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Utopia: Difference between revisions
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*No private property and no locks on doors | *No private property and no locks on doors | ||
*Houses are rotated between citizens every ten years | *Houses are rotated between citizens every ten years | ||
Everyone must work at one of the essential trades (weaving, carpentry, smithing and masonry), and is sent out to farm for two years at a time, but the (mandatory) working day is six hours long (but feel free to work for longer). | *Everyone must work at one of the essential trades (weaving, carpentry, smithing and masonry), and is sent out to farm for two years at a time, but the (mandatory) working day is six hours long (but feel free to work for longer). | ||
*Educated people get to be ruling officials and priests and they get the best food. | *Educated people get to be ruling officials and priests and they get the best food. | ||
*Every house has two slaves (captured from other countries or domestic criminals) | *Every house has two slaves (captured from other countries or domestic criminals) | ||
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*There are no lawyers! Law is simple and everyone is expected to be in no doubt as to right and wrong. | *There are no lawyers! Law is simple and everyone is expected to be in no doubt as to right and wrong. | ||
*Privacy is discouraged, seeing as if you can see everyone, they are obliged to behave well. | *Privacy is discouraged, seeing as if you can see everyone, they are obliged to behave well. | ||
===Utopia vs Dystopia=== | |||
Note how, even ion Thomas More’s original vision, plainly utopia can resemble dystopia they tend to coverge. | |||
===Working definition=== | ===Working definition=== | ||
Actual utopian visions tend to be very vague and light on specifics. We can state general principals easily enough, but if we put too much detail around them, they quickly start fo conflict. | |||
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. | 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. | What does this state of bliss look like? Quickly becomes incoherent: an aspiration for equality, diversity and fair treatment for the 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''. | 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''. | ||
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{{quote|He once greeted me with the question: “Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?” I replied: “I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.” “Well,” he asked, “what would it have looked like if it had ''looked'' as if the earth turned on its axis?” | {{quote|He once greeted me with the question: “Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?” I replied: “I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.” “Well,” he asked, “what would it have looked like if it had ''looked'' as if the earth turned on its axis?” | ||
:—G. E. M. Anscombe, ''An Introduction To Wittgenstein’s Tractatus'' (1959)}} | :—G. E. M. Anscombe, ''An Introduction To Wittgenstein’s Tractatus'' (1959)}} | ||
===Collisions with reality=== | |||
Having something to complain about is relative, not absolute: people will always find something that is unsatisfactory. This is indeed the driver for pragmatic undirected progress, but a problem for utopia, because we have to imagine a point where those with grievances concede they are settled, and no further claim is due. | |||
*CF Graeber: the very thing that keeps a society together is that sense of mutual indebtedness. discharging all obligations gives the community less communal obligation. | |||
*this obliges people to give up their position of influence/authority in the power structure. If you are the principal lobbyist for interest group X and you accept your cause has been resolved then you should have no option but to disband. But this isn't what people do: ''they find other things to agitate about''. | |||
converging on a uniform state of bliss is necessarily intolerant because the interest of accelerating towards the state of utopia means suppressing “misguided” opinions that distract from that quest. | |||
===Examples of utopian visions=== | ===Examples of utopian visions=== | ||
*[[Religion]]s that offer a post-mortem heaven or paradise — call these “dangletopian” programmes. | *[[Religion]]s that offer a post-mortem heaven or paradise — call these “dangletopian” programmes. | ||