Sometimes a fantasy world is the only escape

In my perfect world, no child would need to hunt for food.

No woman would be sexually abused. No pupil would be brutally beaten by her teacher. Police officers would not carry guns. Guns may not be needed at all.

An equal and fair wage would be earned by all. It would no longer be necessary for people, in Oscar Wilde's words, "to be compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading tyranny of want".

People in my perfect world would work at what they love and if not, they would work for a remuneration that does not leave them feeling bitter.

Nor would they feel it is their cosmic right to earn unreasonable amounts of money. Companies would exist not for profit only, but for the altruistic desire to employ as many people as happily as possible.

But in my real world none of this is true. Miners demanding a wage increase died in a hail of bullets fired by policemen. I learnt last week of executive salaries that were so dumbfounding in their enormity, it's hard to imagine how anybody, even those with the most fertile imaginations, could find a way to spend such money. For what could they possibly need these sums of money? Wilde's answer is status and ambition.

"In a community like ours, where property confers immense distinction, social position, honour, respect, titles and other pleasant things of the kind, man, being naturally ambitious, makes it his aim to accumulate this property, and goes on wearily and tediously accumulating it long after he has got far more than he wants, or can use, or enjoy, or perhaps even know of," Wilde wrote in 1891.

The tragedy of it all is that we will most likely remain unequal. People value being at the top of the pyramid, in the process making us more unequal.

I know, I know. I sound like a fantasist, a utopian. But don't plans start with fantasies? Don't we need utopias to imagine and then make better worlds?

As our planet becomes increasingly populated, more children will beg at my car door and more wars will be fought over scarce resources. I hate it. I hate having to explain the pictures of the "war" at Marikana my son kept asking about last week, and about which "side" won, and who I was supporting.

A bit of utopia would be a pleasure.