Thomas Sowell's book The Search for Cosmic Justice talks about this sort of thing in the context of social justice. However well intended, trying to do the impossible can produce atrocities.
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
#72Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly, utopian projects tend to try and eliminate those things. Perhaps because they guarantee against arbitrary interference by the state.
But you see, only arbitrary interference by the state can bring about Utopia, because in order to get there, we need something powerful enough to run over everything in the status quo. (Or so proponents seem to believe.)
Fortunately with super social technology we can succeed where all past attempts have failed.
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s a very religious view. At most you can say humans are not what you wish them to be. Where a crystal may have ‘defects’ that’s meaningless for a pile of sand. Further, defects can be more useful than a perfect crystalline structure. So, to say perfection is unobtainable requires a strict definition of perfection and absolute proof it’s impossible. Both, are very high hurdles.
> That’s a very religious view. Humans are not necessarily flawed Historically they have been. At least they're not up to our own standards. We can kill, lie, cheat, brutalize, exploit, each other, and we do so daily in the billions. We might not be total bastards, but we're no perfectly fine people either.
> We can kill, lie, cheat, brutalize, exploit, each other, and we do so daily in the billions.
All of those can be very useful traits. Evolution, promotes using miliple strategies.
Now, you can talk about spherical humans in a vacuum, but reality is more complex than that.
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That’s a very religious view. Humans are not necessarily flawed Historically they have been. At least they're not up to our own standards. We can kill, lie, cheat, brutalize, exploit, each other, and we do so daily in the billions. We might not be total bastards, but we're no perfectly fine people either.
> We can kill, lie, cheat, brutalize, exploit, each other, and we do so daily in the billions. All of those can be very useful traits. Evolution, promotes using miliple strategies. Now, you can talk about spherical humans in a vacuum, but reality is more complex than that.
Useful for either the survival of the species or the individual. Still, hell for those suffering them. That's the broken part.
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#76The only argument seems to be some religious BS. What we live today(in the developed world) could be perceived as Utopia for the poor caveman for sure.
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#77I 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…
None of the following statements are rational or evidence-based, but I consider them to be true: * Life is not perfect as long as there's death. * Humans cannot live in perfect harmony with one another because of our pesky evil streak. * Man-made laws cannot eliminate human evil. When philosophising at such depths, it's instinctive to get religious. It's also a handy abstraction. Also, transcending reality through wo…
Despite some others' replies, I never meant to dismiss Christianity, much less religion in general. "It's a handy abstraction" is something I wholly agree with, which I think gets lost on a lot of self-identified "rationalists".
I actually think there's a lot of value to be found in religion; the problem comes when it gets infused with a political or national identity and becomes a rallying call instead of a subject of contemplation. The red flags I saw in the article were 1) the hosting organization has a political agenda, and 2) it felt like the author tried to hide the roots of his ideas. It's possible he was just trying to avoid being judged based on his faith, which, yeah. But I've also seen people with an agenda try to propagate their religious or political ideas in a spoonful-of-sugar fashion; obscuring them within content that doesn't advertise itself as such, in hopes that it travels further. I've developed a heightened sense for that sort of thing over the years.
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We can kill, lie, cheat, brutalize, exploit, each other, and we do so daily in the billions. All of those can be very useful traits. Evolution, promotes using miliple strategies. Now, you can talk about spherical humans in a vacuum, but reality is more complex than that.
Useful for either the survival of the species or the individual. Still, hell for those suffering them. That's the broken part.
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.
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
>this world is fallen Makes the entire article essentially meaningless. How can I trust somebody with such a bizarre and unconnected worldview?
Not really bizarre or really unconnected. In fact, for most of history, and with very great many minds throughout history agreeing to that, it would be your objection that would be considered bizarre. You don't have to believe in a specific creator or any specific religious mythology to agree with such a statement as "this world is fallen". Even as atheist like e.g. Emil Cioran could agree with such a statement. But…
Saying "the world is fallen" implies that the world fell from something. It didn't. The same rules of physics, as far as we can tell, have been plugging away since the very beginning.
If you mean "The world sucks" then say that instead of saying "the world is fallen". Fallen has a very specific meaning, and using it as a poetic slush word is enough to make me not take the OP seriously.
Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia
#80This 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 a…
This isn't really a non-standard vocabulary, it's a more-or-less standard vocabulary in the domain of discussing utopias. I think it's reasonable to expect someone writing about a topic to have an understanding of society's ongoing discussion about it. If I read an essay on consciousness, I expect the writer to be familiar with how the term has been defined by philosophers past; if a friend tells me they've regained consciousness, I have no such expectation. That being said, I don't think the author of this piece is using a complete layman's definition of the word either:
>Likewise, dystopias are inevitably totalitarian: to achieve a perfect society, nothing can be beyond the reach of the state.
This discounts anarchist utopias entirely, and any argument against the attainability of an anarchist utopia makes it all the moore utopian. The author seems to be using a shoddy, half-baked definition created for the purpose of this article.