An interesting read, but I also returned here to remark that the argument "Moreover, this world is fallen, so it is by nature flawed. ... and that is not the image of the Creator." is invalid and does make me wonder if there are other, more subtle misconceptions sprinkled throughout.
Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
161–170 of 214 posts
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#162More 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…
I'm struggling to agree with this.
Take a... Syria during civil war society and compare it to... Norwegian society.
I'd argue Norway has vastly more security and freedom. Increasing one didn't increase the other. And both metrics are pretty close to maximum.
Using your example of security vs freedom, yes there are measures you can take to increase security at the cost of freedom.
But there's also many measures you can take which do not compromise freedom. As a very basic example, having laws against murder. These laws (I can't imagine) effect "freedom" in any meaningful way, so I can't agree that they're fundamentally opposed in some kind of inherent way.
What we call security and freedom (and utopian for that matter) are just words, definable in any number of subjective ways.
But a theoretical Utopia is something theoretically perfect, which while technically possible, we probably agree is not practical.
I suppose my point is that subjective, indefinable properties like "infinite security" and "infinite freedom" are not fundamental, literal forces that increase when the other decreases and vice versa.
They're just words, and anything is possible, including a society where everyone enjoys maximum freedom and maximum security (by some definition)
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#163I 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…
Nothing straight can be built from crooked timber. -Kant
Ironic, considering Kant also wrote in his reflections
> "Es ist unmöglich, dass ein Mensch ohne Religion seines Lebens froh werde."
> "It‘s impossible for a human to enjoy his life without religion."
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#164More 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…
I'm struggling to agree with this. Take a... Syria during civil war society and compare it to... Norwegian society. I'd argue Norway has vastly more security and freedom. Increasing one didn't increase the other. And both metrics are pretty close to maximum. Using your example of security vs freedom, yes there are measures you can take to increase security at the cost of freedom. But there's also many measures you ca…
Though I obviously don't know exactly what OP meant, but maybe there is a difference between simply looking at Norway as a pretty close to utopia versus doing that from scratch in one step, skipping the organic "annealing" of culture and politics.
Simply having a few determined goals means the design necessarily have to be biased against the unmentioned goals. And those might be important for the general state, but it can be a hidden preference.
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which logically would mean it’s the universe that’s flawed not humans. Though, that gets into some very odd arguments. History would be rather boring in a static or cycling universe.
> Which logically would mean it’s the universe that’s flawed not humans. Logically you can argue either way. Logically one can say the universe doesn't give a fuck, so can't be flawed any more than a rock is. Humans however both crave unity and love and compassion and so on (and know those things for good), and also do the cheating, lying, killing, bullying, racism, and so on. So, one can justifyably call them broken…
> and know those things for good
Path finding algorithms optimize for the least cost path. That does not mean such a path is good, nor a zero weight path from start to finish is perfection.
In that context just because humans seek something does not inherently make it good. Religions for example often prohibit some gratifying behavior.
Is an eternal state of pure bliss perfection, or little more than a drugged out meaningless existence? Individuals may prefer one state to another, but it's not clear that the state of maximized preference is thus perfection.
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is still no good, because nobody can tell which are those two times when it's right by looking at it.
You can never know if a clock is showing the correct time unless you have another, known good point of reference.
Or if you trust the clock.
With the broken clock, you can't ever trust it.
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your model doesn't seem to include people who have zero interest in dialogue or persuasion and are willing to simply eliminate people they find disagreeable. I see this time and time again: Instead of engaging with dissenters, forums, groups of all kinds just evict people who are perfectly willing to talk. In principle, that's also acting to "simply eliminate people they find disagreeable." Often, it turns out that s…
Ok but if someone is just perfectly willing to talk about how Breivik is a hero and they wish more people would have the guts to do what he did it is of course not the same as actually doing what Breivik did but it seems sort of not worth talking to either, like if Breivik were the enemy of life they would be providing aid and comfort to the enemy without ever actually going out and shooting a bunch of people.
People who will do violence in support of their political beliefs are in the wrong. People who support people who do violence should be questioned, regardless of where on the political spectrum they lie, or whether they are an "your side" or the "other." The people who are going around in masks, with clubs and guns committing assaults and other violent crimes need to be recognized as the terrorists and proto-terrorists they are. The media that preferentially cover one side over another, and people who give their tacit support to such things need to be called out as well.
What disturbs me the most, are the people who are supposed to be peace-loving giving their tacit support to such political violence and intimidation. The remedy for violent extremist tendencies is to let people talk. It's when people feel like they can't talk, that they seek more extreme means.
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speech too is power contextually. So is monied interest. So is racial caregorization. So is voting. So is media control. So is historical distribution of resources. So is protest. So is enforcement of property law. Everything is politics, everything is power. Personally, I think what you see in the world around you is a reaction by people who realized that they don't have power by money (and thus hardly any power by…
> don't have power by money (and thus hardly any power by speech) That would sound much more convincing if it wasn’t for the fact that most media and academia is dominated by the Left (which is far more authoritative these days).
Far less authoritative, because people are starting to see through the flim-flam. More authoritarian. Definitely. Did anyone notice that even tenured professors can't say what they want anymore?
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 r…
How many Russians were effectively living in slavery under Stalin? Or Cambodians under Pol Pot? All of them? Certainly a very high proportion.
1/3 of the world’s Jewish population was wiped out in a decade. At least 1/10th of the population of Ukraine starved in the two year Holodomor. Double-digit percentages of the entire populations of the Soviet Union, Poland, Greece, and Yugoslavia perished in the Second World War as did about 8% of all Germans. 1/4 of Cambodians died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. All within brief periods of time.
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 go…
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.
One also sees people jumping up with a banner in the front of the mob. Lenin and Kim-il Sung, for example.
Of course the issues are real and need to be discussed and criticized. But fortunately stories like Evergreen State College are rare
But the incidences of tenured professors who are no longer free to say what they actually think anymore are legion.
And Twitter storms are not oppression, they are just people being wrong on the internet.
Tell that to people whose lives have been ruined. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI
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.
Downtown Portland was tied up by such mobs as well. There have been hundreds of incidences of violence (a number closer to 1000 than zero) including assaults with serious injury. Why did tens of thousands of people surround a bunch of mostly normal, ordinary people, including a number of brown people, claiming they were "white supremacists" in Boston?
The Left in general is plagued by the zeitgeist of an authoritarian, angry mob, and wordplay/splitting hairs about what exactly should be classified as "authoritarian" is simply silly when you've been actually mobbed. Thugs going about intimidating and committing acts of violence for political purposes is authoritarianism. The wordplay is just one side wanting to act like thugs, trying to pretend it's something else.