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Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

kirkcenter.org

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Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#11

Post by yters »

petermcneeley wrote: post #6

An article brought to you by an institute that believes in: "There are certain permanent things in society: the health of the family, inherited political institutions that insure a measure of order and justice and freedom, a life of diversity and independence, a life marked by widespread possession of private property. These permanent things guarantee against arbitrary interference by the state. These are all aspects…

Interestingly, utopian projects tend to try and eliminate those things. Perhaps because they guarantee against arbitrary interference by the state.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#12

Post by munk-a »

Zenst wrote: post #4

Politics is a see-saw of right and left policey, swings one way, then over time the objection to that swing grows and you end up swinging the other way. But then, you can see this historically with the two party system, even though you have more than a choice of two. Those two are the majority and the way politics works, it's the majority (however small). So yes, a push to one direction or another will increase and r…

Politics in America are a see-saw of right/left swings... and the see-saw swings back and forth every eight years almost like clockwork, this is because of the American political system though, it's not due to the nature of humanity. America needs to take a serious swing at removing money from politics and giving more voice to third party dissenting opinions, it'll help stabilize the country over the long run and allow for a less partisan/black and white approach.

In America there are socially conservative people that believe the in the right for women's choice in abortion, and there are otherwise socially liberal people who believe in removing that right, these people are left voiceless to the benefit of the two entrenched parties and end up see-sawing back and forth between who has been the least terrible recently.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#13

Post by Buldak »

petermcneeley wrote: post #6

An article brought to you by an institute that believes in: "There are certain permanent things in society: the health of the family, inherited political institutions that insure a measure of order and justice and freedom, a life of diversity and independence, a life marked by widespread possession of private property. These permanent things guarantee against arbitrary interference by the state. These are all aspects…

Yes, it's hard not to think that the subtext here is a kind of quietism in service to the status quo.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#14

Post by davidivadavid »

This amounts to arguing about definitions and it doesn't seem like the article proposes anything of real substance.

In the introduction to The Utopia Reader, a compendium of utopian and dystopian literature, the following definitions are given:

* Utopianism—social dreaming

* Utopia—a nonexistent society described in detail and normally located in time and space

* Eutopia or positive utopia—a utopia that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as considerably better than the society in which the reader lived

* Dystopia or negative utopia—a utopia that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as considerably worse than the society in which the reader lived

* Utopian satire—a utopia that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as a criticism of the existing society

* Anti-utopia—a utopia that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as a criticism of utopianism or of some particular eutopia

* Critical utopia—a utopia that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as better than contemporary society but with difficult problems that the described society may or may not be able to solve, and which takes a critical view of the utopian genre

Given that utopias are speculative explorations of possible futures and societies, it seems hard to reconcile that with questioning whether reality is a utopia or a dystopia, as the author does here. That just doesn't type check, and then the article is more about the author telling us about various things he considers dystopian.

For a more interesting take on the concept of utopia, I highly recommend the Fun Theory sequence on LessWrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K4aGvLnHvYgX9pZHS/the-fun-th...

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#16

Post by Zenst »

munk-a wrote: post #12
Zenst wrote: post #4

Politics is a see-saw of right and left policey, swings one way, then over time the objection to that swing grows and you end up swinging the other way. But then, you can see this historically with the two party system, even though you have more than a choice of two. Those two are the majority and the way politics works, it's the majority (however small). So yes, a push to one direction or another will increase and r…

Politics in America are a see-saw of right/left swings... and the see-saw swings back and forth every eight years almost like clockwork, this is because of the American political system though, it's not due to the nature of humanity. America needs to take a serious swing at removing money from politics and giving more voice to third party dissenting opinions, it'll help stabilize the country over the long run and all…

You see exactly the same over here in the UK, and in many other countries. But then that's the case with many voting systems alas. Which needs to evolve beyond a token X in a limited choice every N years. It's like a carpenter going to do a job, and only allowing him to pick from either a hammer or a saw and he has to stick with using only that same tool for years and future jobs in that time. That's politics today alas.

Though when we keep failing to produce a simple electronic voting system, a problem shared around the World. You wonder if perhaps the World could come together and group design an open source solution that the people of the World could audit and help improve, until we all become happy. That would be a start.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#17

Post by afpx »

A Dystopia is only recognizable when juxtaposed against a state that is much different from it. That is, a Dystopia would develop over time, with many not even recognizing the gradual changes; it's not something that develops suddenly. For example, it's not hard to imagine that our world could be considered a Dystopia to some who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago. Or, it could even be considered a Utopia to others. Utopias and Dystopias are only interesting as thought experiments to imagine what Humans could be possible about. There's never actually been one or nor will there ever be one.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#18

Post by viburnum »

Procedural arguments like this are silly. You have to judge things by what they are substantively. Feudalism and slavery were not utopian projects but they were clearly brutal. Nordic social democracy consciously set out to create a decent society for all and largely succeeded. I don't know what game the author is playing.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#19

Post by stcredzero »

Back in my childhood, if you told me that one day, there would be more games of any imaginable genre, more than what you would know what to do with, of a higher visual and production quality than I'd ever imagined, I would have thought that to be a kind of utopia. Now in 2019, I find it to be somewhat dystopic. (See also, the "Paradox of Choice.")

A century before cars, if you told people that a commonplace device could quickly and inexpensively take you to the very store or house you wanted to go to at speeds up to a mile a minute, that would sound utopian. Now we know such systems have serious downsides.

Be careful what you ask for. You may get it. Or, as I put it, into any complex system whatsoever, some suckage must come. Solving one problem either exposes or creates another.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#20

Post by alexashka »

jd007 wrote: post #5

More generally speaking, when you optimize on a particular set of metrics to the extreme (when it comes to social issues this is what utopias try to do), you will inevitably cause another set of metrics to be correspondingly de-optimized to the extreme (which can be qualified as dystopian). There is no way to optimize everything simultaneously because many things are fundamentally inversely correlated with each other…

Utopias are not entities that do anything. It's a word, created to describe an imaginary island, by a fiction writer. [0]

Who is optimizing metrics to an extreme, where did you get that definition?

[0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/utopia

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