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 ===Working definition===
-A quick fix whereby an appeal to forbearance/sacrifice/restraint/counter-incentivistic behaviour now — particularly based on simplistic principles one — leads to a state of bliss later
+A quick fix whereby an appeal to forbearance/sacrifice/restraint/counter-incentivistic behaviour now — particularly based on simplistic principles — leads to a state of bliss ''for everyone'' later.
+What does this state of bliss look like? Quickly becomes incoherent: an aspiration for equality, diversity and fair treatment for disenfranchised runs into problems because you have to define diversity in a way which means there can be no difference of opinion, because if there is, then there can be no utopia.
+It also implies all challenges have been overcome, all mysteries solved, all differences of opinion resolved. which implies also that all literature is written, all scientific discoveries complete. But a utopian state is one in which we are free to explore the cosmos and discover these things. A world in which all things are resolved is suboptimally ''dull''.
+Someone will be dissatisfied with the utopian state. It therefore either leads to a uniform kind of dystopia, or an elusive state we can never quite get to.
+===Solutions to these logical conundrums===
+====Delayed gratification: “dangletopia” ====
+Utopia ''later'' as a justification for permanent [[asceticism]] ''now'':
+The utopia is to come at a point unfalsifiably distant so that our own status is a necessary transitional state of purgatorial ''subutopia'' — progressing haphazardly towards a utopia we will never personally see, but our nearest and dearest will. This is the monomyth of Moses leading the children of Israel to the promised land.
+The appeal of delayed utopia is that we don’t have to think too hard about what it would be like and don’t really have to confront the conundrums: how boring it would be, and in fact how unpleasant if you have to cleave perpetually to the same moral abstentions you have manfully tolerated through your subutopian existence. Or you don’t, in which case it is all a bit hypocritical. If you can have 72 virgins later, why not now?
+Dangletopian visions that use this ruse:
+*Religions promising afterlife paradise for those who have behaved themselves.
+*Effective altruism, which says we are preparing for a utopian for our distant descendants which we will never see ... and which when they get to it, our distant descendants will be preparing for their distant descendants and so on.
+====Let’s run it and see====
+Let’s try it out and see how it goes. Generally, badly, as the icy, atmospheric principles collide with the earthy urges of basic self-interest. Where the community of interest is strong, and has identified a unitary, identifiable enemy — the bourgeoisie, the intellectuals, certain minority interest groups — such that the power structures are strong enough to head off internecine fighting, these generally turn into totalitarian dystopias:
+*Fascism
+*Communism
+Alternatively, the community of interest is too weak, and the “enemy” is not tightly enough defined, and the whole thing breaks down into squabbling and resentment. This is where identity politics is going (the aligned groups are discovering they don’t really have much of a common interest at all, and the “enemy” is a bit too homogenous and ill-defined, and its figureheads are too well-organised and funded.
 ===Examples of utopian visions===
-*(Most) [[Religion]]s
+*[[Religion]]s that offer a post-mortem heaven or paradise — call these “dangletopian” programmes.
 *[[Communism]]
 *[[Fascism]]
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 *[Laissez-faire capitalism]]
 *[[Bitcoin]] maximalism
-*[[Effective altruism]]
+*[[Effective altruism]] — also dangletopian
 *[[Artificial intelligence]]
 *[[Singularity]]