Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by tomp » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 8:53 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #100

_bxg1 wrote: post #33

I don't strongly disagree on any particular point, per se, but the fact that the author's thoughts are rooted in a religious worldview felt like it was snuck in there at the end: "Moreover, this world is fallen, so it is by nature flawed...The utopian visions that animate real places...seek to remake humanity and society in someone’s image—and that is not the image of the Creator." For further context, the website it…

From the article: Two key identifying marks of dystopia are social regimentation and an inevitable totalitarianism. "Conform or be cast out." --Rush, Subdivisions, Signals, 1982 "Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences." From the article: Next, dystopia is marked by dehumanization How one tweet can ruin your life | Jon Ronson -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI From the article: The abuse…

Hey, thanks for your comments in this thread. We need more people to speak up against coercion and authoritarianism, especially when committed in the name of the good (looking at you, Left)! I wish I could do more than just upvote and favourite your comments...

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

#152

Post by TomMckenny » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 9:03 AM UTC

panic wrote: post #124

stcredzero wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are talking about people being shunned and gossiped about like it is on par with being kidnapped by armed government agents and confined in a cell. So one is bad stuff on the level of violent terrorists and intelligence agencies, and another is bad stuff on the level of mean girls in high school? No disagreement there. Both of those stink. Then, there's bad on the level of groups of people going around in masks,…

Authoritarianism by definition requires a strong central power. Whatever you're talking about isn't authoritarianism.

Yes, the other is "mob rule" and there are crucial differences. Historically a strongman is summoned as an excuse to end mob rule (real or imagined) resulting in an authoritarian government. Napoleon, Franco Mussolini are some examples.

In the cases cited, a group is over reacting to signals interpreted as historical oppression. It's awful when it happens and unfortunately it always will. Emotions at injustice are going to break windows (and worse) without thinking and sometimes at the wrong target.

Of course the issues are real and need to be discussed and criticized. But fortunately stories like Evergreen State College are rare, certainly not anywhere near the level of 1960s university sit-ins and even those were certainly not a national catastrophe of censorship. And Twitter storms are not oppression, they are just people being wrong on the internet. They are the inevitable result of ridiculously bad platform design.

So while events like Evergreen certainly need to be criticized, the more serious threat is that this is being systematically used by cynical parties in a dangerous way to portray a nation plagued by oppressive mobs who need to be put in line. Excuses that will spread to harsh treatment of protesters and a pattern that has occurred many times in the past.

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

#153

Post by draggnar » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 9:15 AM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #33

I don't strongly disagree on any particular point, per se, but the fact that the author's thoughts are rooted in a religious worldview felt like it was snuck in there at the end: "Moreover, this world is fallen, so it is by nature flawed...The utopian visions that animate real places...seek to remake humanity and society in someone’s image—and that is not the image of the Creator." For further context, the website it…

It's right there in the word. Eu-topia: "Not place". A place that does not exist. Trying to create utopia is futile because by definition it will never exist.

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

#154

Post by _0ffh » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 9:16 AM UTC

ijpoijpoihpiuoh wrote: post #61

philwelch wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nordic social democracy isn’t a utopian idea, though. It’s a progressive idea and an ambitious idea but it only really peeks out slightly from the normal range of market economies with welfare states, especially within Europe. Feudalism and slavery were awful, but don’t come close to the concentrated human misery inflicted by the utopian projects of the 20th century.

> Feudalism and slavery were awful, but don’t come close to the concentrated human misery inflicted by the utopian projects of the 20th century. By that I assume you're largely referring to the Soviet Union and China during the cultural revolution? Yeah sure, those were bad, but it's hard for me to say whether they were particularly better or worse than slavery (at least from the perspective of a slave). Moreover, I…

>I think that the assumption that those 20th century projects failed because they were utopian is unsourced

Yes, but this is not about their eventual failure, but about their Dystopianism, which was part of their programme. Lenin explicitly stated that his "Jacobian party would never reject terror, nor could it do so". Lenin espoused state terror and mass murder, justified by "the greater good". If that is not idealism causing Dystopia right here, I don't know what is.

Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror

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

#155

Post by TomMckenny » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 9:22 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #100

_bxg1 wrote: post #33

I don't strongly disagree on any particular point, per se, but the fact that the author's thoughts are rooted in a religious worldview felt like it was snuck in there at the end: "Moreover, this world is fallen, so it is by nature flawed...The utopian visions that animate real places...seek to remake humanity and society in someone’s image—and that is not the image of the Creator." For further context, the website it…

From the article: Two key identifying marks of dystopia are social regimentation and an inevitable totalitarianism. "Conform or be cast out." --Rush, Subdivisions, Signals, 1982 "Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences." From the article: Next, dystopia is marked by dehumanization How one tweet can ruin your life | Jon Ronson -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI From the article: The abuse…

>People who actually believe in those principles actually try to convince people

Then convince the offenders. Preaching to those who are already outraged or the uninvolved just fans their emotions too and moves further and further away from reasoned discourse.

>because trial by public opinion and media isn't a judicial process

This has indeed been a problem in the US for decades where anyone accused of any crime has their face plastered on the evening news for ratings. Never is there a retraction when released or upon acquittal. Not that it would do any good as the damage is irreparable.

Now that it's starting to happen to powerful people, the issue is finally being raised. I'm going to guess the eventual resolution will be some lawsuit system that makes publishing accusations of the powerful financially impossible while keeping open season on ordinary people.

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

#156

Post by jondubois » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 9:27 AM UTC

There is no utopia. There are always winners and losers. Also, every system has cracks and loopholes which work against meritocracy.

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

#157

Post by arvinsim » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 9:29 AM UTC

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…

TL;DR Everything has tradeoffs. You can't have it all.

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

#158

Post by pimmen » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 9:52 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #118

ijpoijpoihpiuoh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feudalism and slavery were awful, but don’t come close to the concentrated human misery inflicted by the utopian projects of the 20th century. By that I assume you're largely referring to the Soviet Union and China during the cultural revolution? Yeah sure, those were bad, but it's hard for me to say whether they were particularly better or worse than slavery (at least from the perspective of a slave). Moreover, I…

It took centuries for the slave trade to approximate the death toll of communist regimes. Fascism and national socialism were also utopian projects. Under all of these projects, millions of people were enslaved, imprisoned, persecuted, and murdered in vast numbers. I’m not saying the aggregate amount of human misery is the same, but the amount of misery inflicted in a given year was dramatically higher. “Utopian” is…

That's mostly because we were billions of people when the 20th century utopian projects started, something we've only been for the past 200 years or so.

The population of Ancient Egypt was about 1 million at the start of recorded history and about 5 million during the Roman conquest. Yet, even though the number of Egyptians in slavery were only in the millions at its highest it was crime that was very widespread in relation to the population.

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

#159

Post by pontifier » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 11:11 AM UTC

hugh4life wrote: post #35

"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias." ― Oscar Wilde "It is our utopias that make the world tolerable to us: the cities and mansions that people dream of are those in which they fin…

I try to run the makerspace I started as a mini utopia. Access to technology, tools, and a place to explore what is possible, is a big part of what a utopia is to me.

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

#160

Post by magpi3 » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 11:33 AM UTC

When I read this article, I thought of growing up in the suburbs. The suburbs I grew up in are ideal for the adult who wants to have a large house and minimal contact with strangers, but they are something very different for the adolescent child who is craving experience and contact with the outside world.

It would be hyperbole to call the suburbs an example of a dystopia for teenagers created in an attempt to create a kind of utopia intended for parents. But I have to admit that was the first thing that popped in my head as I read the article.