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Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

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

#21

Post by shoguning »

I've heard the assertion that utopianism is bad, but what about it is bad? Certainly, we should be able to strive for improvement, in ourselves and society?

The problem with utopianism is the desire to create a new society out of whole cloth, with no regard for the lessons of the past, or the structure of existing society. Drastic changes, like those of the communist revolutions, rarely bring about positive change (not never), and frequently bring about huge disaster. Instead, changes on the margins tend to more reliably improve things. There are exceptions of course.

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

#23

Post by reb »

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…

I agree. It's also worth noting the lifecycle of most optimizations, including the non-partisan variety:

1. Early on many benefit and costs are minimized per capita.

2. As the benefits diffuse across the population, smart/wily/greedy individuals push the optimization to squeeze more value for themselves.

3. Benefits begin to centralize among the smart/wily/greedy. Awareness of costs starts to grow. The general population becomes ambivalent. Regulation can keep the system in this state for a while, but it too will eventually be optimized.

4. The arms race of optimization ultimately excludes all but the smartest/wiliest/greediest from any benefit while the rest of the population eats the cost. The optimization is now Bad For Society™.

My gut says this pattern is true for any social construction, from marriage and markets to card games and communism. The only meaningful insight I take away from it is that ideological conflict (competition between optimizations) is literally the foundation of a functioning society.

The relative balance that tension provides doesn't strike me as mediocre. Without it, everything devolves into an oscillating heaven and hell, mirroring your ideology.

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

#24

Post by pixl97 »

alexashka wrote: post #20
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

u·to·pi·a: noun an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.

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

#25

Post by chongli »

aschampion wrote: post #8
chongli wrote: post #3

I took a philosophy course on Utopian and Dystopian literature last year. The takeaway I had from the course is even more stark than this headline: Utopia and Dystopia are two names for the same concept. In all of the utopias we studied -- from Plato's Republic through Thomas More's Utopia and including Marx's Communist Manifesto -- the question that kept ringing in my ears was "utopia for whom?" Every utopia makes a…

> A utopia which purports to make everyone happy (shouldn't they all?) is one that assumes all people are the same or it endeavours to make them so. So the contrapositive is that because people differ all societies require some people to suffer? That's a great way to justify all sorts of exploitation. > In all of the utopias ... including Marx's Communist Manifesto Ah, the Chicago school framing. What's primarily a p…

That's a great way to justify all sorts of exploitation.

Describing is not the same as justifying. Nature is what created us as individuals. Humanity could have been a vast society of clones (like an ant colony) but it isn't. We take all of the good and all of the bad together when we accept our individuality.

primarily a positive work describing existing material conditions and relations is utopian

It sounds to me like you're conflating the Communist Manifesto with Capital. The Manifesto is distinctly and unabashedly utopian. It is not a critique of any extant society, it is a call to arms. It sets forth a sharply bifurcated worldview, proletariat versus bourgeoisie, and attempts to rally the former in revolution against the latter.

This fact is so obvious, to so many people, that terms like "Communist utopia" and "worker's paradise" have become clichés.

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

#26

Post by wenc »

alexashka wrote: post #20
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

From your linked definition, it is a word "coined by Thomas More (and used as title of his book, 1516, about an imaginary island enjoying the utmost perfection in legal, social, and political systems"

Taken metaphorically, a utopia is a idealized state of affairs where perfection (optimality) is reached. This state of affairs is imaginary however, because the world in which such a perfection is attained is also imaginary. Attempts to achieve it in our reality (communism, etc.) ends up running up against a complex system of nonlinear tradeoffs, which is what I imagine the OP is alluding to.

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

#27

Post by pixl97 »

afpx wrote: post #17

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 ot…

Many people would consider North Korea a dystopia now.

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

#28

Post by philwelch »

shoguning wrote: post #21

I've heard the assertion that utopianism is bad, but what about it is bad? Certainly, we should be able to strive for improvement, in ourselves and society? The problem with utopianism is the desire to create a new society out of whole cloth, with no regard for the lessons of the past, or the structure of existing society. Drastic changes, like those of the communist revolutions, rarely bring about positive change (n…

That's the distinction between utopianism and, I guess, gradualism or conservatism. It's not about whether or not we should improve society, it's about whether we should completely overturn everything in society based on abstract theory.

A non-utopian way of improving society is to have robust, good-faith discussion between progressive and conservative factions, where the progressives keep trying to find safe, marginal reforms to make while the conservatives act as a skeptical check on those marginal reforms turning into a utopian project.

At least in the United States, where I live, this doesn't happen because the "progressives" are radicalizing towards utopianism while the "conservative" faction is themselves split between utopianism and reaction.

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

#29

Post by GauntletWizard »

davidivadavid wrote: post #14

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 i…

You're the one arguing definitions. This author is trying to make an actual argument, and you've introduced a non-standard vocabulary, and are judging the argument _with your vocabulary instead of the definitions the author made quite clear_.

How do you pronounce "Utopia"? How does it differ from "Eutopia"? Your definitions are fine, internally consistent, and quite clear for serious in-depth discussion... But they align badly with the common set of definitions (In which Utopia is your Eutopia), and so reading vernacular writing is probably unclear or poorly argued when using such - But that doesn't mean that their argument is bad, only that you're misreading it.

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

#30

Post by wenc »

reb wrote: post #23
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…

I agree. It's also worth noting the lifecycle of most optimizations, including the non-partisan variety: 1. Early on many benefit and costs are minimized per capita. 2. As the benefits diffuse across the population, smart/wily/greedy individuals push the optimization to squeeze more value for themselves. 3. Benefits begin to centralize among the smart/wily/greedy. Awareness of costs starts to grow. The general popula…

> ideological conflict (competition between optimizations)

This is an important idea. Optimality shifts when the environment shifts, and some ideas which work well in one environment may end up working badly when the world changes.

Because the world is inevitably complex and stochastic, we need enough dynamism in society in order to continually adapt, and for that we need a system that permits competing ideas, as well mechanisms to limit the amplification of the effects of bad ideas (good democratic institutions do a decent job at the latter).

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