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Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun (1943)

orwell.ru

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Re: Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun (1943)

#81

Post by rossdavidh »

orwellsadvocate wrote: post #49
petermcneeley wrote: post #39

"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…

Essay is still exceedingly relevant, but the "completely alien" part is probably that the men doing the bleeding and dying were from the wealthiest societies on the planet. During WW1 and WW2 there was actually more violent death among the wealthy societies than among the poorest. That is extraordinarily different.

Re: Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun (1943)

#82

Post by beat »

yourbandsucks wrote: post #76
e12e wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, gp seem disconcertingly disconnected from the reality of Yemen, Syria or Palestine - just to mention a few places off the top of my head.

Or maybe they have a sense of context. Despite any media hype, the world is more peaceful than ever, and a fewer % of people are living in poverty than ever. Maybe they're exceedingly well connected with reality.

My new favorite factoid... the percentage of people living in extreme poverty (less than $2/day) has dropped from 29% to just 9% in the past 20 years alone. The mind boggles. We've made as much progress against extreme poverty in the past 20 years as the past 20,000 years. Two thirds of it, just gone.

Looking at the angry headlines of the day is a very misleading way of understanding the world.

Re: Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun (1943)

#83

Post by RangerScience »

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.

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."

Re: Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun (1943)

#84

Post by Izkata »

saagarjha wrote: post #22
hexomancer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it alzheimer’s?

No, although that is an interesting thought: selectively forgetting things so you can relearn them later.

The immortals from the webcomic El Goonish Shive do something like this to avoid insanity, passing only important memories into their new lives. It tends to lead to panic (due to half-remembering important things) or unwanted obligations in their next life.

Re: Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun (1943)

#85

Post by petermcneeley »

e12e wrote: post #73
ConceptJunkie wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be alien to us, but there are millions of people for which this describes their reality.

Yeah, gp seem disconcertingly disconnected from the reality of Yemen, Syria or Palestine - just to mention a few places off the top of my head.

I am disconnected from those realities because for me they are not comparable (to me personally or even in general).

The first is scale. WWII scale was massive and considering that WWII was really just WWI-part2 its really just the continuation of the global struggle for power finally ended in ~1991.

Second is personal closeness. My relatives participated in WWII. My life is shaped by its outcome.

Third is ideological. WWII was a battle of world ideology. Fascism, communism, and liberal democracy.

For the places mentioned they do not have the same affect in my life. If those realities took place on a different planet I would not be the wiser.

Re: Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun (1943)

#86

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

stcredzero wrote: post #47

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…

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.

Re: Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun (1943)

#87

Post by beat »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #46
petermcneeley wrote: post #39

"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.

It may be alien to us, but there are millions of people for which this describes their reality.

But millions less than there were even a few decades ago. The world is making progress toward peace, health, safety, and a decent standard of living at an extraordinary pace right now.

This is not to say everything is hunky-dory. But it is to say that this is no longer World War II.

edit: Where do you think all the Syrian and Lebanese restaurants in America came from? Refugees from the collapse of the Ottoman empire post-WWI. It was just as bad then as it is now. But it can get better, and I am totally convinced it will.

Every wave of immigration that made America what it is today came from people fleeing poverty and violence. Hardly anyone emigrates away from a safe, comfortable life with family and friends and familiar sights nearby. In the 19th century, 20% of the population of Sweden came to the US to escape famine. Sweden was 90% illiterate, mired in extreme poverty, with a birth rate above 5. Now, it's... Sweden. The most civilized country in the world.

If Sweden can evolve from an impoverished hellhole to being the epitome of modern civilization in a century, why can't the same thing happen to Syria? Or Sudan? Or Myanmar? I think it can, and it will.

Re: Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun (1943)

#88

Post by cfqycwz »

guelo wrote: post #18
saagarjha wrote: post #10

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…

I would say through making. Making things gives life purpose, something to struggle against and triumph over. And you also get to learn. Learning for learning's sake doesn't give you the sense of purpose as learning in order to make something great .

Marx and others who elaborated on his work developed the notion of alienation under capital—the notion that capitalism really screws up the specific sort of pleasure you describe. The idea, if I'm not messing it up too badly, is that a worker under capitalism encounters the stuff they make as something alien to them—and in fact something that shapes and brings the worker into being rather than the other way around. I know I experienced this phenomenon all the time staring at code on a screen when I was working in tech.

Re: Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun (1943)

#89

Post by stcredzero »

psandersen wrote: post #60
projektir wrote: post #24

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…

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.

But even there, there is conflict, unrequited desire, and death. Even among beings we could regard as godlike in comparison to ourselves. Even among super-people who lack for nothing, who can even choose genders, and who can live hundreds of years or many millennia if so chosen.

Re: Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun (1943)

#90

Post by gnode »

ballenf wrote: post #9

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…

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.
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