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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

#171
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I wish I could do more than just upvote and favourite your comments...

Yes you can do more. Speak the truth. Pick your battles wisely, but be forthright and speak up!

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

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As it's currently formulated, it's easier to publish stuff about public figures than private individuals. The bar for showing defamation of private figures is lower.

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

#173

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.

Communism for all its faults was infinitely better than slavery and even a huge improvement over feudalism.

That was Pol Pot’s theory. He was warned away from his utopian, revolutionary “Year Zero” program by Chinese communists who understood that a level of pragmatism and gradualism was necessary. He scoffed at this advice and a quarter of his countrymen died.

It’s fair to say that when communism was merely awful rather than utterly catastrophic, it was merely because at those specific times and places, it was still pursued with at least a nod to pragmatic concerns. It’s no coincidence that the best form of communism—Deng’s “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”—was the most explicitly pragmatic variation of communism.

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

#174
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Utopianism is the notion that perfection is attainable and perhaps even inevitable if you put enough enemies of the people against the wall.

The opposite of the authors viewpoint isn’t Utopianism (which is as extreme in the opposite direction) but pragmatism and realism. The fact that, flawed as we might seem, we are living in a reality that may not be possible to be more perfect.

Which isn’t far from an even more secular version of my point. Utopian ideologies often rely upon a superior “master race” or “new Soviet man” who has overcome the perceived imperfections and limitations of nature and who can assume a role in the world to come. In that sense, utopia itself is highly reminiscent of religious ideas, except with the addition of crucial missteps.

The substantive value of the idea that humans are imperfect or “fallen” is to caution against these kinds of expectations in the first place.

And there are real examples of this. It is humanly impossible—not necessarily mathematically or logically impossible, but humanly impossible—to achieve 100% success at any metric in the long run. I can’t design a 100% available distributed system at meaningful scale. An airline can’t have 100% of their planes arrive on time. A basketball player can’t make 100% of his free throws over a meaningful career. People miss, people fall short, people make mistakes, and it doesn’t require religion or Utopianism to imagine even attainable improvements.

So my problem with doing away with the notion of perfection at all is that it goes too far. Will there ever be a world where no part of AWS ever has an outage? Probably not. When the next AWS outage happens, will we be able to imagine, in great detail, a world where that particular outage wouldn’t have happened? That’s the job. And so rather than resigning ourselves to the notion that perfection is meaningless, let’s instead accept that perfection is an unattainable goal. That way we can dismiss the fanatics who demand actually attaining perfection while still admitting to the possibility of improvement.

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

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your plan for rational public debate being used to determine social norms instead of standard social animal behaviour is very flawed. A lot of people are scared or confused by the fact that the internet and globalization has fractured the mainstream media narrative into multiple narratives and exposed the underlying politics (not "politics" as in "the discourse", I mean "politics" as in "the application of power to a…

But not much has changed materially, you are just exposed to more personal conversations in public spaces than we used to be. It is weird. It is less public conversation, and more "shut up and submit!" What you are actually seeing happen: politically engaged people are ignoring you or just brushing you aside or even telling you to shut or get lost because you don't matter to them politically. This is the authoritaria…

You are confusing "there is no debate taking place" with "I am not involved in the debate".

It is happening, it is just happening among people with a different worldview, using different language than you prefer.

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

#176
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposite of the authors viewpoint isn’t Utopianism (which is as extreme in the opposite direction) but pragmatism and realism. The fact that, flawed as we might seem, we are living in a reality that may not be possible to be more perfect.

The best of all possible worlds, in other words.

That sounds a bit strong - I was going for "you can't verify that better worlds exist, therefore you can't say with any conviction this world is fallen unless you choose to avoid logic"

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

#177
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 W…

It's estimated around 80% of the population of Egypt at any time was in some sort of slavery, whether chattel slavery, bond slavery or through forced labor the latter of which is what I would stretch including the citizens of the USSR into.

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

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a story in the news today about a Coast Guard lieutenant with extreme political views who was planning to go on an Anders Breivik style murder spree. 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. Regrettably, it's not hard to find people who subscribe to eliminationist ideologies, and having found t…

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…

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."

Er...I was asking what you do about people who are willing or even enthusiastic about killing others, and I think this is qualitatively different from exclusionary behavior. 'Eliminationist' may not be the most semantically optimal term but it's the prevailing one to describe ideologies that accommodate or promote things like mass murder or genocide.

Certainly someone who reaches the level of Anders Breivik's extremism is beyond talking to. However, it's the height of arrogance and immorality to treat people who are perfectly willing to talk as if they are him. What I see so much of is the treatment of sincere questions as if they are such extremism.

But lots of people with eliminationist ideologies are perfectly willing to talk, because they wish to recruit and promote their ideological viewpoint. Perhaps you could furnish examples of what sort of sincere questions you see 'being treated as if they are such extremism'.

What I see most of, is people not gathering data, not communicating, and eliminating first, asking questions never.

It's also possible that this is a function of your perspective and you're simply not looking in the right places. I can't help feeling that you're avoiding answering the question by simply restating your opinion over and over - 'outrage mongering' 'information buble' 'groupthink' etc.

I get that you think this is a big problem, but while you acknowledge the existence of extremists who put their ideology into violent action, it sounds like you just don't know what to do about those people so you just omit them from your model of productive discourse and are then surprised when people critique your model.

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-terroris…

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.

And my question to you is what you do about people like that.

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.

[Citation needed]

There are lots of extremists who have little to no difficulty in getting their opinions off their chest and who continue to maintain or escalate their extremist views. You whole theory seems to be that people just need an opportunity to vent their feels and that will cause aggressive or atrocious feelings to subside. This may work great in therapeutic contexts but I'm not willing to accept that it holds true in the world at large. Look at all the people recruited by ISIS; why didn't they just vent their feelings and then go back to their everyday lives?

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And the cards are on the table! Pro-Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys eh?

Boy, I can't imagine why people are just ignoring you and insulting you instead of engaging with your obviously bad faith prompts to discuss Nazi rights. Bit insulting to the intelligence of HN in general to think this reddit-level BS would fly isn't it?

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