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Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia

bostonreview.net

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Re: Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia

#11

Post by dllthomas »

ideonexus wrote: post #4

The remains of the 1939 Worlds Fair are found in the Bronx. I took a subway there once on a visit to NY. I was both inspired by the science center there, and dismayed to find it surrounded by antiquated residences and roads. It was like a vision of the future in a garden surrounded by the mundane suburban sprawl of reality. Futurism is still the closest thing I have to a religion, and so I admire that in Bel Geddes v…

Yeah, Omelas immediately came to mind for me as well, on seeing the title. Rather more literal than what was intended in the article, I think.

Re: Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia

#12

Post by eli_gottlieb »

ideonexus wrote: post #4

The remains of the 1939 Worlds Fair are found in the Bronx. I took a subway there once on a visit to NY. I was both inspired by the science center there, and dismayed to find it surrounded by antiquated residences and roads. It was like a vision of the future in a garden surrounded by the mundane suburban sprawl of reality. Futurism is still the closest thing I have to a religion, and so I admire that in Bel Geddes v…

And insofar as Omelas is trying to make a point about life in general, history in general, potential societies or lives in general, it is simply reactionary. Who is even Ursula Le Guin to tell us that everything must have a seed of evil in its core?

Re: Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia

#13

Post by ashark »

ideonexus wrote: post #4

The remains of the 1939 Worlds Fair are found in the Bronx. I took a subway there once on a visit to NY. I was both inspired by the science center there, and dismayed to find it surrounded by antiquated residences and roads. It was like a vision of the future in a garden surrounded by the mundane suburban sprawl of reality. Futurism is still the closest thing I have to a religion, and so I admire that in Bel Geddes v…

Our standard of living depends on a great deal of the suffering of others.

Most of nature is essentially a constant living horror movie for all participants, which we just barely sit outside of (as long as food remains plentiful and the TV is on). So was the human experience for most people, most of the time we've been on this planet. Still is for many people.

The truest understanding of conscious, mortal existence in this universe, and of the course of our species in it, may well be something akin to cosmic horror.

Sanity and the ability to "function" in society mostly depend on temporarily forgetting these things.

Re: Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia

#14

Post by Roritharr »

ideonexus wrote: post #4

The remains of the 1939 Worlds Fair are found in the Bronx. I took a subway there once on a visit to NY. I was both inspired by the science center there, and dismayed to find it surrounded by antiquated residences and roads. It was like a vision of the future in a garden surrounded by the mundane suburban sprawl of reality. Futurism is still the closest thing I have to a religion, and so I admire that in Bel Geddes v…

"Futurism is still the closest thing I have to a religion"

Thank you, I just learned something about myself.

Re: Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia

#15

Post by cestith »

Noos wrote: post #9
cestith wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's dominated by a single player then the information isn't actually free. Hence rather than anarchists we get the neoanarcbists fighting against tight control of the information rather than fighting control over the people themselves. We'll also have neoluddites who are fine with physical machines leveraging human labor to great heights but who fear and rise up against expert systems and machine learning that th…

It probably won't be like that. Those in charge of the utopia generally never foresee the dystopian aspects well. Remember how people worried about overpopulation, until we found out westernization brings declining and even sub-replacement fertility. More likely we'll be like some soviet socialist nightmare. All packed into dirty, ugly cities, eating our hummus and drinking our water as we are shuttled from our four…

I'm not certain what specific symptoms could come about, but if there's one constant in human nature it's that people will find short-term reasons to oppose things no matter the long-term goals.

Re: Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia

#16

Post by Retra »

api wrote: post #7

A utopia is a local maximum. Intelligent beings, having the ability to model and traverse fitness landscapes, eventually figure this out.

But a global maximum is also a local maximum, so what good does it do you to figure that out?

Re: Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia

#17

Post by nnfy »

anigbrowl wrote: post #8
cestith wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's dominated by a single player then the information isn't actually free. Hence rather than anarchists we get the neoanarcbists fighting against tight control of the information rather than fighting control over the people themselves. We'll also have neoluddites who are fine with physical machines leveraging human labor to great heights but who fear and rise up against expert systems and machine learning that th…

I am skeptical of ML not because it will automate away human control of production (which would be quite a good thing in many respects) but because it is likely to reinforce arbitrary or implicit human biases while being sold as the epitome of rational objectivity. A lot of technologists I meet are socially and culturally illiterate and do not seem competent to implement such systems. I would further argue that emplo…

>A lot of technologists I meet are socially and culturally illiterate and do not seem competent to implement such systems

And who are you to make such a judgement?

What about the case that fear of bias is used as a tool of control? Perhaps in such a society, these "culturally illiterate" developers would be better suited to create a more minimally biased system.

Re: Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia

#18

Post by bertlequant »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #12
ideonexus wrote: post #4

The remains of the 1939 Worlds Fair are found in the Bronx. I took a subway there once on a visit to NY. I was both inspired by the science center there, and dismayed to find it surrounded by antiquated residences and roads. It was like a vision of the future in a garden surrounded by the mundane suburban sprawl of reality. Futurism is still the closest thing I have to a religion, and so I admire that in Bel Geddes v…

And insofar as Omelas is trying to make a point about life in general, history in general, potential societies or lives in general , it is simply reactionary. Who is even Ursula Le Guin to tell us that everything must have a seed of evil in its core?

It's been a while since I read that short story, but the message I took from it wasn't that there was a seed of evil in the society, but that no matter what society or system exists, there will always be those that cannot fit into it. Perhaps someone considered a failure in one society, would be a "king" in another. If someone doesn't have something that society values, perhaps it will be hard to coexist in that environment, causing them to leave or become something deemed worse. Maybe Le Guin had other motives with her story. Maybe Utopia is just a step towards the next Utopia, which will itself be another step, due to an inherent lack of satisfaction. There are many ways to interpret the story, which is why I have always enjoyed it.

Re: Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia

#19

Post by m1sta_ »

ashark wrote: post #13
ideonexus wrote: post #4

The remains of the 1939 Worlds Fair are found in the Bronx. I took a subway there once on a visit to NY. I was both inspired by the science center there, and dismayed to find it surrounded by antiquated residences and roads. It was like a vision of the future in a garden surrounded by the mundane suburban sprawl of reality. Futurism is still the closest thing I have to a religion, and so I admire that in Bel Geddes v…

Our standard of living depends on a great deal of the suffering of others. Most of nature is essentially a constant living horror movie for all participants, which we just barely sit outside of (as long as food remains plentiful and the TV is on). So was the human experience for most people, most of the time we've been on this planet. Still is for many people. The truest understanding of conscious, mortal existence i…

I disagree. There is nothing fundamental about our existence which mandates suffering. That provides hope.

Re: Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia

#20

Post by danharaj »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #12
ideonexus wrote: post #4

The remains of the 1939 Worlds Fair are found in the Bronx. I took a subway there once on a visit to NY. I was both inspired by the science center there, and dismayed to find it surrounded by antiquated residences and roads. It was like a vision of the future in a garden surrounded by the mundane suburban sprawl of reality. Futurism is still the closest thing I have to a religion, and so I admire that in Bel Geddes v…

And insofar as Omelas is trying to make a point about life in general, history in general, potential societies or lives in general , it is simply reactionary. Who is even Ursula Le Guin to tell us that everything must have a seed of evil in its core?

I don't think that's le Guin's thesis. The Dispossessed is her book that explores the nature of utopia, its subtitle is "an ambiguous utopia" even. I think the focus of omelas is the juxtaposition of outward peace and prosperity and internal brutality. The key to the book is how people react to seeing the rotten core of their society. It's not a thesis on what all societies look like-- le Guin has constructed many complex, lifelike societies that don't have such brutally evil defects, but a kind of society that sounds awfully familiar. The point of this story is how one reacts to the revelation of the society's nature, both within the narrative and externally in the reader. Who walks away from Omelas?
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