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Utopia vs Dystopia discussion
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Humberto
(new)
Aug 24, 2013 05:03AM
By the way. Utopia is relative. It could be said that living at an upper middle class level nowadays is utopia when compared with life a few hundred years ago.
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Humberto wrote: "Utopia is relative."I think that's an important point. Utopia is an "ideally perfected place" but I think folks are mistaking that with just "perfect." A utopia is not a perfect place, but the manifestation of a perfected ideal. It's not a perfect society, but one where the society has adopted a philosophical construct perfectly. The society can still be flawed... just as the philosophy is flawed. The people in that society can still be flawed, as any ideal with include ways of dealing with human error.
Don't know if below is exact quote but it's something like this:"The source of humanity's problems is its inability to sit in a room and do nothing."
With above in mind, more and more methinks humans subconsciously avoid utopia because they're afraid of boredom.
In literature the avoidance is more conscious in the fact that dystopian settings far outnumber utopian because as some posters already mentioned latter has no "plot".
But I still want to read attempts at utopian settings despite the futility...perhaps as flawed creatures humans...at least homosapiens can't imagine a truly utopian society in which no problems exist, nothing to "believe in", nothing to "fight for", nothing to "live for", etc.
Humberto wrote: "Greed may disappear (most of it) in an economy of abundance. Under those conditions wealth could be meaningless.An example of this in modern SF is Iain M. Banks's Culture series. The Culture exists in an economy of abundance. Money is nonexistent and people are free do do as they please without want. Utopia.
However Banks is (was, RIP) smart enough to equip his Culture with various sub-groups, such as the notorious Special Circumstances, which essentially institutionalized The Culture's darker side, engaging in nefarious covert operations like meddling in the affairs of non-Culture societies.
Utopias in literature are ultimately boring unless something is broken or dark about them, for writing requires conflict, and if the society you're investigating is "perfect" then conflict doesn't exist. Ergo, it makes for bad subject matter. As someone quoted Clarke saying, dystopian societies make a better tale.
Or as Tolkien put it in Chapter III of The Hobbit:
"Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway."
But the "need" for conflict and imperfection is a human/homosapien thing. Indeed the initial conflict is with language which is an imperfect form of communication. So attempts at using language to tell truly utopian stories are perhaps humanly impossible. Still I want to read attempts. I'd write them myself but I'm not good enough.On somewhat related note in interviews with unemployed people one common comment was boredom -- that surprised me because when I was unemployed I was never bored -- quite the contrary -- one reason I'd love to live in a Star Trek earth utopia in which "working for a living" is obsolete.
The closest I've read to a real utopia is Lost Horizon by James Hilton. There is conflict, but the way it is set up, involving both reader perception and character perception, while subjective, I consider it utopian with no dystopia. It's well written and wonderfully atmospheric, philosophical.
Smallo: "unemployed people... boredom" ... "When I was unemployed I was never bored". Maybe you had money, and motivations, and they did not. Utopia must deal with that problem. So all must be well off and educated.
This is possible in an economy of abundance.
Yes in true utopia I don't see how boredom can exist. For example in Star Trek utopia holodecks alone would give people more than enough scenarios to "challenge" themselves.
Study after study has shown that unoccupied people quickly slip into depression. There seems to be an innate need for work--at least some of it--to provide a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment.As an example, I'd point you all to the number of retirees that re-enter the work force, just to have something to get them out of the house.
There is no need of a 'job' to be occupied. I am retired and now write books - in a nonprofit fashion. It is up to our imagination to keep busy.I entirely disagree that working to make your boss rich is a 'moral' obligation.
What is needed is a new economy that reflects the utopian (future) situation of abundance.
When nobody 'has' to work, new ways of being busy will develop on their own.
I would like to travel more. I would like to roam the country and far away places. As we live in an economy of scarcity, I must settle for less. If I am bored it is because I do not have enough money to do more.
Boredom is associated with lack of $ and imagination. And $ comes first.
Indeed. "Work for living" is just necessary evil. Even when unemployed I didn't have time to catch up on TV streaming queues, reading books and comics, write and other interests. If anything boredom should be obsolete especially in true utopia.
Jonathan wrote: "Study after study has shown that unoccupied people quickly slip into depression. There seems to be an innate need for work--at least some of it--to provide a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment."I've seen studies in which they examine the lifespan of people after they retire, and a few that have to do with isolation, but I'm a little doubtful about the methodology of those studies in relation to work in general. It seems to me that being employed and drawing a check and being occupied by personal pursuits are very different things.
In any case, I'd be happy to be studied if some researcher would care to pay my rent and keep me in the luxury to which I'm accustomed in order to test out this theory....
Very interesting discussion.But there's a reason, I think, that dystopian series end with the overthrow of whatever and whoever was controlling the dystopia. Writing about tearing down a bad system is easier than writing about building up an improved one. All the dramatic conflict is on that end of things.
For instance, reading about the Revolutionary War is much more interesting for most people than reading about the construction of the Constitution, though that has dramatic possibilities of a quieter, more intimate sort.
C.B. wrote: "...dystopian series end with the overthrow of whatever and whoever was controlling the dystopia. Writing about tearing down a bad system is easier than writing about building up an improved one. All the dramatic conflict is on that end of things."I think that's an important point. Dystopian books tend to have a small band of rebels who manage to overthrow the seemingly invulnerable empire. Utopian books tend to focus on the cracks in the system, or the circumstantial factors that might lead to the failure of the society. That's not always the case, of course. 1984 is a book about how the dystopia winds up victorious. However, it does seem to be part of the conflict of a fictional narrative when someone presents an elaborate society, be it utopian or dystopian.
Rebellion against utopia also isn't popular. Example: Lucifer's war in heaven is well known but few stories exist. Only one I can think of is paradise lost. Prewar stories are almost nonexistent...can only think of Neil Gaiman's murder mysteries.
Paradise Lost was the first in a trilogy...only nobody ever reads the other two because Lucifer isn't in them, much.And as we all know, the devil gets all the good lines.
Indeed because, like dystopia, evil as narrative device is much more popular than good.
Also I know different tangents here but related. Don't see stories after "happily ever after" unless something threatens "happily ever after".
Just to back up Gary's point, 1984 is a book where the dystopia wins. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why it has stood the test of time?
Dystopia is easier to write about. It is like in recent movies where it is easier to stage a long fight with knives or just hands than to show any depth in the story. Utopia is difficult to portray as it involves social scenarios and personal behaviors.
My own personal opinion is that in order to improve our lives, it is necessary to think and write about practical and doable Utopias.
We should see Utopias as reachable, not fantasy worlds.
I repeat that compared to a few centuries ago, we live in utopia.
Folks...semantics.Writing a novel is "work". It's being productive. Though if might not be punching a clock, you're still doing more than just laying around watching TV. The same could be said for gardening, or exercising, or woodworking, or what have you.
More semantics. To work is different than having a job.
A job normally implies being regularly paid by a third party.
And it is in essence a byproduct of the industrial revolution.
Yes job (work for living) is different than work one chooses to do for enjoyment/personal improvement -- latter is type of work referenced in Star Trek utopia.
Too much value is placed on suffering and "dignity" on "rising from adversity" because humans can't imagine life and their humanity without above. That's why utopian narratives are essential.
Jonathan wrote: "The focus here toward crafting a Utopia seems to be on social engineering, and creating the ideal society via political tricks and public policies. I put forward that the key problem that will fore..."Regarding the repetition of history, no historian or casual scholar could fail to see cycles and patterns of human individual and group behavior effecting societal conditions and impacting all fields of studies including science. The human animal has not significantly changed physically, cognitively, or
behaviorally in thousands of years of recorded history. Totalitarianism, eugenics, euthanasia etc. have always been proposed as methods to a means of achieving a better society, i.e. a utopia, but are methods to a means that many recognize as also having the real potential of creating a dystopia instead. They are just as relevant topics of discussion and debate today as they were in ancient Greece. They will likely continue to be so in the distant future.
I think Science Fiction at its best explores how new technology and science discoveries could be applied and what the end result might be for the individual and for society - in either an utopian or dystopian future. Very good and popular science fiction may even influence real world discoveries and inventions and/or their real world application. Coma, for example, may be considered simply a popular medical thriller but it certainly woke up a whole generation to the possibilities of organ transplant abuse. Likewise Star Trek influenced a whole generation of scientists such as myself to become involved and support space travel.
For most scientists, our dream is to help humanity and to improve lives and make a better world with a goal of better achieving an utopia. Our nightmare and fear is instead to contribute to harming mankind and towards achieving a dystopia.
Science is not inherently good or evil. While much remains to be explained or discovered, it is a hard not soft science. It follows a rule based system. It is only how we apply science that defines its nature.
History is replete with well meaning humanitarians who's efforts were used to the opposite effect. As example, the guillotine was invented as a humane way to kill criminals and instead was applied efficiently to thousands of innocent civilians. Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite was criticized for creating something that killed people faster than ever. Einstein and the atom bomb, etc. etc.
My take is that there cannot be utopia without an economy of abundance. Science and technology are on the way to achieve that.
Once the economy shifts from scarcity to abundance some kind of practical utopia may be possible.
Human nature is weird. However, I can see that millions and millions of human beings are right now living in peace in most cities, towns and everywhere. I don't share the point of view that we are worse than in the past. We can be better and I think our civilization will be.
Humberto wrote: "My take is that there cannot be utopia without an economy of abundance."I think that's a fair point. At least, the people in it have to get (or be able to get) somewhere relatively high on Maslow's Pyramid for that society to qualify as utopian.
Once you can prevent the next Joseph Stalin, you're in good shape.
C.B. wrote: "Very interesting discussion.But there's a reason, I think, that dystopian series end with the overthrow of whatever and whoever was controlling the dystopia. Writing about tearing down a bad syst..."
Agreed! It is much easier to pull down, critique, destroy than to build and create.
A common thread in history is the revolutionary hero who overthrows a tyrant ironically to turn oppressor himself.
It is often more efficient and productive to work to improve a product, a process, a government, etc. than just to destroy and attempt to create one anew. But it is also much more tedious and less ego satisfying.
Stalin was successful in a post-tyranny revolution, in the midst of poverty, war and destruction. I would say that kind of excessive poverty, ignorance and semi slavery promotes a dictatorship. Something similar to what happened with Hitler in Germany, due to the depression.
Interestingly, in the midst of abundance a group could negate the goods and services to the majority. I think that the world economy is leaning in that direction. There is excessive productivity and still common people cannot buy the goods for lack of money, which is being accumulated in a cloud of investments by the super rich. Such a condition, taken to an extreme, could also promote a dictatorship. Could be a good story.
But that's where you and I disagree, I think. You seem to view the sufficient accumulation and distribution of stuff as being a capstone on human ambition and power struggling. It won't be.
It has already happened. Power struggles with a dagger and poison have been replaced by politics, in government and corporations. Invasion, looting and rape has been displaced by investments in derivatives.
All this because a large percentage of people have more goods, sometimes more than enough.
I think our civilization has progressed, and I do think that greed will not disappear, but it will be channeled into more 'civilized' ways.
Think how we lived (common people, not the kings) a hundred, two hundred years ago. Our civilization has improved.
With respect, that strikes me as similar to the folks that blame all human evil on atheism, or religion, or adherence to a particular political philosophy. Corporations and investment banking--in your view--might provide the vehicle for such abuses, but I suggest we need to remember that human beings are always at the wheel.And they will run right over any constructed "Utopia".
According to "The Singularity" not.always.
Our societies are all constructed. Recently the blueprint is called Constitution. The US was designed as a utopia for male, white, Protestant landowners. And of course women, blacks and other human beings have run it over. Claiming the weird concept (in the eighteen century) of human rights. I am talking about SF, which at that time what we are now was.
Jonathan wrote: "Corporations and investment banking--in your view--might provide the vehicle for such abuses, but I suggest we need to remember that human beings are always at the wheel."It seems to me that could be a pretty effective, operative definition of dystopia: "human beings always at the wheel."
Jonathan wrote: "With respect, that strikes me as similar to the folks that blame all human evil on atheism, or religion, or adherence to a particular political philosophy. Corporations and investment banking--in y..."Jonathan wrote: "With respect, that strikes me as similar to the folks that blame all human evil on atheism, or religion, or adherence to a particular political philosophy. Corporations and investment banking--in y..."
Historically speaking, you have plenty of evidence to back you up. Mankind at the wheel can readily drive us into a Utopia or Dystopia, and even both simultaneously.
Humberto wrote: "Our societies are all constructed. Recently the blueprint is called Constitution. The US was designed as a utopia for male, white, Protestant landowners. And of course women, blacks and other huma..."
Constructed yes, but to paint the founding of the USA with such a broad stroke is an over simplification. James Town was a settlement for the "corporate investor" and Plymouth for the "religious oppressed".
Historically, for many great civilizations, at their height of wealth and leisure, minorities were granted more rights and freedoms. On the climb and on the wane, they were more repressed. Blaming the "other" or minorities for the failure is a classic device.
The ploy of directing the "common" working man's anger at minorities as the basis for the deterioration of a standard of living and way of life is as old a ploy as the Roman civilization. The reality is that any great civilization must have enough excess wealth and resources and military might to allow great minds leisure time of thought and the materials and manpower to produce an excess of goods. More often than not, historically, a great civilization is built upon the backs of cheap labor and their own natural resources such as gold, oil, etc. A great civilization may seem a utopia to those with wealth and power and a dystopia to those in the common pool - if that is their personal view of both. They may measure either by how inclusive or inclusive the sharing of wealth is.. Once a civilization depletes their own natural resources (either by usage or by inclusion of their own labor pool in the mainstream of society), civilizations often turn to other places to extract their natural resources (both materials and man power). Thus we now look to get mineral wealth from Mars ... and cheap labor from China...An innovative civilization will build upon what it has and will have greater longevity but once that drive of innovation and fortitude of commitment via work ethic and military service dies among its masses ... eventual decay is inevitable.
MaryReads wrote: "... Work ethics and military service dies among its masses ..." Work ethic is an America only legend that came about as a justification of the Puritan movement. It is not a universal concept and is applied only to the mid and lower classes. The term was coined by Max Weber in 1904 "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism."
Military service by the masses makes it look like war is a sacred duty. Where in reality the masses were drafted, most of the time forcibly. Officers, all of them belonging to the aristocracy, used their service in the military to get lifelong benefits.
I do not think that any country has ever 'exhausted' its natural resources. Europe, Mesopotamia and China have been using their resources for a long time and still they have flourishing agriculture and productivity (when they are at peace and their political system allows them).
Discussions so far focus on material utopia. But that is lower level. Higher level is temporal utopia where people have time to do what they want without being bothered about "survival", "errands" and "responsibilities".Today's middle class first worlders are materially well off but spend most of their time trying to preserve material wealth. Even super rich must at least superficially show they do "something" because of stigma against doing "nothing".
Humberto wrote: "MaryReads wrote: "... Work ethics and military service dies among its masses ..." Work ethic is an America only legend that came about as a justification of the Puritan movement. It is not a unive..."
Actually, a work ethic is itself Biblical, and applies to all classes within scripture. It's far older than 1904.
As for cultures exhausting their natural resources -- yep, it can and does happen. One of the theories about why the various powers of South America hadn't developed some of the technological advancements of the east is that they'd killed off their draft animals.
And then we have the ancient inhabitants of Easter Island, who removed every tree. Modern day Haiti also comes to mind, where deforestation is almost absolute, and fishing over what was once some of the world's best reefs was conducted with dynamite and poison.
Jonathan wrote: "Humberto wrote: "MaryReads wrote: "... Work ethics and military service dies among its masses ..." Work ethic is an America only legend that came about as a justification of the Puritan movement. ..."
Thank you for bringing forth some very real aspects of history and not just theoretical philosophy / political thought or reinterpretation of history based upon such views...
About Sudamerica. Argentina has cattle. Not native but its living mass must be many times larger than all the inefficient domesticated animals which were here before the Conquest. Exhausting resources to me does not mean exhausting one resource. It means that the area is not capable of sustaining a population, forever.
i. e. The oceans are being contaminated and that is a tragedy. Even though I think that better technology will eventually restore them. Like the rivers in Europe and America, which were cesspools and have recently been cleaned and restored to their former glory.
The Romans deforested such huge swaths of forest that they created deserts. They exterminated the black lion, and much more. The later Roman empire's military was relegated to low paid mercenaries and those pressed into service while the patrician masses, at their leisure, poisoned themselves with lead lined heated Roman baths and lead impregnated pottery. With the exhaustion of her own resources and a fading innovation in agricultural and production methods, weapons, etc. combined with a lack of fortitude to keep control of her colonies to fuel the empire, Roman "utopia" or "dystopia" - depending upon the POV -inevitably declined.
This pattern, with some variations, is similar for the great Ottoman, Spanish, and British empires.
The basic nature of man and of societal structures have not so greatly changed that we can not anticipate and recognize similar patterns of behavior as individuals and as groups - yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Like the fairy tales of old, Science Fiction utopia and dystopian fiction makes a nice "safe" political / governmental acceptable medium to explore extreme potential future outcomes based upon various political, philosophical, technological, etc. implementations...
'By the sweat of your browyou will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;'
That is not an ethical principle. It is a punishment for eating apples
An apple a day... Is a principle.
MaryReads. Have you been in Italy? I have and to me it doesn't look exhausted. Maybe the Romans made mistakes. But exhaust the resources of Italy or Europe. No way. The Spaniards took all the gold from Mexico. But they did not get all the oil. That is being exhausted now. However sunlight and solar cells could solve the lack of oil in the near future.
And still 110 million eat quite well. Except for the poor, who as everywhere else, have no money to buy the food which is abundantly available.
I like your upbeat view and hope you are right for our children's and future generation sake : )By "exhausted" of resources, I meant control of resources of the day. Wood was the material used by the Romans, Oil of the 20th Century, and next as you say potentially Solar and Wind. Sadly, due to powerful lobbying in the US Debt. of Energy (read The Seven Sisters for a fascinating history of the oil companies), the US potential lead in solar and wind was lost. China is the biggest producer and user of solar cells and Europe has already deployed wind power.
Meanwhile, the US continues to fight for oil and looks to fracking (with the real potential for increased crust shifting and earth quakes etc.)and deep ocean drilling (with potential for another BP disaster) to extract more. So too China and thus tensions are high over who has rights to oil in the China sea...
Yeah, Italy is nice : )
..I left off a lot of potential "resources" which of course includes human resources - i.e. a cheap labor. , educated, skilled, and innovative labor, etc. Best wishes with the discussion. It has been interesting and engaging.. but I will sadly have to move on as I am back at work.
Regards, Mary
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