his novel Looking Bac, is interesting in predicting that the nations of the world would have since 1887 gone a long distance on the path to societal perfection by the year 2000.  And, for an individual nation to eliminate violence, war, and the need for a military (worthy aspects of the ideal society), the universal rejection of violence would seem to be necessary.

 

I return, then, to two chief endeavors:  identification of the societal and international precursors of achieving perfection;  and description of the truly ideal society.

 

My focus is on national sized entities that develop the prerequisites for societal perfection;  and on similarly large geosocial formations that develop individually and in confederation the truly ideal features of life.

 

The Nordic models have very good (if not excellent as defined by my tough standards) education systems, both pre-college/university and at the college and university levels;  universal, affordable health care;  long-term paid family leave at the birth of each child;  national, high-quality affordable child care;  and a communal, empathic societal spirit seeking a good life for each person with a high level of economic equity.  Those features constitute a necessary benchmark for moving toward genuine perfection;  and for any nation to attain perfection, that benchmark must be reached by all nations of the world.

 

Then the question becomes, if the preconditions for societal perfection are met, what would be the features of the perfect society?

 

Features of the Perfect Society   

 

>>>>>   The perfect society would feature absolute gender equality and recognize all gender identities;  no features of patriarchy would remain.

 

>>>>>   Egalitarianism would describe social and economic relationships:  social and economic class differences would not abide.   

 

>>>>>   Money would be unnecessary:  people would labor willingly for the good of society, giving of their labor in a manner consistent with their talents, skills, vocational inclinations, following a natural tendency to fill societal needs.

 

>>>>>   Widespread agreement would have for many centuries been achieved as to crops, industrial goods, and economic enterprises needed for the public good;  any changes, diminutions, and additions would occur via discussion in local, regional, and national forums.

 

>>>>>   Such forums would be all that would be necessary as to government, with leaders emerging organically according to obvious organizational and managerial ability;  no elections to formal office would be necessary.

 

>>>>>   Thus a pervasive spirit of cooperation would abide, developed over many centuries, far beyond what existed or could even be imagined by most people in the 21^st century.

 

>>>>>   Violence and war would have ended.

 

>>>>>   The need for lawyers or prisons would no longer exist.

 

>>>>>   Mental illness would be rare, only traceable in those few cases to genetic rather than environmental conditions, and treated empathically;  over millennia, natural selection would almost totally eliminate genetically produced mental illness.   

 

>>>>>   Education would emphasize the acquisition of knowledge across the liberal arts (mathematics [from arithmetic through calculus], biology, chemistry, physics, history [which would include the study of past forms of government and economy], literature, grammar, multiple languages, visual art and music);  and would provide training to all students in the manual and technological arts.

 

>>>>>   Pre-college/university education would proceed over nine grades, generally beginning at age five and lasting through age thirteen;  Stage One college and university education would proceed for three more grades (grades ten through twelve, generally for those at ages fourteen through sixteen);  Stage Two college and university education would then proceed according to vocational and professional inclination, with further, advanced study also in the liberal arts, generally for those seventeen to twenty-one years old.

 

>>>>>   By the age of twenty-one, therefore, a high degree of vocational and professional training would have been achieved for all people according to their greatest interest and talent;  and societal members would have great knowledge of all fields in the liberal arts, with considerable skill also in the manual and technological arts.

 

>>>>>   Members of the perfect society would have perpetual quest for knowledge and thrive on discussion with their fellows as to any improvements that might be made;  accordingly, they flock to libraries, museums, and public forums.

 

>>>>>   Those in the perfect society would have a heightened appreciation of nature, the visual and musical arts, and physical activity;  and they would pursue those interests along with vocational specialty throughout life.

 

>>>>>   Those living in the perfect society would have heightened knowledge of nutrition, physical exercise, and healthy life habits;  they are vegetarians who drink no alcoholic beverages.

 

>>>>>   People would organize themselves into nuclear familial units and monogamous unions;  they would generally cook at home but have a wide variety of options if they desire to eat in small establishments specializing in certain types of culinary options or to gather with their fellows in large communal dining halls.

 

>>>>>   Those living in the ideal society would sustain habits and live under felicitous conditions conducive to life spans reaching on average for both females and males to age 87, with many people living well past one hundred years of age.

 

Article #4 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume XII, Number Nine, March 2026

Religion, Spirituality, and Ethics in the Perfect Society

 

Societal perfection will be attained only many centuries after the Twenty-First.

 

As in other aspects of life, humankind will remember and continue to study certain institutional features from those centuries long before perfection was attained, and in many ways life will be informed by those institutions:  National borders will no longer be rigidly definitive but rather suggest areas within which culturally united people dwell;  the best features of past social democratic government will produce the democratic, cooperative, egalitarian spirit that now makes highly formal governing institutions unnecessary;  families will still be organized residentially and emotionally into nuclear units, but concern for one’s fellows will extend loving concern for everyone in the larger national and international family.

 

Similarly, people in the perfect society will remember and respect religious institutions to which humankind was long devoted.  Memory and reverence for those institutions will preserve sacred literature, places of worship, and key concepts from the historical religions of the world:

 

Animistic heritage will inform an abiding, deeply held reverence for the destructive potential, constructive power, and transcendent beauty of Nature. 

 

Respect for the Zoroastrian tradition will instill abiding gratitude that former tensions between Good and Evil have been resolved decisively in favor of the former. 

 

Judaism will be revered for instilling in humanity a centuries-long desire to fulfill the expectations of the Divine. 

                                                                                                                                       

Hinduism will be appreciated for producing in humanity an appreciation for a World Soul that unites all Life and induces respect for Ultimate Reality beyond the terrestrial. 

 

Buddhism will be revered for producing in humankind calmness of soul, an enhanced appreciation for the inevitability of change, and a propensity to appreciate with profound, focused attention each moment of joyful, healthful, radiant life while comprehending and responding circumspectly to suffering, illness, and death. 

 

Christianity will inspire in humanity a deep love of one’s fellows as the most important of all values, a refined sense of empathy, and a sense that for each human being in which such a spirit abides, immortality is assured.

 

Islam will be revered for penetration to the moral core, elimination of distractions, and relentless focus on singularity of the Divine.

 

Sikhism will be appreciated for inducing in humanity honest, loving, egalitarian behavior across race, gender, and creed with a passion for unity with the Divine.

 

In the perfect society, places of worship will be preserved as architectural treasures and as spaces that offer an abiding sense of peace, conducive to meditation and prayerful reflection.  All will be welcome to all such places of spiritual repose.  Such spiritual spaces will honor the past while abiding in a society in which borders and distinctions are suggestive rather than definitive.

 

As with the case of government, the religious institutions of history will inform the organic emergence of spiritual leaders inspired by the ideal qualities attributed to popes, patriarchs, and Dalai Lamas who exist now only in historical memory.     

 

People will live abundantly, contribute greatly, and die fearlessly, assured of immortality due to the nature of their lives.  

 

Article #5 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume XII, Number Nine, March 2026

 

The Operant Determinants of Human Behavior:  Implications for Public Education

 

All human behavior is determined by the way in which a person’s neural processes assess experiences as positively reinforcing, punishing (aversive), or negatively reinforcing (termination of aversive circumstance).

 

People vary greatly as to the precise nature of their neural processes, which are determined by intelligence, behavioral inclinations associated with natural selection, features acquired from one’s specific familial heredity, and the nature of the experiences that one has had at the juncture in which an additional experience occurs.

 

People also have unique arrays of experience that, however similar, nevertheless are singular as to sequence and specificity.

 

Each experience for a particular person is received as positively reinforcing, punishing, or negatively reinforcing and recorded in the parts of the brain associated with the intellectual, emotional, and physical components of the experience.

 

At this point the precise state of the particular person’s neural processes is critical, determined by the amount of knowledge accumulated through reading, research, and experience as the person’s biological constitution interacts with the environment:

 

The individual’s neural assessment of those interactions constitutes the process of cognition.

 

Cognition, then, is the process of neural evaluation of experiences that activate neurons in the parts the brain stimulated by visual, emotional, physical, and intellectual components of experience.  Experience is neurally evaluated and stored in the hippocampus, amygdala, and other memory centers for recall of factual detail and categorization as positively reinforcing, punishing, or negatively reinforcing.

 

The larger the information base a person has established, resulting from experience but also, critically, from breadth and depth of reading, research, and accumulation of factual knowledge, the better positioned one is cognitively to make decisions most likely to be maximally beneficial for the person at the upper levels of human aesthetic, intellectual, physical, and emotional sensibility.    

 

Human beings do not have free will. 

 

Human behavior is determined by experiences neurally evaluated as positively reinforcing, punishing, or negatively reinforcing. 

 

But, though lacking free will, people do make decisions according to cognitive processes seeking reward and avoiding punishment. The quality of decisions made and outcomes experienced are determined by a person’s knowledge base and by both genetically acquired and experientially developed personal attributes.

 

We have, then, the paradox that the better a person understands the determinants of human behavior, including the absence of free will;  and the stronger a person’s knowledge base and personal aptitude for making qualitatively beneficial decisions;  that person then acts with an informed assertiveness that we associate with free will.

 

Such a person may be said to be acting with a level of self-awareness that we call consciousness. 

 

The higher the level of consciousness, the more productively interactive a person can be with the environmental determinants of human behavior:

 

The best ship captain can never determine the motion of the seas;  but knowledge and developed ability give the captain opportunity to steer the ship in such a way as to produce the best possible experience for that captain and for all of those aboard.

 

The above analysis follows the best information available from behaviorist, neural, and cognitive psychology in assessing the determinants of human behavior.

 

Philosophers, theologians, artists, novelists, and other creative human beings produce much of metaphorical value that may be recorded as experience for neural evaluation;  such intellectually and artistically creative people are not as well positioned to explain human behavior as are behaviorist psychologists and neuroscientists, but their creations inspire and inform those who more precisely assess why people do what they do.

 

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People are only as good as their environment induces them to be.

 

Education is a critical component of every person’s environment.

 

In the perfect society of many years hence, homelife, subnational regions, national conditions, and international circumstances are all conducive to ideal human behavior.  And all of these favorable conditions result largely from the quality of education that has been received, as describe in Article #3 in this edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

 

Having received such an education, citizens of the United States will be knowledgeable across many subject areas of the liberal arts:  mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history (including governments and economies of the past), high-quality literature, and the visual and musical arts.  People will also have gained training a vocation or profession, ready to contribute their talents for the common good.  In vigorous classroom discussions people will have considered the great issues that vexed people in past centuries, reviewed the constituent components of their perfect society, and speculated as to what changes might be necessary to maintain perfection.  And in those energetic discussions, students on their way to becoming superior citizens will have considered the highest  ethical responses to a multitude of life situations.

 

Such a public education will produce citizens who sustain and ensure the continuance of the perfect society, which in turn will perpetuate ideal in people who, as is the case for all human beings, act not according to free will but rather make decisions that they perceive correctly as being the most positively reinforcing. 

 

Ironically, therefore, in clearly realizing that they as individuals they have no free will, people will have moved collectively toward an understanding of the drivers of human behavior that allow them to interact more powerfully with their environment in the creation of societal perfection than if they had clung to the illusion of free will.