Perhaps it used to be the case that people had trouble imagining a utopia, but here's two solid utopias (or near enough) I've encountered in fiction: the entirety of Ian M Bank's "Culture"; and the second chapter of Cory Doctorow's "Walkaway".
Also, there's the perennial example of Burning Man (and related festivals) - here's an example of people creating happiness that has little to do with the removal of scarcities, and plenty to do with the addition of abundance.
To go off @mactintyre's selection: if "nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary", well, seems to me that's a failure of imagination and experience more than an incapacity in humans or reality.
"It won’t do to say to a man, ‘You can create. Do so.’ It is much safer to wait for a man to say, ‘I can create, and I will do so whether you wish it or not.’"
These are the people that, when all scarcity has been eliminated, take that bland contentedness which results and turn into something more.
Not to say the Orwell is wrong - he's on the nose: "Happiness hitherto has been a by-product, and for all we know it may always remain so. The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood."
Banks's Culture works in particular because Banks mainly wrote about contact (friendly or otherwise) with non-Culture societies. The general thesis still holds: man is not truly content without conflict and challenge. Hard SF provides a way for utopias to not stagnate and become boring: once humans have secured long life, prosperity, and harmony for themselves, they seek adventure in the big wide universe outside their dominion.
This also applies to conceptions of heaven, the best description of which I found in the movie Defending Your Life, in which the worthy deceased ascend to become "citizens of the universe" and tackle bigger, cosmic challenges with their vastly increased intellect.
> Also, there's the perennial example of Burning Man
Which is a temporary outlet for a select very affluent few Westerners (non-affluent person wouldn't even be able to afford transportation and supplies, not mentioning $500 entrance fee) who drive there for a week (increasingly accompanied by air-conditioned tents and personal chefs), frolic in costumes or negligee, burn stuff down for fun and return to their regular lives. A lot of fun, but I can't see how any sane person can see it as a model for a society.
> The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood
Somehow in the real socialism it happens in exactly the opposite way (the famous joke is that under capitalism man exploits man, and under socialism it's the other way around). Socialism always produces the nomenklatura (note that I have to use a Russian word for it, because it is so inherent to the largest Socialist experiment in history) and the privilege networks (another Russian word, "blat") which create a complex network of inequality and privileged access to formally "equal" benefits. In a capitalist society, most inequality is monetary - through class, sex and race play its role, ultimately money usually overcomes most of it (especially in a modern society, where things like open racism are frowned upon). In a socialist one, not only money can't do much without privilege, if you are outside the privilege network, the mere attempt to make this money (or otherwise route around the privilege network) would get you imprisoned or executed. Some brotherhood it is.
> revolutions happen not because of poverty but through the process of a society becoming poorer.
I don't think it's the case that most of them start because the society as a whole had become poorer, but because some particular segment has, while others accumulate wealth. It's not really worth having a revolution if there's nothing of value to seize. A lot of revolutions started as tax revolts by the wealthy, in fact -- the french revolution and english civil war come to mind. It was only after central authority collapsed that events outpaced the initial instigators.
Beautiful language: "Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. ... when [Swift] tries to create a superman, [he] leaves one with the impression the very last he can have intended that the stinking Yahoos had in them more possibility of development than the enlightened Houyhnhnms."
At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha [Alexander Berkman], a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.
I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things."
Note: I am responding to comments here, haven't read the article yet.
Utopia is not possible because the desires and wants of millions of people (focusing on a country) don't overlap with everyone else's 100%, or sometimes not at all. We also don't live long enough to truly appreciate what we have today, as I'm sure people from hundreds of years ago would think today's society is a utopia: (basically) infinite potable cold and hot water, heat and air conditioning, electricity, sewage removal, relative privacy, trash removal, modern medicine, fast, cheap transportation, a wide variety of fresh food all year round, internet... I could go on.
So maybe utopia is genuine appreciation on a personal level for what one has. You can't do this without contrast, and contrast is best developed from real experiences. Maybe one could spend a couple weeks out in the woods with canned food and a stream for water (and no electronics except a flashlight), and come back with a new found understanding for the amount of convenience and comfort one has in this modern life.
Here you have a picture of the world as Wells would like to see it or thinks he would like to see it. It is a world whose keynotes are enlightened hedonism and scientific curiosity. All the evils and miseries we now suffer from have vanished. Ignorance, war, poverty, dirt, disease, frustration, hunger, fear, overwork, superstition all vanished...But is there anyone who actually wants to live in a Wellsian Utopia? On the contrary, not to live in a world like that, not to wake up in a hygenic garden suburb infested by naked schoolmarms, has actually become a conscious political motive.
This is a neat summary of the ideological contradiction of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. Everyone wants edginess with safety, but no one wants the Disnified, safe version of edginess. We want the hard-nosed meritocracy of innovation, technical prowess, and commerce, but we don't want to let our children risk even the failure of losing in sports.
All ‘favourable’ Utopias seem to be alike in postulating perfection while being unable to suggest happiness.
'Favorable' Utopias are like Mary Sue characters or fanfics without real conflict. There is no interest without real risk and real adversity. Even Iain M. Bank's Culture universe has imperfections, conflict, and death, even if there are untold trillions in it living idyllic lives of enlightened hedonism and curiosity.
Humans can't really tell the difference between real and simulated risk.
Online games are incredibly compelling for the people who play them, but they're a lot less risky than taking part in a real war and risking real blood and real body parts.
I don't see why we couldn't sublimate games like economics in the same way. The experience of winning would be almost identical, but simulations wouldn't have to be zero sum in the way that meatspace acquisition games usually are.
There's a fundamental conflict between conceptual Utopia/Heaven and the law of supply and demand. All literary conceptions of a utopia rely on abundance of some good that is scarce in the author's time. Usually ignoring that its ubiquity makes it tend toward zero value.
Here's my stab at Utopia, but it requires a belief that Knowledge is infinite:
Utopia is a state of unhindered, continual learning at your own chosen pace.
"Utopia is a state of unhindered, continual learning at your own chosen pace."
That's a very specific view of Utopia that I suggest most regular folk would not agree with, moreover, it's a bit odds with metaphysical kind of utopias from antiquity.
Knowledge is ultimately still material, not necessarily enlightening. It's part of the dualist 'trap' that keeps us focused on what's right in front of our noses, 'playing some game' engaged in materiality. To me, bits of knowledge are just bits of lego blocks, tools for helping us describe experience.
Remember in Abrahamic terms were 'cast out of Eden/Heaven' literally for eating from the 'Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil', i.e. the start of dualism and this never ending thirst for knowledge which distracts us from simply 'being'. You see this in eastern philosophies as well with 'attachment' to things, including knowledge.
But I do like your point about supply/demand perhaps (think of it especially in terms of social status, not material things especially) and constantly needing something, in your case, knowledge/learning. Neat thought.
>Utopia is a state of unhindered, continual learning at your own chosen pace
Isn't that just your reformulation of the same sort of traditional definition of Utopia? You value relaxed/continual learning which in some way is missing your life, so therefore that is your Utopia. :)
The U.S. founding fathers had another definition which is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is very individualized. Suggests it is relevant to the one as opposed to relevant to the masses. Very anti-elitist on its own merit.
> Utopia is a state of unhindered, continual learning at your own chosen pace.
That's pretty darn close to a solid Christian perspective on heaven, where God himself is the one whose infinite love, creativity, and power bring unending joy to his people -- and knowing more about him (there's infinite content to be taken in) becomes the pursuit that never gets old. He's the only reason heaven won't be dull after 10^x years -- both knowing him personally and enjoying and learning about (via science, etc.) the new things he will do.
> Utopia is a state of unhindered, continual learning at your own chosen pace.
This is similar to an argument Oscar Wilde made in The Soul of Man under Socialism, although he frames it, as you might expect, around art and the artist.
I find it a little surprising that Wilde does not come up in Orwell's essay.
If there's a conflict between sustainable enjoyment and constraints of reality, then maybe utopia / heaven is euphoric mania. Certainly fiction has explored the idea of psychotherapeutic utopia.
This article focuses on a utopia of worldy pleasures, and goes on to explain why such a place would be a pretty boring place to live. But that’s just human nature: we’re never permently satisfied with what we have. The only way that we feel happiness from these things is if we get more of whatever it is, and that’s kind of impossible in a utopia. However, I still think there’s a way to get satisfaction out of a world like this: through learning. Even if we, at some point, discover everything there is to know, I think it’s still possible to find joy, since there people will be born unaware of this knowledge. Perhaps we might even mark a lifetime by the amount of time it takes to learn everything.
"This Christmas Day, thousands of men will be bleeding to death in the Russian snows, or drowning in icy waters, or blowing one another to pieces on swampy islands of the Pacific; homeless children will be scrabbling for food among the wreckage of German cities." - Should be some context for how completely alien the world of the writer is to us now.
"This Christmas Day, hundreds of men will be bleeding to death in the Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan sands, or blowing one another to pieces in the Mexican drug wars; homeless children will be begging in the streets of one of the wealthiest nations in history".
I know that it's not fair to compare the death rates today to that during the height of WWII, but _completely_ alien? That seems extreme to me. There's still plenty of suffering, and while it may not be quite so universal as it was during the 1940s, it's still prevalent enough that the essay should be relevant today.
Judging by the list of "Ignorance, war, poverty, dirt, disease, frustration, hunger, fear, overwork, superstition all vanished." it seems many of us are living in a utopia yet we still aren't satisfied.
Always on somewhere on this planet, and always a threat when the relations between yours and other nations become tense.
> dirt, disease, frustration
All ever present, and experienced by everyone to great extent.
> hunger
In the western "utopia", it's usually a job mishap or a big medical bill away.
> fear, overwork
Ever present and experienced by most of us.
> superstition
Displayed by half of the population, if not more.
Even if we happen to live without experiencing most of these for a while, it's only the most ignorant that don't realize how fragile such situation is.
Fear is everywhere nowadays, it seems to power capitalism or at least is encouraged by it. I suspect the reason is that actual capitalism (as opposed to the ideal construct) is more based on Social Darwinism and capital accumulation than on trading for the mutual benefit of all market participants.
He never really gets to the point in the title about not believing in fun
He says reasonably enough
>...not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another.
But the fact you don't want an aircon paradise doesn't have to mean no to fun. Why not party / go surfing / whatever seems fun?
Seems like a good counterpoint to the silly, loaded argument of "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas", which boils down to "Can you imagine a perfect, happy, society and take that seriously?"
The answer is that few people really can, even among those people who think society can be perfected.
The article says a number of things about the Christian Heaven. But fails to recognize the premise is that people who go there are changed. On the inside. There is peace, on the outside, because there is peace in the heart, on the inside. There is contentment, because it is on the inside. There isn't a lust for power and control over other people's lives. Nor any shortage of resources. And the biggest thing described as great about Heaven is being in God's presence. Not material things or power.
The problem with all other utopias is that they seem to imagine something that people create without a change on the inside. People have tried to create ideal kingdoms for millennia. The problem is that its seeds of destruction are on our insides. It is us that is the problem.
1943 was the same year that Maslow first presented his hierarchy of needs. I believe that it goes much further to explain the requirements for human happiness.
Lest the headline imply otherwise, Orwell was a proponent of democratic socialism: “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”
I never liked the formulation that utopia is not worth it because people lack the creativity to imagine what could be done for fun in it. It's like we've never tried but hey here's an explanation as to why you shouldn't want it! It should really not be a surprise that imagination is lacking here because for a lot of people, happiness is just defined as having things other people don't have, because that's simply how we came out to be wired and because we continue to live in a world that follows those principles.
Until those principles have been modified, you have no idea what a utopia is and would look like. This has never, ever, been the case, not in any society you can think of. You might think you live in some super nice societies but you have never escaped those principles.
Utopia isn't about making people not have toothaches or whatever anymore. That's not the point. Utopia is about letting people live in a manner that they would want, not in the manner, currently, prescribed by the law of the powerful and the powerless.
But if you really think that if suddenly your problems being solved, you'd find nothing to do, you are not thinking hard enough, and you are already too wrapped up in the thinking of having things other people don't have. It's a mindset problem of people born into a world working on that principle and it's a hard one to rewrite.
> Utopia is about letting people live in a manner that they would want
One of the lessons I learnt from Huxley's Brave New World is that this phrasing is very ambiguous and the meaning of utopia is more complicated, if the word is indeed meaningful. The people in BNW live in the manner that they desire, but not many would call it a utopia. Sure, those desires themselves are the result of genetic and environmental conditioning, but so are ours!
It seems to me that Huxley is saying that some element of struggle and overcoming of adversity is necessary for human flourishing.
>Utopia is about letting people live in a manner that they would want, not in the manner, currently, prescribed by the law.
This is so unrealistic. If the manner I want to live is hunting and killing other people for sport, but the only thing restraining me right now is the law (such an inconvenient thing is the law), then most people would say laws are preferable to utopia. Even with laws people do crazy hurtful things, I can't even imagine what things would be like if there were not laws and the threat of punishment.
I've always thought of Utopia being peace insofar as a society that cannot harm an individual, and cannot allow individuals to harm other individuals, which I suppose aligns pretty closely to Orwell's notion of "brotherhood".
Such simple principles would solve the issues of:
* racism
* homophobia
* moral indignation
* xenophobia
* extreme economic disparity, such that those with means are actively holding down or holding back those without
* lack of access to health services
If we solve all of those things, we'll still have problems. We'll still have people disagreeing, people fighting. People struggling. What we might also have, however, is the desire to also work with others, rather than go to our deaths over issues because of such potent underlying bitterness.
The human race is flawed enough as it is. We don't need manifest disagreements spawned by religion or dogma, for instance, to fuel the flames.
This is a great comment, and I just wanted to add that imagining what a fictional high tech utopia would look like was what inspired Iain M. Banks to write the culture series.
For anyone interested in tech and the far future its a must read.
It should really not be a surprise that imagination is lacking here because for a lot of people, happiness is just defined as having things other people don't have
The psychological research suggests that this is how people are wired up. Just as we're wired up to consume fat and sugar whenever we come across it, we're basically wired up to start marauding our neighbors if they're way richer than we are.
[+] [-] RangerScience|7 years ago|reply
Also, there's the perennial example of Burning Man (and related festivals) - here's an example of people creating happiness that has little to do with the removal of scarcities, and plenty to do with the addition of abundance.
To go off @mactintyre's selection: if "nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary", well, seems to me that's a failure of imagination and experience more than an incapacity in humans or reality.
You could also look to Asimov's "Profession" (http://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html) - again, while not exactly a Utopia, it's decently close - and more importantly:
"It won’t do to say to a man, ‘You can create. Do so.’ It is much safer to wait for a man to say, ‘I can create, and I will do so whether you wish it or not.’"
These are the people that, when all scarcity has been eliminated, take that bland contentedness which results and turn into something more.
Not to say the Orwell is wrong - he's on the nose: "Happiness hitherto has been a by-product, and for all we know it may always remain so. The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood."
[+] [-] bitwize|7 years ago|reply
This also applies to conceptions of heaven, the best description of which I found in the movie Defending Your Life, in which the worthy deceased ascend to become "citizens of the universe" and tackle bigger, cosmic challenges with their vastly increased intellect.
[+] [-] smsm42|7 years ago|reply
Which is a temporary outlet for a select very affluent few Westerners (non-affluent person wouldn't even be able to afford transportation and supplies, not mentioning $500 entrance fee) who drive there for a week (increasingly accompanied by air-conditioned tents and personal chefs), frolic in costumes or negligee, burn stuff down for fun and return to their regular lives. A lot of fun, but I can't see how any sane person can see it as a model for a society.
> The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood
Somehow in the real socialism it happens in exactly the opposite way (the famous joke is that under capitalism man exploits man, and under socialism it's the other way around). Socialism always produces the nomenklatura (note that I have to use a Russian word for it, because it is so inherent to the largest Socialist experiment in history) and the privilege networks (another Russian word, "blat") which create a complex network of inequality and privileged access to formally "equal" benefits. In a capitalist society, most inequality is monetary - through class, sex and race play its role, ultimately money usually overcomes most of it (especially in a modern society, where things like open racism are frowned upon). In a socialist one, not only money can't do much without privilege, if you are outside the privilege network, the mere attempt to make this money (or otherwise route around the privilege network) would get you imprisoned or executed. Some brotherhood it is.
[+] [-] apo|7 years ago|reply
It would seem that human beings are not able to describe, nor perhaps to imagine, happiness except in terms of contrast. ...
I wonder if this also works in reverse: humans are incapable of describing or imagining unhappiness except in terms of contrast.
This reminds me of a line that goes something like: revolutions happen not because of poverty but through the process of a society becoming poorer.
[+] [-] empath75|7 years ago|reply
I don't think it's the case that most of them start because the society as a whole had become poorer, but because some particular segment has, while others accumulate wealth. It's not really worth having a revolution if there's nothing of value to seize. A lot of revolutions started as tax revolts by the wealthy, in fact -- the french revolution and english civil war come to mind. It was only after central authority collapsed that events outpaced the initial instigators.
[+] [-] squarefoot|7 years ago|reply
Which is probably why successful oppressive regimes (the ones that don't look as such) boil their frogs very slowly.
[+] [-] mactintyre|7 years ago|reply
Beautiful language: "Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. ... when [Swift] tries to create a superman, [he] leaves one with the impression the very last he can have intended that the stinking Yahoos had in them more possibility of development than the enlightened Houyhnhnms."
[+] [-] smacktoward|7 years ago|reply
I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things."
-- Emma Goldman, Living My Life (1931) http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/goldman/Features/danceswithfemin...
[+] [-] eezurr|7 years ago|reply
Utopia is not possible because the desires and wants of millions of people (focusing on a country) don't overlap with everyone else's 100%, or sometimes not at all. We also don't live long enough to truly appreciate what we have today, as I'm sure people from hundreds of years ago would think today's society is a utopia: (basically) infinite potable cold and hot water, heat and air conditioning, electricity, sewage removal, relative privacy, trash removal, modern medicine, fast, cheap transportation, a wide variety of fresh food all year round, internet... I could go on.
So maybe utopia is genuine appreciation on a personal level for what one has. You can't do this without contrast, and contrast is best developed from real experiences. Maybe one could spend a couple weeks out in the woods with canned food and a stream for water (and no electronics except a flashlight), and come back with a new found understanding for the amount of convenience and comfort one has in this modern life.
[+] [-] stcredzero|7 years ago|reply
This is a neat summary of the ideological contradiction of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. Everyone wants edginess with safety, but no one wants the Disnified, safe version of edginess. We want the hard-nosed meritocracy of innovation, technical prowess, and commerce, but we don't want to let our children risk even the failure of losing in sports.
All ‘favourable’ Utopias seem to be alike in postulating perfection while being unable to suggest happiness.
'Favorable' Utopias are like Mary Sue characters or fanfics without real conflict. There is no interest without real risk and real adversity. Even Iain M. Bank's Culture universe has imperfections, conflict, and death, even if there are untold trillions in it living idyllic lives of enlightened hedonism and curiosity.
[+] [-] TheOtherHobbes|7 years ago|reply
Online games are incredibly compelling for the people who play them, but they're a lot less risky than taking part in a real war and risking real blood and real body parts.
I don't see why we couldn't sublimate games like economics in the same way. The experience of winning would be almost identical, but simulations wouldn't have to be zero sum in the way that meatspace acquisition games usually are.
[+] [-] pokemongoaway|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ballenf|7 years ago|reply
Here's my stab at Utopia, but it requires a belief that Knowledge is infinite:
Utopia is a state of unhindered, continual learning at your own chosen pace.
[+] [-] sonnyblarney|7 years ago|reply
That's a very specific view of Utopia that I suggest most regular folk would not agree with, moreover, it's a bit odds with metaphysical kind of utopias from antiquity.
Knowledge is ultimately still material, not necessarily enlightening. It's part of the dualist 'trap' that keeps us focused on what's right in front of our noses, 'playing some game' engaged in materiality. To me, bits of knowledge are just bits of lego blocks, tools for helping us describe experience.
Remember in Abrahamic terms were 'cast out of Eden/Heaven' literally for eating from the 'Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil', i.e. the start of dualism and this never ending thirst for knowledge which distracts us from simply 'being'. You see this in eastern philosophies as well with 'attachment' to things, including knowledge.
But I do like your point about supply/demand perhaps (think of it especially in terms of social status, not material things especially) and constantly needing something, in your case, knowledge/learning. Neat thought.
[+] [-] macspoofing|7 years ago|reply
Isn't that just your reformulation of the same sort of traditional definition of Utopia? You value relaxed/continual learning which in some way is missing your life, so therefore that is your Utopia. :)
[+] [-] larrydag|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TimTheTinker|7 years ago|reply
That's pretty darn close to a solid Christian perspective on heaven, where God himself is the one whose infinite love, creativity, and power bring unending joy to his people -- and knowing more about him (there's infinite content to be taken in) becomes the pursuit that never gets old. He's the only reason heaven won't be dull after 10^x years -- both knowing him personally and enjoying and learning about (via science, etc.) the new things he will do.
[+] [-] klenwell|7 years ago|reply
This is similar to an argument Oscar Wilde made in The Soul of Man under Socialism, although he frames it, as you might expect, around art and the artist.
I find it a little surprising that Wilde does not come up in Orwell's essay.
A pretty good summary of Wilde's case here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_Man_under_Socialis...
[+] [-] dctoedt|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] orwellsadvocate|7 years ago|reply
I know that it's not fair to compare the death rates today to that during the height of WWII, but _completely_ alien? That seems extreme to me. There's still plenty of suffering, and while it may not be quite so universal as it was during the 1940s, it's still prevalent enough that the essay should be relevant today.
[+] [-] tonyedgecombe|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|7 years ago|reply
Ever present, if you look around.
> war
Always on somewhere on this planet, and always a threat when the relations between yours and other nations become tense.
> dirt, disease, frustration
All ever present, and experienced by everyone to great extent.
> hunger
In the western "utopia", it's usually a job mishap or a big medical bill away.
> fear, overwork
Ever present and experienced by most of us.
> superstition
Displayed by half of the population, if not more.
Even if we happen to live without experiencing most of these for a while, it's only the most ignorant that don't realize how fragile such situation is.
[+] [-] fucking_tragedy|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tim333|7 years ago|reply
He says reasonably enough
>...not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another.
But the fact you don't want an aircon paradise doesn't have to mean no to fun. Why not party / go surfing / whatever seems fun?
[+] [-] badcede|7 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bKW7JkHKm8
[+] [-] all_usernames|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Semiapies|7 years ago|reply
The answer is that few people really can, even among those people who think society can be perfected.
[+] [-] DannyB2|7 years ago|reply
The article says a number of things about the Christian Heaven. But fails to recognize the premise is that people who go there are changed. On the inside. There is peace, on the outside, because there is peace in the heart, on the inside. There is contentment, because it is on the inside. There isn't a lust for power and control over other people's lives. Nor any shortage of resources. And the biggest thing described as great about Heaven is being in God's presence. Not material things or power.
The problem with all other utopias is that they seem to imagine something that people create without a change on the inside. People have tried to create ideal kingdoms for millennia. The problem is that its seeds of destruction are on our insides. It is us that is the problem.
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] projektir|7 years ago|reply
Until those principles have been modified, you have no idea what a utopia is and would look like. This has never, ever, been the case, not in any society you can think of. You might think you live in some super nice societies but you have never escaped those principles.
Utopia isn't about making people not have toothaches or whatever anymore. That's not the point. Utopia is about letting people live in a manner that they would want, not in the manner, currently, prescribed by the law of the powerful and the powerless.
But if you really think that if suddenly your problems being solved, you'd find nothing to do, you are not thinking hard enough, and you are already too wrapped up in the thinking of having things other people don't have. It's a mindset problem of people born into a world working on that principle and it's a hard one to rewrite.
[+] [-] n4r9|7 years ago|reply
One of the lessons I learnt from Huxley's Brave New World is that this phrasing is very ambiguous and the meaning of utopia is more complicated, if the word is indeed meaningful. The people in BNW live in the manner that they desire, but not many would call it a utopia. Sure, those desires themselves are the result of genetic and environmental conditioning, but so are ours!
It seems to me that Huxley is saying that some element of struggle and overcoming of adversity is necessary for human flourishing.
[+] [-] irrational|7 years ago|reply
This is so unrealistic. If the manner I want to live is hunting and killing other people for sport, but the only thing restraining me right now is the law (such an inconvenient thing is the law), then most people would say laws are preferable to utopia. Even with laws people do crazy hurtful things, I can't even imagine what things would be like if there were not laws and the threat of punishment.
[+] [-] dclowd9901|7 years ago|reply
Such simple principles would solve the issues of:
* racism
* homophobia
* moral indignation
* xenophobia
* extreme economic disparity, such that those with means are actively holding down or holding back those without
* lack of access to health services
If we solve all of those things, we'll still have problems. We'll still have people disagreeing, people fighting. People struggling. What we might also have, however, is the desire to also work with others, rather than go to our deaths over issues because of such potent underlying bitterness.
The human race is flawed enough as it is. We don't need manifest disagreements spawned by religion or dogma, for instance, to fuel the flames.
[+] [-] psandersen|7 years ago|reply
For anyone interested in tech and the far future its a must read.
[+] [-] stcredzero|7 years ago|reply
The psychological research suggests that this is how people are wired up. Just as we're wired up to consume fat and sugar whenever we come across it, we're basically wired up to start marauding our neighbors if they're way richer than we are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3XYHPAwBzE
[+] [-] lostmsu|7 years ago|reply