Optimistic Idealism. Dead? Boring?

[Homer Potvin]

Something about enjoy our humanness

Which obviates the possibility of utopia.

 

[Naomasa298]

Which obviates the possibility of utopia.

The Silverberg book might be more about how one "utopia" doesn't work for everyone.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

Has there ever been a story about a utopia that wasn't about how the utopia was rotten to the core and everyone was really miserable? I can't think of one where the utopia was just a setting and not the crux of the story. That would be interesting, I guess.

Loads of 'em, so long as you stop watching/reading about half way through, like Logan's Run or The Beach. Do you really need to watch until the end to find out what Soylent Green is made of? And, The Stepford Wives made informed life choices.

I guess we do like to see it all a shambles, like that line in The Matrix when they say they abandoned the utopian version of the virtual reality world because the human subjects couldn't accept it.

The closest thing to a utopian book I've read is based in a barren village after the Chernobyl incident when an elderly woman returns to live in the still radioactive area, which then gathers a muddle of other inhabitants who just want out of the world they'd become accustomed to. It's not utopian, but the lead character is so zen she transforms everything around her into some kind of serenity, including the murder she gets accused of and other less than savoury interactions with the wider world. Very little happens. My kind of book.

 

[Louanne Learning]

I read something today that made me think of this thread and the original meaning of Utopia – that of a society which replaces private property with communal property.

Dr. Luke Kemp, a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, is the author of Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse. He studied the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 5,000 years.

And what is this curse that Dr. Kemp has uncovered? – Inequality

We are a species that evolved in egalitarian social structures – but what’s happened in the last 5000 years?

According to Dr. Kemp -

“History is best told as a story of organised crime. It is one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population.”

So, this suggests a question – is Utopia a society more like the primitive, egalitarian societies we evolved in?

 

[DLC]

I'd say he's full of shit if he's saying 'a species that evolved in egalitarian social structures' while also saying It is 'one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory' bro's just typing words.

 

[Louanne Learning]

'a species that evolved in egalitarian social structures' while also saying It is 'one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory' bro's just typing words.

the egalitarian social structures existed tens of thousands of years ago.

One group making monopolies existed in the last five thousand years.

 

[Louanne Learning]

the primitive, egalitarian societies we evolved in?

When we lived more connected to nature, and more closely followed the rhythms of nature