Why Utopias Are Evil
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- Опубліковано 21 лис 2024
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This is your daily reminder to read Iain M Banks-utterly fantastic utopian (or about as close to) books. Did you know the first 500 people to use this link will get 1 month free >>> skl.sh/hellofutureme09241
HELL NAW!
Am I a bad person because I always as you to read One Piece in reply to your comments? mayhaps perchance but a righteous cause sometimes neccessitates an unrighteous path. Please for the love of all that is beautiful in this world do yourself a favor and READ ONE PIECE
The culture is hedonistic not utopian.
@BaalAdvocate, it's both, it's neither and its everything in-between.
@@BaalAdvocate the culture is the closest you can get to a true utopia frankly. is it one? no, partially because boredom is a thing
One of the things I found profound about Omelas was its positive aspects had to be multiple choice because no two people can ever agree on perfection.
That was what i was thinking. That my utopia to someone else might be hell is the simple fact why utopias are evil.
Holy Shit! DOM'S HERE!
My thoughts exactly. There is no choice. If you want to change something, you are a traitor
And that is why the Perfect is impossible. The difference between the Perfect and the merely good is that the Perfect is truly and completely subjective, which is why I find it quite annoying when people apply subjectivism to the merely good the same way.
@@ladymacbethofmtensk896 which is why I like the oddyssey perspective the most! Reaching perfection is not what is important, but instead the continuous strive to get there. Even if we must refine _forever_ as long as we do so, we will reach it. and for every generation, things will be better and better than the last.
"Utopia is in the horizon. I take 2 steps, she moves away 2 steps, and the horizon moves 10 steps further. Then what's an utopia good for? For this very reason, it makes us walk." Eduardo Galeano
I like this
The Road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions. Just like every utopian....because, for Utopia, the ends always justify the means.
The Le Guin story to me is much more about confronting the fact that, No. This society doesn't *have* to be contingent on the suffering of a child. It's completely separate to the systems put in place that can make people's lives better. But "it has to be this way, otherwise we stop being as prosperous" is the same excuse people give in the real world, and in the real world, the suffering is just as unnecessary, but its obfuscated, so the story is a refutation of the fact that society has to be any way specifically, in order to work.
There was another author that made the same point, I believe, that the intent was say, "You should stay and fight for a better place for everyone not walk away."
Also, I think what can happen is that some fall into the binary either-or (?) fallacy and will interpret "less prosperous" as the same as "more suffering". That is, by having less food, more people will starve - perhaps even, I will starve. When there is at least one other possibility - that less food will simply mean... less food; that instead of having 5 types of pasta available at dinner, you now have 4 types. Or you have slightly less of each of the 5. No suffering involved.
Of course, a lot of that is founded on assumptions baked into capitalism and some of our systems of social mobility and welfare, so there is a certain real world justification. But that's more an indictment on the incredibly bad flaws in those systems rather than a slight on a utopia/a better place.
@@PhotonBeast Did you watch the video? At all? HFM literally discussed all of that stuff in the video itself, aside from the real-world implications of someone from Salem, O(regon) calling the utopia O melaS.
@@PhotonBeast Sounds like you're thinking of "Those who stay and fight" by N.K. Jemisin.
I vote for C) Individual human desires are not the homogeneous. Your definition of an utopia very well can be my distopia and vice-versa. Actually, I'm pretty sure it is. Hence, every utopia need to use some sort of trickery to keep everyone aligned with it.
@@mayorathfoglaltvolt The story doesn't engage with that at all. If you want something that deals with that look at "The Book of Martha" by Octavia Butler. Omelas is very specifically about American empire and its lack of ability to imagine a world without suffering.
I usually think the ones who walk away from Omelas is about how we can't imagine a perfect utopia without suffering, but in the mood I'm in now, I'm leaning towards the suffering child being a metaphor for how prosperous, wealthy societies export suffering to other countries and disadvantaged groups within their own country.
I think you're right. Many of the luxuries we enjoy exist because of forced child labor in China (just to use one example). To "walk away" in our world might be to stop partaking in goods and services that result from the suffering of disadvantaged groups.
Not just countries, but to every living being we exploit. When you go to KFC, you don't think about the three chickens got raised fast with artificial foods so that they could barely walk, and then got electrocuted, which they may or may not survived, then sprayed with boiling water to make it easier for the machine to pull their feathers out, then ripped apart by a different machine, so you could eat cheap. Basically, the story of every non-human being is similar to this. We choose not to factor in non-human suffering. This story is just about making this choice deliberate.
@@bocckoka I'm still gonna eat chicken, but I could try to make that from a local farmer.
The thing to realize about Omelas is that it's not just 'one' child. It's one after another after another, because children can't survive very long like that. So who is selecting all these children to be dropped down the hole to expire of hypothermia, diarrhea or pneumonia, and why has nobody dropped THEM down a hole?
I haven't read the story myself, but from what the video said... it sounds like the children are a kind of filter, where everyone who stays are part of the Covenant, aware of the grave cost they pay for their civilization (in hopes they will not take it for granted, but instead sustain and preserve it, if only to ease their shared guilt... and those who leave are those who would have otherwise brought down their civilization from within. The assumption of course is that everyone knows... and that the city is more than capable of dealing with external threats harshly (otherwise, they actually have to kill the people that leave, in secret presumably... which is the real cost, because the child in the floor doesn't even have to be a real child, it just has to appear to be... so maybe it is only one child, and no children occasionally go missing).
Because it has to be someone who doesn't fit, when everything is "perfect" it just means the same and children who can't live there have to suffer
@@wandering_fairytale what if the “child” is simply an illusion, a scapegoat that keeps society afloat solely on the knowledge of its own suffering. Self sustained by guilt, honesty kind of genius.
To me this is what the story is about. Or what i take from it.
Why is my life more important than that child's? Why does it suffer for me to not?
The magic school arc in Magi does a good job of explaining this concept. The whole city is run by magic and everyone has anything they could need or want and no one has to go any hard labor and everything is fixed and provided for automatically. But the magic comes from the energy siphoned from the non-magical people, the commoners, who are kept in camps underground. The common people are also physically provided for and are plied with hedonistic pleasures to keep them “happy”; but they’re still prisoners who never get to see sunlight and have shortened lifespans.
How do they stay healthy enough without sunlight, though?
@@jennifervan75 that’s part of why they don’t live as long as the upper classes above ground.
I think about that arc a LOT. There's so many deep philosophical questions in how the mages vs the non-mages live.
@@ellicurus I thought humans could only live 3 years without sunlight.
I could just be wrong lol
@@ellicurus Magi the anime?
"Unless *all* of us are free, none of us are"
Suffering will always exist. Our goal should be to minimize it with compassion and empathy. For everyone.
Suffering needs not exist. The only reaon that it exists is because the inability or unwillingness of individual people to know themselves. It is the same reason utopias don't currently work.
The day a person integrates their self they'd be living in a personal utopia. And the more poeple do, the greater it grows.
Which is only possible by limiting excess... imposing laws and restrictions which take away everyone's freedoms.
How else could you limit suffering, if not by ruling over the masses... holding authority over other's freedoms?
No one is free, unless everyone is free... means people have the freedom to kill each other, or take away others freedom. Therefore, at a minimum, we have to take these freedoms from each other... to provide everyone with as much freedom as is possible for all.
Or maybe, it should be... no one is free, unless everyone has the opportunity to choose free (because ultimately, freedom is choice... and one choice is also, that some individuals clearly don't even want freedom). There should be places in the world where people can go to live safe and peaceful lives, and places where they can do as they please (under the natural pressures of a world where everyone else can also do as they please... because that's the only free world (no one can decide what heaven is for someone else, after all).
I think we could achieve better technologies, including social ones, to improve our world from where we are. Most of people don't want to make the change, so they use oversimplificatons or overcomplications to the concept of utopias. I think a concept of Utopia should include that we are making the effort to minimize suffering and injustice as much as possible for everyone, with the limitations of reality.
@@infrnlmssh9719 I disagree that suffering need not exist. As long as a person is alive, some sort of suffering will occur. There will naturally be times when you're sad (we cannot escape death and will grieve the loss of those we care for), there are times to naturally be in pain (though it would be nice to see an end to chronic illness, pain in general is just a warning sign that something is wrong and things can't be perfect all the time), there will naturally be times to be afraid or tired. All of these states could constitute as suffering.
That's why I said to minimize. If we could address the unnecessary suffering, suffering from hoarding of resources, suffering from poor communication or emotional awareness, the world would be a much better place.
@@Radhaun You can disagree. But the fact of the matter is that all suffering is either produced or perceived by people.
Suffering and pain are not the same. And people need not suffer the natural woes of the world like tragedy and death. Pain, yes. Suffering, no.
Most chronic illnesses already have a solution or a way to be prevented, though most of the public are either unaware or unwilling to listen to the solution.
That _"unnecessary suffering"_ you refer to can be addressed, immediately, by you. So is this true for the rest of the world.
Because one of those solutions people refuse to see is that our world is a reflection of ourselves. When faced with conflict or pain we either succumb to it and perpetuate it, or we *endure true to ourselves and slowly shape the world around us.*
The great folly and woe of our modern world is that people believe just by not doing evil means you are good. And everyone makes mistakes. So those accumulate, because they obviously do. And then we wonder _"why is it so, this suffering in the world?"._
And keep yourselves in denial, thinking that the burden of perfect virtue is too great. When the reality is that you don't even need to fix your flaws, you just need to be a net benefit to existence while being true to yourself. As trying to be a "virtuous person" while being inauthentic is also a severe inefficiency at best and a massive detriment to society at worst.
Paradise is inevitable.
Without need for any obstruction to anyone's will. Harmony, wisdom and the people needed to make it so reached critical mass thousands of years ago.
How long it takes depends on you alone.
In The Matrix, human minds are so fundamentaly broken by the very idea of a perfect world, so much so that most humans in the First Matrix (which was designed to be a utopia) basically drove their own minds to death by simply existing in it.
The matrix franchise, until the most recent film, kinda hinged their whole worldbuilding on a fact that humans and the machines didn't really _tried_ to talk it out during all this time, until Neo went to the machine city to _force_ the talking.
So it kinda make sense for me that the First Matrix, that was "utopian for humans" from the _machine's pov_ would quite likely be an unbearable hell for an _actual_ human. I don't think they've consulted _any_ humans while building any of the Matrix versions.
Great point! I had forgotten that.
~ Tim
@@DarthBiomechi’m not so sure. The robots were not so stunted in their understanding of human wants and desires, given the nature of the matrix you see in the first movie. And if they were, I’m sure it’d have been considered a failure which they worked away from and iterated on to build a perfect matrix between then and the movie one. The movies present the 1st Matrix specifically as a failure because the humans would not accept a perfect world. Perhaps the speaker is biased but it’s not ever brought into question except in a roundabout way as a consequence of the human plight for freedom that governs the movies as a whole
@@jordansandoval7097 It wasn't that the humans didn't want some wonderful perfect world... it's that the humans understood the world was fake almost from the outset. The Matrix required people to accept it as reality and the earlier incarnations failed in that regard.
@@jordansandoval7097 Perfect for whom? That's the real question. And unless you are involved, the answer to that question may just not be inclusive of you.
I love the fact that utopia literally means “no place.”
You're correct. Too many people think there can be such a thing as a utopia. It can't exist.
It's a pune, or play on words, because it looks like it's just a lazy way of saying 'eutopia'
Utopia is the name of the poorest town in Australia.
I've actually read Utopia
it didn't strike me as a desirable society. Mainly because some of its ideas (like enslaving criminals) have been tried out and had horrible consequences the writing neglected to consider (like the USA prison system)
Eutopia is the 'good place'. Outopia is 'no place'. Utopia is a pun spanning the two.
I think the tropes of "Utopia but with a dark secret" exist for the same reason as "Immortality has a price/is undesirable" type tropes. It makes for an interesting and easy narrative that _feels_ like it has something more important to say.
We have so far been unable to achieve either, so it's a coping mechanism to say that there would be such and such downside to it anyway. To tell people, you don't want immortality because it has some price, or you'll eventually want to die and can't. You don't really want a utopia because secretly someone will always suffer.
Utopia doesn't have to be that hard to achieve yeah, these stories aren't truly about utopia, it's more like fantasy and they're always about something as an excuse to fight.
A utopian society just needs to have a certain standard of living, and even the sinister exploitation, they're always a bit fantastical and suggest that it must be systemic.
Being immortal is gonna suck really bad once the sun goes out and space goes dark
@@AS-fu1kd if we're just talking radical life extension through technology, then not only could they just end it all once they've seen as much as they want, but they would only be able to stay alive for as long as there is energy available to maintain life.
@@AS-fu1kd Id love a button that increases my life by 500 years and pressing it whenever I feel like
I'd argue against having a catch to immortality being similar at all. Immortality is intrinsically undesirable. We have words for suicide in every language because people of every culture willingly choose death over life.
Without death, life would be unbearable.
At the time these books were written there was a fascination with understanding how the 'Nazi society' came to be. Milgram, Zimbardo and so on. In a philosophy degree you usually cover Utopia's, and it's inevitable coercion, conformity and so on. The stories mentioned could be viewed as what would you have done if born into a society akin to the 'Nazi' one? Many joined in, many walked away, and some fought. What would you have done? Most believe they would fight...but most would not. H.G. Wells Time Machine is often used as an example of many philosophical ideas it's an amazing book.
Same in Sociology.
Anyone paying attention to what is happening in the USA today will see how Germany just went along and did not fight.
If you tried to fight, you would just die
Because sadly, but you're not the main character who can defeat anyone on their way by just tring hard enough
You are an NPC, a nameless featless fodder, a grain of sand on the beach
@@bodiless99 Hell anyone paying attention to what is happening in Germany today will see how past Germany just went along and did not fight.
Since my nation is committing a genocide, I'm one of the cowards complaining about it at every opportunity while the rest of us are cowards who do nothing. I don't have to imagine what it's like to live in an evil culture.
6:32
Wasn't there a Doctor Who episode like this? Only instead of a suffering child it was a space whale. And instead of just leaving they were sent into said whale's mouth. (What's the whale didn't actually eat them. The twist was that they didn't even have to force the whale to move, and when they shut off the machine that was forcing the whales to move, the whale actually moved faster.)
Yeah, I love that episode.
Yes! I just commented this. I remember having an ethics class on the dilemma and it seeming eerily similar. I realised it during a rewatch, it is a great episode.
A perhaps inspired, but more idealistic and superficial version of the dilemma. Where there is an easy and all-round better solution that our oh-so-noble Doctor can preach without consequences (a sad flaw of many episodes).
@@Ravasalsed An optimistic TV serial is just plain different from a short story intended as a thought experiment. The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas never really has to provide a neat resolution after the ad break, whereas the TV serial does.
Not that I don't get annoyed when shows wuss out on their moral dilemmas like that because oh my GOD are there so many that do that, present an engaging moral dilemma and then introduce a less interesting third factor that makes it irrelevant so the show can finish. But in a lot of ways it's based on the culture and limitations of the medium.
I saw that DW episode. I also know of an episode of star trek Strange New Worlds that have this storyline
You can look at StarTrek for that cynicism that a better world can’t be made without dirty secrets. Roddenberry posited that humanity could just decide to build a better world where no one suffered and was fundamentally moral and then StarTrek writers spent decades putting in things like Section 31 because they couldn’t accept that Utopia could exist without a dirty tricks department. Some of it works, the conspiracy at the heart of StarTrek 6 was that you had people in StarFleet and the Klingon empire who were willing to work together to ensure a final calamitous war rather than face a unknown future where the Federation and Klingons found peace (hence the title “The Undiscovered Country”). That movie worked because it was also a Cold War parable, the franchise is plagued with writers who have a lot of trouble accepting the premise.
They also have forgotten the point of the Star Trek Utopia, which is that problems and challenges mostly come from the outside. If one shows up from the inside it's corrected by the Utopia and it's mostly individuals that went astray. The point is that you can't cut yourself off from the rest of the universe.
Which is why one of the valid criticisms was in an DS9 episode when they speak about the Federation assimilating cultures. If no one watches out for it, the Federation members will end up with a 'Federation Culture', which is made up out of bits and pieces of all cultures. However, one of the alternatives is that the cultures of the Federation cut themselves off from the rest of the Federation, which leads to isolated worlds that forget why they need a Federation. Which is another alternative. A planet alone will be conquered by the Klingons, Romulans or other conquering power in the universe.
This is a problem the Federation has not yet fully grasped and addressed. At least not as far as I know However, the Federation from TNG to Voyager is still a rather young organization.
That's why I really dislike Section 31. It completely upends the whole point of Star Trek.
@@Dreamfox-df6bg, What makes something like Deep Space Nine work in isolation is that the societal flaws still present in the various civilizations within the setting, sometimes including humanity, are portrayed less as issues that have been solved, but issues that must vigilantly be battled against, the striving for total perfection may end up having the opposite effect, as reflected in other societies in the setting ruled by amoral and insidious ideologies.
It's in the struggle against these ideologies, against ignorance and savagery, even with mistakes and failure, that the Federation meaning, not in it's supposed perfection, but in its pursuit of further growth and development with every ally it makes, the peace and civility it seeks to promote.
@@Dreamfox-df6bg DS9 hasnt forgotten that , just that those always exist and, its a war drama. Ok. And that existing isnt unrealistic, we saw there are some stuff, and to keep it believable, you need to have that too. It also never took overhand.
And the point of DS9 is more how to preserve the federation under that odds and to keep the spirit of the federation. Test it, show what it takes to keep that. Show if it can withhold crutiny. And it does. And you need some spy organisation foer havin a wardrama, and we saw not great elements before in it (like that judge in the drumhead doing mccarthyism)
And its still won very ystartrek minus a diety trick. support damar, offer a cure for stopping the violence, some leap of faiths. Defying the odds.
And that while on homefront , yeah. showing the dangers.
I also like how enterprise 3 and 4 do a 9/11 trauma to first in 3 take them to dark places and back desperate, to with that newfound strengh, save the future of the federation by sceming people spreading disttrust and xenophobia.
Its because the premise is both boring and laughably impossible. DS9 has something to say because its world like the real world is flawed and contains people with all their imperfections. And it still has noble characters and its villains but they are interesting and make decisions and suffer consequences. They do not sit in the dark drinking weak tea with broccoli around their neck
"Things were Great. And then the Aldari got very VERY bored...." (some stuff happens) "And thats where Chaos gods come from".
Chaos gods aren't real
@@evilcomputer The greatest trick the Chaos gods ever pulled was convincing the world they didn’t exist
Slaanesh
@@evilcomputerneither are any other make believe God's.
The point of the quote was a Warhammer reference.
@@wickederebus Using 40k to define or even to help explain your real world philosophy is ridiculous.
I feel like the book, The Giver, sums it up nicely. You need the agreement and cooperation of everyone. The second a few people disagree with the social norms the entire system collapses
The less people the happier people
I despie utopia books as they give me the eeby jeebies for somereason and so i hated reading the giver
I can't imagine a perfect society, but I can imagine one that is better than the one we're in right now. And once we've reached that better society, I know I'll be able to imagine a society that's even better. If we keep going, there will be a society that looks like a utopia to us. Perhaps not perfect, but much closer than we are now. And if they still keep going, then perhaps, one day, there will be a society that looks like a utopia to them. I don't know if it's possible to reach a truly perfect society, but I do know that we can keep getting closer.
You say "once", as if your "better society" is really better. "Be careful what you wish for- you just might get it."
Thanks!
I can too.... But I came to realise society are complex things, slowing growing under the law of unexpected consequences... So, it might be a harder exercise than expected! ;)
@@lloydfromfar After all, one man's utopia is another's dystopia. The closest thing to a utopia is where the vast majority of people agree to what would constitute as more or less perfect and act accordingly.
Ya better for you though. You ignore the non believers. The push for utopia in whatever form it takes requires crushing the "other" allowing a bit of bad allows for the most genuine good to exist not fake good by weaponizing the bad to get there.
Utopias the depend upon secret suffering are a common trope. And it's an interesting intellectual exercise but not really a realistic one. Potentially a harmful one, embedding nirvana fallacy into the social consciousness.
It's like fiction skips a step between here and utopia. I haven't read or seen anything that dares to imagine what happens in between, between now and the utopia. If we're striving for that world with no suffering and clean abundant energy and enough resources for everyone, what is **our** next step to get there?
Seems to me that a utopia, or at least an intermediate utopia, is not a society free of suffering, but one that provides the resources to relieve suffering. We might never be able to eliminate bullying on an elementary school playground, but if the bullied kid gets the comfort and protection and compassion and support they need, that's coming really close.
I feel like this is my issue with a lot of stuff like omelas.
Especially with how people interpret it. Idk if lequin believed that you can make a guilt free omelas and a lot of people interpret it as "you could " rather than it being a thought expirament.
The only way to prevent all suffering is to not have anything alive, but we can make life better in some ways like better resources for the bullied kid.
Cory Doctorows „Walkaway“ feels like the step between 30 years in the future and Utopia tldr:
Hyper capitalism lead to oligarchy/Korporatokraty but since machines made everything easy some people walk away and live in communes. A new technology threatens the powerfull and the walkaways have to fight
@@dismurrart6648 Right! It's not about preventing suffering! Some suffering is preventable, arguably most present-day suffering is preventable, but you can't stop natural disasters or dating disasters so there will always be some suffering. The goal isn't to prevent all suffering, the goal is to alleviate suffering, to provide the infrastructure to make people and society more resilient to the suffering that can't be prevented.
If your society provides mental healthcare to everyone, dating disasters can be overcome. If your society provides food and shelter and healthcare to everyone, natural disasters can be overcome.
The hard part is preventing the suffering that is preventable. War? Hunger? Disease? Prejudice? All of the problems that we create for ourselves, those are ironically the hardest to solve. But I think any society that is resilient to natural disasters and dating disasters goes a long way towards being resilient to man-made disasters.
your cell phone was made and dug by african child slaves, your clothes too...and you are guys are talking about bullying and dat8ng frustration in america?
the fact that you guys can only see your bubble and not look in your culture's own basement is so on the nose for this video it's stunning
@@apokatastasian2831Whereas your phone, your laptop, and your clothes were no doubt handcrafted by well-paid artisan monks deep in the caves beneath the crystal city of Nom-Garath.
Your comment is useless. You are factually correct, of course, but your sneering condescension is just... useless. The fact that children suffer in slavery for mega corporations does not mitigate the pain experienced when somebody's loved one dies of cancer, or if they're heartbroken, or if they feel isolated and hopeless. And if you were mourning and somebody said "Wow, posting pictures about some dead organic tissue to Facebook on the slave cell phone, I see..." you'd very justifiably punch them in the face.
You're no holier than any of us, so stop pretending that your moral soapbox means anything in this grand symphony of suffering.
The Le Guin story feels more like an exercise in our _lack_ of imagination as to what it takes to make a utopia, or what our possible responses can be.
Must a child be subject to unending suffering to uphold utopia? Without an attempt to experiment with that circumstance or trying anything else, it's left as either an unquestioned postulate upon which all other logic follows, or an author fiat.
So, is the contract real?
Take the child out of the hole and find out.
Does the child really have to suffer?
Make them comfortable and find out.
Does the child really have to be alone?
Join them in that hole and find out.
I would agree with this. She explicitly says something along the lines "we authors are all liars". It displays not only lack of imagination, but also our willingness to believe stories. We are primed to believe stories, and that is in itself a weakness. Because what if we build this perfect society and then stick a child in a hole to suffer just because someone sold us the story that the child has to suffer for the utopia to work.
The story is intended to be a critique of American empire and how we claim that our prosperity is contingent on our place the the hegemonic global power. It's also about how people refuse to accept that utopias are possible because after describing the city and before the child there is the line "Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy?No? Then let me describe one more thing." This shows that the only thing that can make a utopia believable is by making it based on suffering because our societal imagination is limited by the idea of zero-sum games.
This becomes especially clear considering that Le Guin wrote a number of utopias mainly "The Dispossessed" and "Always Coming Home."
Or what if it doesn't have to be the same child. Put one child in the hole for a week then another child. Maybe the coming of age ritual can be spending a week in the hole. Every person suffers for one week and then lives the rest of their lives in a utopia sounds like a worthwhile trade off.
In a college poli sci class we had to write a summery of a utopia and a distopia. It was interesting. So much of the stories involved abundance vs scarcity.
We human are predictable. I don’t know what else to say.
(Specifically coming from a capitalist country. Counties with other social structures and values would have students putting forth different would building. )
We make millions suffer without reason and nearly no body question it
Welcome to society
We read “the ones who walk away from omelas” in English class last year (non native) and the more we talked about it, the more I was able to appreciated the story.
3:24 thirsty ahh
"Isn't every utopia somebody else's dystopia?" - Frosptunk 2
Difference is sometimes the alternative is a worse dystopia for everyone. Even the ones who benefit from it.
Technically speaking, yes.
Even Heaven is Hell, to those people who have rejected Jesus Christ.
_(Technically speaking Hell may be better...)_
Simply because they're in the presence of God/ the one they have rejected.
@@Americanbadashh The problem here is that it has to be proven first, not just asserted
And ecen if it is that way, there still should be taken attempts to circumvent it and outsmart the fate
@@Paulthored Technically speaking, Heaven and Hell is a dystopia either way, whether one rejected the "God" or not, if you look at it from an outside perspective.
Religion itself is a manifestation of the same concept as the Utopias built on lies and suffering.
Not every Utopia has to be like that
@@narrativeless404 yup, there's truly no escape from dystopias
I think a fairly clear reason why we expect some hidden evil in utopia stories is because otherwise the story has nothing to say.
Unless there’s some external force changing the status quo, there’s no conflict to discuss or form a story around in a utopia.
Chronicling the life of someone in that utopia would be interesting though, so I disagree.
Reconciling things like conflict, competition, free will, etc. exploring how all that can exist in a perfect utopia is something that can be greatly interesting
No flaws required.
But that takes a feat of great creativity, doesn't it?
For a single flaw, complication, or inconsistency brings down the entire plot
It's a big part of the reason why Solarpunk is a SF subgenre that has very few entries that are actual stories. Because it's supposed to be more or less utopian, with no 'dark secret' behind it. It's pretty tough to have enough conflict to sustain a story if the setting is inherently one where most conflicts have been solved in the past.
You could have a conflict based on how people from the utopia interact with the world outside it. Star Trek is basically that.
@@Lernos1
And the Culture Series too.
But both have hints that these societies aren't perfect either, and possibly evil too. Modern Star Trek at least much more grey than black and white, but I think there were hints even in TOS.
Yeah, even Banks' utopian (ish) Culture is usually pitted against non-utopian societies to create conflict and give them something to say. I did have a section about this, but it didn't fit for this video. 😊
~ Tim
0:10 Obviously, Dinotopia.
17:40 Even Dinotopia has Lee Crabs
Correct.
You didn't describe a Utopia; you described your flawed version of it, with a flaw that doesn't exist in our real world. The child in the hole isn't necessary-you added that to give your Utopia an evil side. 1:06
@@TheDanishGuyReviews Breathe deep, seek peace.
Is that the terrible part: it isn't
Wonderful breakdown of this topic! Honored to have been able to contribute artwork for this 🎉
It's such a necessary topic for current times, and a good reminder that it's less about achieving something perfect, but more about striving to every day do a little bit better than the day before.
I knew The Ones Who Walk Away was going to come up within the first few lines of dialogue. I read that story two different times, at two different schools, and it stuck with me both times.
When I was younger, it made me feel weird, and creeped out, but I was too young to really articulate why.
But when I was older? I saw a society of hypocrites. An entire city where every person is individually made aware that children are ritualistically sacrificed, but not permitted to die quickly, and each one of the residents that chooses to stay in that city endorses this behavior through their apathy.
My knee-jerk reaction on the second reading, older in years, was a desire to bash the captor over the head with the nearest piece of furniture, take the child, and flee. That evolved into feigning acceptance for a better plan later, and waffled between dismantling the city's leadership or burning the whole place to the ground because what good could really come of a city filled with people that take no issue with such atrocities? "But I did not speak up, because I wasn't the child in the hole" is a pathetic excuse.
Of course, the story is metaphorical, and so were my emotional responses to it. By the time of my second reading in College, I'd joined the military, and gained a more adult perspective on my family roots during the Second World War, which have quite intimate scars about just this sort of thing. Some survived years in Nazi prison camps, while others fought for the resistance, so I shouldn't be surprised my initial reaction to learning a government was starving and torturing people in captivity for no reason other than 'it's what needs to be done' stirred up a guerilla sentiment.
This is a topic I always love. I'd found that "They Killed the kid in the Omelas Hole" recently, and it was such a GRIPPING read. Shockingly funny at parts, too. Which given it's whole nature, had a wonderful effect of making me laugh and then making me feel bad for laughing (not too bad, tho).
And you kind of hit on part of the broader answer to Le Guin's question at the heart of Omelas with the Odyssey section. That there's always this journey, and the journey is never ending.
So I think one of the aspects of the distrust in Utopia are the ones that try to sell you on it. No utopia would actually call itself a utopia, because there's always some new frontier towards a better world waiting. And part of that is this takes WORK, effort, everyone chipping in along the way.
While the amount of labor required of a person in a, let's call them "blessed" society, might be miniscule compared to the taxing amounts of work in a more harsh one it immediately becomes suspect when that labor starts approaching 0 or loses direction. If you are free to just forever do NOTHING in this society, then that work is getting paid off somewhere else.
It's like those scam "carbon offset" businesses, where a company can pollute as much as they want, and this company will supposedly do a bunch of "green" stuff that cancels it out. But it's mostly a lie. Yes, they do some measure of good, but it doesn't, and CAN'T, erase the harm the company is doing. And then because of this lie, the company never actually TRIES to do less polluting. And this can be found in people as well, the phenomenon of "moral balancing". People who foster a public image of doing good precisely because of the bad they do behind closed doors. They feel this urge to do good things to try and cancel out their bad things.
So I do think that is ultimately the answer. Even in a post-scarcity society, chance is always a factor. And WHEN chance hits, who gets the help? Even if everyone gets help, who gets help FIRST? What are the plans to prevent this kind of harm in the future? Any society that thinks it has reached the "finish line" of progress is really just sweeping some amount of suffering under the rug. But even there, the push for progress can itself become "the kid in the hole" when they start thinking of ways to "fix" people to stop suffering. So even THAT isn't a promise of a good society.
Honestly, I don't believe that there's ever gonna be a "workless" society. Look at Sparta: the Spartiate elite were FORBIDDEN from working, and were given leisure... and produced nothing at all and went aggressively into political and war conquests and made themselves petty tyrants... but there's plently of them who "illegally" decided to write, to garden, to weave, to sculpt.
If you don't *enforce* idleness, people will work out of sheer fucking boredom. Remove money incentives and constraints and people WILL pick up trades and STEM careers and the humanities and even humble crucial work like garbage sanitation. Thrill-seekers don't just dive from aeroplanes and snowboard, some of them load up with meteorological stuff and then go drive into huricanes and chase tornadoes.
Making school geared more toward giving kids a little taste of every job and the equipment to go into any job they want to aim for would go a LONG way towards that-- especially if we stop making kids think that being bad at rote memorized math/english means they can't go be programmers or great orators, and stop teaching that cashiers, and sanitation engineers, and fast food staff are somehow "less" than surgeons or lawyers-- if everyone got the same rewards for their efforts and service and quality of work, I get the feeling we'd have a lot more landscapers and gardeners and people having fun driving big vans that crush things and working cooperatively on farms and stuff, and a lot more people making a career out of helping run local food joints.
Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I see it everywhere: people who give up on tiny dreams for big careers so their kids don't grow up in poverty, people who want to leave their careers for a dream risking their financial stability for it, people with brilliant minds who just never can AFFORD the education and don't know where to dig in the shadows of the internet to gain the knowledge they need, people who would be wonderful storytellers who never get a chance to tell their story because they're "risks" to the companies...
People doing work they're not wired for, or barred from work because they can't afford getting the requirements... or chasing work that they're denied because someone is more desperate and willing to do it for less.
Bai sing sei from avatar the last Airbender. Many refugees from the war went there hearing it was safe but imagine how they felt when azula managed to take over the city so easily
Griffith wanting his kingdom in berserk on top of many people's bodies he sacrificed. The world is way worse now and the refugees are coming into the city most likely something griffin created as a result of opening the space between earth and the other realm.
Many times a utopia is just a false lie that comes with many restrictions or sacrifices to the people of the city while rejecting what is happening elsewhere.
griffith never wanted a utopia, he solely wanted to rule the world. He wanted to be as free as god.
Omelas isn't a utopia. By definition, if it has to hinge on this abominable secret then it doesn't qualify as "perfect or near perfect". Even if we set aside the guilt of knowing the secret once they come of age (which supposedly most in the setting do), there's also the sadness they would feel for their fellows who chose to leave, the sense of those people's judgement, and the constant fear that someone could upend their whole way of life if the child was ever interfered with.
I always thought that Omelas was pretty blatantly "I see you don't believe the place can be perfect. Let's add the secret suffering so you can finally consider the place as if it's an option" I mean... it's not even subtext, it's a text it is utopia, with pain glued on to make people accept it as concept to engage with.
(edit) As it's stated in this video.
@@ewabrzakaa6395 the suffering and sadism isnt tacked on. its the basis for the entire idea. She started with it.
Omelas is North America. its Salem Oregon. its the best possible version of own society, wihtout fixing whats fundamentally wrong with it.
You live in Omelas right now, just a much worse version. Reducing all the suffering down to one person is intended to make people engage with it, instead of what we nornally do, abstract from it .
I do agree that Omelas isn't a utopia, but probably not for the same reasons.
The story seemed simple and impactful but the current of pessimism was exactly the element that kept it static, I like the way you put it, that the hole in our theory for growth without exploration or suffering can guide a lack of positive imagination for the future and end up encouraging some unhealthy ideas about what evil or corruption is and whether it's innate or predetermined. Why do we have such a hard time, sometimes even a distaste for, imagining a better civilization? It's worth rethinking, maybe it's exhausting holding up a set image for what that perfect society will be one day from the perspective of an imperfect society, instead of thinking of utopia as an ongoing open and honest process of continuous introspection, integration and reflecting. All the stories brought together in taking a shot at these questions form a solid landscape for examination that adds to the collective conceptions of possible paths in our social and civil evolution.
The unfortunately odd centering of the cosmic connection between suffering and prosperity in most of these stories seemed to hang on the justification and uncertainty of anything outside that paradigm, as if to give shape to an idea of primordial innate evil. I'd like to explore how slippery sacrifice for progress can be and how progress, or complex civilization, being measured by the amount and the efficiency of energy production and consumption could pave a road toward overproduction, inadequate distribution and disposal and the gradual line of decisions made to benefit from, exploit and preserve the new resulting status quo, "you are how you sacrifice."
The channel pours so much thought and heart into these videos, they're truly awesome and you are so deeply appreciated!!
The basic, underlying problem is that we examine these issues entirely in the realm of fiction.... and Utopia makes for really, really boring stories. They'd be a fantastic reality, but they don't make for much of a story. This need for conflict in our stories has worked its way into our overall cultural mindset where we expect it in reality as well.
I think that's more a matter of writing and perspective. A great writer can make even the mundane act of buttering the bread seem like an exciting act when done right.
Whether the mundane appears exciting or boring depends entirely upon how it's experienced. Writing can offer you a glance into another's said experience.
It's much more important that whatever adventure you go on it _feels_ important than that it _is_ important. Feeling is everything in writing; Writ that does not make you feel is just a plain text-book.
Or so i perceive it.
you can make a film about a utopia and have it have conflict
its called bad disney highschool/middleschool movies for the popular girls
@@borekminer Or could be that even in an Utopian society, people should face certain degree of problems in their life to make them better persons allowing them to succeed when certain things become harder and harder.
That could be a plot of a father and mother trying to teach their son a valuable lesson for him to become a better individual that can stand for himself when problems rise, and to not become soft because everything is already granted. Which is an interesting thing to aproach by different angles, based on the way people perceive education of their childs should be done.
My issue with utopias as a whole is that there are 7+ Billion people in the world and each one likes something different. What is good for me will be okay for another ans bad for a 3rd, thus the only way for an utopia to exist is for there to be separation. But this separation inherently means that it is no longer an Utopia, just a well veiled dystopia built on echo chambers which leads to war and suffering.
A utopia is just like a mirage, it shows you what you want to see leading you on. Only for it to fall apart as soon as you get close enough to see the details. Any attempt to create such a place will fall apart not because it is impossible, but because the conditions for it are so precise that even the slightest diviation results in it falling apart.
i think separation is the key, why notnjust create several utopias so that people could chose which ome they want to live in
@@Dev-uc1sk Because that still causes the issues of "Our utopia wants that land where your utopia is in", "our utopia rejects your utopia and want it gone", etc.
A "utopia" can only exist if everyone cooperates and does not get in each other's way. But to meet the needs of every person there must be cases where two people completely disagree.
@@Dev-uc1sk Because even small-scale utopias are impossible. People are ultimately individuals with different views on what a utopia would even be. And then there are the other matters of resources, land, ideology, and finances that get in the way.
Separation needn't lead to war and suffering. Modern functioning countries already have lots of separation between the libraries and the night clubs and the parks and ..., with each person going to the bit that they prefer. Some people prefer cities, others prefer countryside. And so on.
You can have a huge amount of "I prefer this, you prefer that, let's each do our own thing".
@@donaldhobson8873 But that's not a utopia. That's just ordinary civilization. The question becomes what happens when one utopia clashes with another? Why should I pay for the libraries that the people of some different utopia use? Or why should they be allowed to come to my utopia at all? If I'm part of an Ayn Rand ultracapitalist utopia why would I want to share anything with the Marxist commune a few miles away?
I think we don't believe in a perfect society because there is no such thing as a perfect person. The lack of someone perfect (whatever the standard of perfection is) means that a society, built by individuals, cannot be perfect.
Said caution is one of our main defenses against con artists, cult leaders and tyranny. When people forget this truth they start worshiping there leaders as gods which results in stuff like the Aztec empire, the Reign of Terror, the Rise of Communism and Jones Town.
That’s why it has to be built by AI. The AI will make rules for us to follow.
@@ladybug3380 That is entrusting a imperfect program made by imperfect people to make perfect laws. It doesn't require a programming degree to figure out how that can and would go wrong.
@@Wolf-oc6tx Then let the AI create itself.
@@amihartz My father is skilled at coding and from what I learned from him, code don't work that way, there is always a human hand involved even if code can be partially self-writing.
I think Big Joel had a very interesting interpretation of the Omelas story. He saw the story as a satire of the concept of the “evil utopia” cliche, with the idea that a perfect society would have to have some dark evil secret as ridiculous. Does the addition of the random suffering kid that the society is dependent on somehow make Omelas any more believable? Perhaps the very idea that a progressive future society needs some dark secret is in itself designed to enforce our current imperfect status quo and dissuade people from change.
Nirvana fallacy taken to its ultimate extreme. "Perfection can't exist so don't even try for better."
@@pufthemajicdragon, Engaging with the idea of perfection as at least not being easily obtained isn't inherently problematic, though the suggestion that improvement or development, attempting something close to perfection, shouldn't ever be attempted is.
Being able to acknowledge the possibility of failures and mistakes while also providing the argument of not being limited or defined by those mistakes and failures arguably should be the ideal way to go about a utopian story, leaning into the chaotic nature of society, of existence as a whole, but not taking it as an excuse for indolence, as if we did, if we simply resigned to our limitations, we would never have gotten anything done at all, regardless of wether its considered meaningful or not in the long run.
@@callmev3531 I don't think we should aim for perfection. Every time we have tried to implement an idea of a perfect society it was a disaster. I will give you 2 examples. First the socialist countries which tried to make perfect communist paradise. It ended as a disaster in pretty much every country that tried it. Second example is of American Puritans that tried to make City of God on earth and if you look at their ideals it was not a nice place to live in.
The problem is that someone's utopia is someone else's dystopia. The radical Christian's idea of utopia is different from some secular economist's idea of utopia. For this reason models of utopia always fail. In my opinion it is better to focus on the problems that we have right now and solve them as they come instead of trying to implement some perfect idea of society.
@@vault13dweller15 My point was that perfection is far, far away from us, and that should reflect even in fiction where societies have removed various limitations and issues, but not all of them.
I keep mentioning Star Trek in these comments because while its cited as a utopia, but also is shown to still have issues, to not be perfect, just a side effect of technological progress making enough room to focus on societal issues, and even then, it's incomplete, there's still conflict and strife.
But with that room for conflict comes struggle for further progress, for wisdom and cooperation, a struggle that gives its protagonists purpose.
On the other hand, civilizations that are treated as societally un-advanced usually wrap their entire culture around war or profit or seek total order at the expense of freedom, as that is their vision of perfection, a suffocating one that leaves its people worse off.
Doesn't sound like the original story is satire.
You actually keep explaining the thoughts I was about to bring up before I could finish typing them XD
"Truth does not do as much good in the world as the appearance of truth does evil." It's a sentence that really strikes the cord between utopia and dystopia to me. "Appearing" to be a utopia is what lets dystopia thrive. Even on a lower level, "appearing" to be "good enough" is what lets dystopia thrive because "good enough" is inherently undershooting the goal of "good", otherwise you wouldn't be adding "enough" to it (note, I'm not using "perfect", I'm not sure why people tend to think that's what's immediately above "good enough").
One thing I've learning during my life so far is that there is no happiness without struggle. Most, if any can't enjoy something good if they don't know how bad it could be. So life has no meaning without hardship and the sense of overcoming it. So to quote a cartoon " Pain and suffering is what mankind will ever know"
The best way to tell if a utopia is real or not is what happens when you try to take the child out.
18:08 "why don’t we believe in a Utopia?" I think the answer to that is: if we believe in a Utopia, we have to ask ourselves: “If this is possible, why do we not already live in that Utopia?” And that hurts.
This. We live in fear, of ourselves AND others. It's the great lie capitalism sells us, through every story able to be told under it. We as a society have to sell a shadow self to ourselves, because we mirror societies problems onto ourselves... Which is what keeps them in power
I'd argue it's because by definition a utopia has to be perfect and perfect by definition can't exist entirely in part due to the fact that everyone imagines a different idea of perfect which will inevitably conflict with someone else's idea of perfect
@@limymage9186I was going to say it's because there will always be humans who suck ass and ruin things for everyone else, but that too
What? No it doesn't - the answer to that question is that sustaining life requires resources which are scarce. That's it. Stop overthinking it.
@@obliviouz Resources required to sustain life stopped being scarce more than half a century ago. Global warming might make them scarce again, if we as humanity continue to be dumb, but what all people on earth need to sustain life could be created today with far less than half the work people currently spend. So no: that’s not it. You hit a mental blind end.
If your utopia starts with skyscrapers and flying cars, I just know you are going for the bad kinds of utopias because those are the signs of a society that fundamentaly misunderstands urbanism and the wellbeing of its inhabitants.
It looks cool though
The skyscrapers I get, but how are flying cars an indicator of this? (I'm genuinely asking because I don't know and flying seems fun.)
@notbot2648 walkable cities and well-made public transportation systems are more utopian than "What if we took all the problems and dangers inherent in personal vehicle fueled traffic congestion and moved them a hundred feet straight up?"
@@CitanulsPumpkin Ahhh okay, that makes sense. Thank you!
What do you have against skyscrapers?
They're highly efficient housing for a lot of people.
Space on earth is limited, so unless we get rid of a bunch of people (Note: this is bad), or expand to the stars (Outside the scope of many stories), we gotta take what we can get.
Maybe we like Skycrapers in a Utopia because it allows a lot of recreational spaces and nature to be within close proximity to this high density housing.
Skyscraper does not mean bad living conditions inherently, does it.
@@CitanulsPumpkinoh boy!!! I really need to get my books written so you can enjoy that then.
I was shellshocked recently in the sexual harassment orientation in our school, the presentation literally started with something along the lines of “We live in a society where sexual crimes have diminished so much that we have resigned what sexual harassment is…” then going on to list physical touch and having “non-necessary verbal contact” to a person of the opposite gender and so on as sexual harassment.
The biggest problem with the question of good and evil is that good might only exist in a contract to evil, and we will keep redefining evil to become more and more benign concepts.
Even though we might already live in a utopia compared to a medieval world.
The darkness of Utopias and the path to them is intimately tied to the concept "The Ends Justify the Means" because a Utopia by defenition is an INFINITELY good end you can use NEAR infinite levels of darkness to justify it
I think something really relevant to this video is the concept of Utopia as explored in Frostpunk 2. In the game factionalism and discord arises because people have different visions of how humanity should rebuild in the frozen wastes and prioritise different things: Some envision a society fully adapted to the frost while others desire a society truly equal while others take pride in time honoured traditions.
As a result, your city can fall as one or both sides are angered as their vision of a utopia is not realised, whatever it is.
People value different things in a perfect society: some value happiness more, others progress and yet others value knowledge or self-expression in differing levels. As one possible ending quote puts it.
"After all, isn't a utopia someone else's dystopia?"
Skill issue.
Different people wanting different things isn't a problem unless those people want mutually contradictory things.
If some people want happiness and others want knowledge, well if they want those things for themselves, you could give people a choice. Or you could make sure everyone is happy and knowledgeable. Perhaps some really skilled AI teacher that gives amazing fun lessons. Perhaps just when everyones IQ is 200 thanks to smartness pills, people routinely read string theory for fun.
@@donaldhobson8873 "unless those people want mutually contradictory things".
This is exactly the case in the game. The point is made that the radical factions have visions of the world that are mutually exclusive: Equality vs Merit is the most blatant one as the former policies are towards subsidised, fair living while the latter seeks to reward only the ones deserving of it. There are also the Progress vs Adaptation and the Tradition vs Reason axes that further drive a wedge between visions of survival.
Srsly, it's worth a play, if not at least watch someone else play it.
@@TheSpearkan Equality vs Merit is the most blatant one as the former policies are towards subsidised, fair living while the latter seeks to reward only the ones deserving of it.
Ok. So if everyone is made meritous? Everyone is super smart and super skilled in all the ways that the merit people think matter?
Or just give people a choice of whether they want to go to equity land or merit land.
I always feel like the Utopia is evil cliché is the same as the immortality is bad cliché. Its not based of anything real, no true mechanism actually forces the best possible society to be evil, but in creating the illusion of "dont fly too close to the sun." It also discourages people to imagine how our society could get better. Utopian thinking is a mocking term thrown at those who people think have unrealistic dreams or ideas. Stuff that is simply too good.
Ironically most of the evil utopias do not depict some grand egalitarian society that as abolished all need, but rather a society that exploits some for the benefit of others. This is the Utopia the very rich live in, not the radical leftist or idealist philosopher.
In Brave New World their society is based of a horrible class system, where the workers are genetically engineered (by limiting their oxygen supply to their brain as they grow in the vats) to be docile and stupid. Only a few live the wonderful hedonistic life depicted in most of the book. It is a critique of capitalism, of the empty splendor of the capitalist class who grind the workers underheel and make everything a commodity and trend to follow along.
Utopias are not inherently evil, but the ones that exist in the small pockets of ever nation is.
Problem is that every single attempt to construct a Utopia has ended disasterously. Also, I wouldn't say Brave New World is a critique of Capitalism since the Society is literally run by a government that controls everything, and there's no businesses to be found. It's more of a critique of materialism.
My thoughts lie along the same line: the use of Utopia in fiction today is mainly as a tool to critique the current thinking of sheltered/privileged peoples throughout societies. And not a true depiction of absolute Utopia, or the flaws that might exist in one such as: "how can two different people with opposing beliefs live in the same Utopia".
It is based on a true mechanism. That mechanism being free will
I wouldn't say say Brave New World is a critique of Capitalism per se, because its society is completely controlled by the state, not (as dystopias criticizing Capitalism would) megacorporations or robber barons and such. It is more of a critique of Materialism, I think, and I definitely don't get the feeling that "oppression" is a major theme, given how we the readers never really interact with the underclass of the society.
In my 999 Worlds RPG setting I subverted this trope: A utopian society that many people think is secretly evil, but is actually good.
I think it's awesome that even Honkai: Star Rail explored this topic in Penacony
Where Sunday elected to be that one suffering child. Because for a utopia to exist, someone has to make choices for all man, and that is a life of sacrifice and suffering
from the perspective of someone who spent several years being disabled and experienced being left to rot quietly away from society for the sake of able bodied people who were inconvenienced by my existence, i think the reason why we can't imagine a utopia without it relying on some kind of cruelty is because the ability to justify how things are now is more valuable to us than actually acknowledging our guilt and doing the hard work to change things for the better. it's so much easier for you to walk away and convince yourself that you're not the one in the hole.
Well it's less that and more that not everyone wants a better world for everyone. We live in a world where some people are power, hungry and short-sighted and don't really want a better world for everyone else, but mostly better for themselves. There are luddites who believe that technology is evil and we gladly let a bunch of innocent people die because of their idea that technology is bad and you have to try to make them coexist with those who love technology and helping the disabled. We live in a world with people who have incompatible ideas and Utopia tries to mash them together
I first read The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas more than 10 years ago, for a literature module in my freshman year. It always surprises me that not more people know about it, even people who are well-read and enjoy reading. This story has stuck with me this whole time, I've turned it over and over in my mind but never found a satisfying answer. I guess I want to say thank you for making this video, for being a part of this conversation of texts.
There are two very entangled notions here that I believe are what make the matter so confusing.
1. Some concepts are defined by their opposites. Is it possible to have good without evil, joy without suffering, love without fear? What does one mean without the other?
2. Is human nature capable of building something good that isn't based in corruption?
For the first, I believe that life without contrast is impossible. However, contrast does not need to entail suffering or evil. You can have joy, contrasted by pain. But pain does not need to equal suffering. I think pain turns to suffering when the pain seems pointless, increasing, and/or inescapable. But contrast is not a bad thing. If we have the freedom to move away from pain, coupled with the maturity and wisdom to understand when it is worth to choose pain with our own free will. I am capable of choosing to endure pain without it turning to suffering if I deem the cause worth while.
For the second, I believe that yes, it is possible to build something good that isn't based in corruption. However, I also believe that this requires a maturity and wisdom that humanity as a total has yet to reach. It isn't until we learn to set aside our fear of something that is strange to us, and to instead seek to understand it, that we will be able to transmute corruption and heal it. Not kill it or stamp it out, but truly heal it. And until we are able to do this, every utopia we dream of will always reveal itself as a dystopia.
the only kind of utopia that’s a problem are those who fail to face their own flaws, to fight the eternal inner struggle against ignorance and repression of one’s failings. In other words, evil MUST have an active place in utopia. the question is where to put it? my answer is “within each and every one of us”. distributed. What is evil? it’s just a negative emotion. like melancholy or anxiety or whatever. A contradictory utopia is possible, if it takes responsibility for the evil within and handles it well. Utopia isn’t a perfect society that would be ridiculous. It’s a society that gracefully learns from its mistakes and faces all its internal flaws, its a society dedicated to drawing strength from overcoming self criticism. That’s not evil. ignorance and repression are what is evil. The problem with a lot of utopias is their moralism. that’s the wrong framing. utopia must be an evolving process, not a set of laws or a static state. utopia is possible but it has to be found in the evolution of itself
Exactly. Evil is simply a moral judgment on an action. No morality = no evil. The lion hunts and kills the gazelle; we do not call the lion evil, nor is it. It is simply surviving. A true Utopia is a society without judgment, allowing people to live as they wish to do so. Find a way to accommodate people's desires and interests so they can live in harmony together. Star Trek is considered a utopian society because people have outlets for any desires they may have. There are wars they can go fight in if they wish to kill others. There are holodecks to engage in whatever fantasy they may have. People live in harmony within the Federation because whatever one's interest, there is an path to satisfy it. No one needs to suffer, unless they wish to do so. I have no problem imagining a true utopia; I only have difficulty imagining humanity actually creating one. We are so hell bent on forcing others to live as we want to live, instead of saying let each live as they will, that we create true misery for each other needlessly. We would have to reach a place where we stop placing moral judgments on one another, and humanity is a long way off from doing this.
@@xzonia1Unfortunately, there are things that should have moral judgements against them. Rape, for instance, is an example of something that is never justifiable, and people shouldn't be allowed to do it. Of course, that's an extreme example, but it illustrates that any society must have moral standards. The question then becomes "where are the limits and who decides them?"
@@akl2k7 Rape occurs in the animal kingdom as well. Do we call animals evil?
Evil is an unnecessary label. There already exists outlets in this world for people who desire sex, such as prostitution. Unfortunately, we demonize this outlet as well, so people don't want to use it. The bdsm community has an even more extreme alternative for those who want to do such things (called mock rape) which is consensual and satisfies such urges. If we let go of the judgments and labels, people can find outlets for their desires and live in harmony with society, rather than going against the utopian ideal. Do societies really need moral standards? Utopian societies do not. That is part of what makes them perfect.
@@xzonia1 But even in your case for that society to work you have to have basic rules like: don't murder, don't steal, don't lie etc.. And you have created morality again. Even your idea of "no judgement" is a moral judgement in itself. Morality is fundamentally built in humanity.
I don’t believe in moral relativism because it flies in the face of humanity. Because the people that always argue its existence argue it on a cultural basis. They always ignore humanity which is ironic because most people like that humanists.
I can't believe Ursula LeGuin would so blatantly steal the plot of the Doctor Who episode "The Beast Below"!
(I am joking)
I kept thinking about this the whole time I was reading the story! I always bring up that episode when I'm trying to explain the trolley problem to my nerdy friends 😅
I was thinking of this within the first few minutes. I couldn't not think about it lol That ship wasn't a Utopia, but it's such a good match otherwise.
@@nikkia9506 You know, I totally forgot this about that episode. I remember Amy wandering into the choice, I remember the star whale of course, but a lot of the rest of the episode was a bit of a blur to me. I wonder how the change from "utopia" to "necessary for survival" complicates the philosophical question?
"All men are NOT created equal! Some are born swifter afoot, some with greater beauty, some are born into poverty and others born sick and feeble. Both in birth and upbringing, in sheer scope of ability every human is inherently different; Yes that is why people discriminate against one another, which is why there is struggle, competition and the unfaltering march of progress. Inequality is not wrong, equality is." -Charles zi Britannia
For some reason i am reminded of this quote when thinking about utopia.
Fair and equal aren't the same thing after all
> Some are born swifter afoot, some with greater beauty, some are born into poverty and others born sick and feeble.
Crispr, Crispr, UBI, Crispr.
All those things can be fixed, most with a little snip to some DNA.
@@donaldhobson8873 A lot of the "beauty" part contains character traits, choices, habits, etc. And these things in turn are not just affected by genetics.
Not everyone will be a movie star. Some individuals will have certain talents, personality, and some providence mixed in there.
Also beauty is usually related to rarity was well. So if you make an attribute common, it loses its beauty.
its like chasing a rainbow.
@@donaldhobson8873 editing someone's genes to make them "beautiful" sounds pretty Nazi-ish
Free stupid idea: The Ones Who Don't Know
It's just a grounded-fantasy epic about a stone age society where the characters experience the full range of human experience.
After listening to 10 books that are about 40 hours each on average, there is an epilogue where a guy in a labcoat says "y'know I feel sorry for these tube people that don't know what the real human experience is."
I don't get it
I once saw a thought experiment (can't remember where) about the utopia paradox. This basically states that any utopia is bound to turn into a dystopia. It went something like this:
Imagine your perfect world. Now imagine what it would take to create such a world. Devise a plan that would ensure everyone, even those who don't agree with your vision of a perfect world, will go along with your plan. Wonder what you would do to ensure that your perfect world will keep existing for the generations to come. Is your world still perfect?
Well, a perfect world would be one that was rational. And what is rational is understandable. And that means that even people that disagree can be convinced.
@@symmetry8049 You make the mistake of assuming that people will be convinced by rational explanations. Some will, sure, but not all. What do you do with them?
@@samueldimmock694" We are not thinking machines that feel, we are feeling machines that think”― António R. Damásio
@@samueldimmock694 Maybe not people that thought of things before. You cannot reason someone out of something they weren't reasoned into. But you can use education and the common teenage drive to rebel against your elders to drive their children to that worldview. And if it's really rational, you'll have made your teenage rebels rebel against it out of reason, allowing you to reason them back into that ideology by adulthood. If it's not logical, then it's unlikely to be as perfect as it seems. If it's boring, same thing.
@@gabrote42 I guess I just didn't understand the timescale of your hypothetical plan.
Utopian city would just be *normal* mundane life but there isnt corruption and social welfare is always there to help and most jobs actually contribute to society.
Why does this sound lot more plausable :)))
If institutions actually functioned 50% of the worlds problem would be gone
Unfortunately human nature will always ensure that those institutions fail.
But then what is mundane? to have your TV, your computer? a garden? a 9-5? not everyone has that or even want it, mundane for you could be luxiry for other or thrash for others.
What jobs are classify as "actually contribute to society"? what society? western? eastern? in the present, past or future? if a job that doesn't enter in that classification would be less paid? why? is still livable wage? who decides? and what are the motivations for choosing said jobs?. Is it going to cause clasism for the way is separeted? is it good that it exist?.
Who is gonna ensure there is not corruption? who is going to monitored the ones that ensure there is no corruption are not corrupt? who choose them? on what criteriea? the ones choosing aren't corrupt? how you know? if they are not do they have conflict of interest? does it matter? when does is matter?.
All of it with out even touching themes of Race, Sexual preference, gender preferences, gender roles, religion, their own history and past beff between them, cultural differences, etc.
While is a very kind wish to think that with eliminating corruption everything will be fine, is still very naïve and simplistic, specially if is based only in the city/country you live in and only in the know and not in the future =). Hope it didn't came across as mean this are the questions I ponder on a daily basis when trying to make decisions. well not every single one but a couple =P.
What defines mundane and why should utopia be a top down institution? Real and permanent change works from the bottom up. If the government controls everything then freedom doesn’t exist. It would be the Helldiver universe where The Government is in absolute power and are ruled by a galaxy wide dictatorship that the government convinces the masses is actually a free and democratic system they refer to as “managed democracy” where instead of voting you answer a survey and a machine votes for you. The people who live in it are kept sedated by propaganda with cult a like mentality, kept ignorant of the reality of the brutal regime they actually exist in
Institutions do function. Unfortunately, the do exactly what they're designed for and that's rarely to help people.
@@per-c8229 It does help that there are in actuality pretty vast bodies of knowledge on methodologies for infrastructure and social institutions that could have them function a lot better. They just generally don't get scaled because well...existing power structures or resource chains generally don't like disruption or competition. Like corruption in of itself is one of those things that actually is fairly "mathable" in how it aligns to resource models in various provisions of service and nominally in functional institutions is excised because its directly inimitable to the institutions functions. Its existence though gets complicated removal wise by the fact that as time goes on administrative structures shift and the usual problems of succession for positions come up, and in those cases cronyism, cartels, etc work to help maintain their own positions at the expense of institutional efficacy. So like nominally there are reasons to say you could do it, but there's also plenty of reasons to show how the barriers from A to Z work?
This is mostly me pondering along side everyone else on the topic to be honest.
I personally believe that suffering , cruelty, tyranny and selfishness are problems that will crop up time and again until the second coming of Christ, that a good society is one that focuses on addressing these problems in a healthy way rather then the madness of excusing them.
My opinion as well. I think though that in order address these problems, we have to hold to Christ and no one else. Politics, economic polices, we have to lose attachment and not identify with them. From there we can be truly free to try something new, while learning from the mistakes of other systems.
@@Spyblox007 I think what is needed is to figure out what works(for making a society worth living in and supporting) and lean on it, at least that is what we need to do in the meantime . Part of this is rebuilding healthy traditions with a free will respecting don't throw the baby out with the bathwater mindset(basic we need to fix problems in ways that go socrched earth on culture, tradition and the economy).
@@Spyblox007let's not ignore religious differences there buddy because I don't think your gonna convince the billions of Muslims or hindus to just forsake their religion muchless there gods to worship a foreign deity maybe there ideologies maybe there economic policies,maybe there politics but definitely not there religion
@Wolf-oc6tx I agree, take from what works. But we have to ask ourselves if it really works, or if we just think it works because we've been told that our whole lives.
@@Spyblox007 True, that is where its important to have a mindset along the lines of don't throw baby out with the bathwater. People have done to much blaming good things for bad things.
"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization." - Agent Smith
The bible definitely tried to create a perfect world, too. But look at it now. It's sucks horribly to the point that God flooded the earth, and Jesus had to be born
I think one of the more interesting stories about utopias is Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson. It plays with the idea that actually reaching happiness has different requirements for each individual person, and is also ultimately not as fulfilling as the journey to get there. You can kind of parallel that with the story of the Eldar from Warhammer 40k, who grew numb to the utopia they had created.
Another exploration of Good and Ideal Societies that I like a lot is the novels by Sergei Wassiljewitsch Lukjanenko. Namely the Watchers series and The Stars Are Cold Toys.
I think that the reason utopias aren't possible is quite easy: we cannot agree on what is good and evil
Some say A is good and B is evil
Some say B is good and A is evil
So a utopia for team A would be a dystopia for team B
That's why we've been writing utopian stories for 6000 years. We're trying to pin it down. Somewhere in between all of the stories we've written is the answer, whether that answer is practical or not.
@@jeremiahnoar7504 Utopias are just a literary device to explain an author's politics. They aren't possible.
We pretty much agree on what is good.
Some just think they deserve good stuff on the dime of others.
@@dani.lepore9410 Then be our sage. What is good?
Moralistic relativism logically ends with no true morality at all, it's a dangerous game to play. In the face of dire tribulation it's easy to pin down that some things are in fact good, because we all know what is evil.
I’m quickly reminded of that Ursula K. Le Guin story just by the title.
Oh
It is that story lol
The reason true utopias are as rare as hen's teeth is because you can't make a story without conflict. They do exist in fiction, they're just very rare because they remove a whole dimension of possible struggle for the protagonists. Also, there isn't 'one' utopia, there's as many utopias as there are people.
Protagonists struggling to get to the utopia is a good plot.
fallen beings are entertained by suffering
We need more slice of life stories
What I got from the different takes on Omelas is that all utopias end in static perfection.
And that has to be the most antithetical aspect to humans.
Change and progress die when perfection is reached. Everyone in their utopias was content with their perfection, despite its flaws that the only ones who wanted to be human again and strive towards something better are the ones who walked away.
Fair enough. Keep up the progress. Everyone eventually becomes some sort of incomprehensible cosmic deity. After a few million years of accumulating mind upgrades of various sorts, you are very not human anymore.
The hard part about making an Utopia is knowing where to hide all the dystopian things you had to do for it to work.
The Giver
Thanks for this Tim, some more reading to add my TBR list.
For me, a city is inherently a dystopia because I don't like them.
Sad thing is that we have loads of suffering in our world worse than this and we don't have endless prosperity.
And there is worse than that. Nobody is assaulting the child in. Um. Yeah.
We condemn millions to suffer for our prosperity, and we have no paradise.
And that's mostly because most people believe in this system. They believe that their prosperity can only come at the cost of the suffering of others, and they are happy to make that trade. Also known as "zero sum game" in Game Theory. Fortunately the real world is not like that, we make it that way by playing the wrong game.
The rich people at the top have the paradise
Don't mind me just crying at how desperately I want to be an optimist and believe that a perfect society can exist. And at how jaded me and everyone else is by living in a society built on blood and child labor and misery.
I really like the space ship one where nobody is evil but its just a long string of people thinking they are the saviors and one upping one another all for the sake of goodness yet causing harm to one another at the same time.
Short answer it is about how people cannot look at the big picture they cannot accept that everything is imperfect and being this close to perfection costs this tiny bit of suffering so they chuck a tizzy and leave for the ashes of an even more imperfect place. Same kind of people who aren't suffering from anything but make it a crusade for their own self gratification whenever a slight injustice in the world is perceived and they make it an excuse to be the worst of themselves when they have everything.
Or, are people able to believe in good if there is no price to pay. It just looks to us like a calculation that can't add up. While at the same time we see suffering as currency.
Yo! It's the idea I put in the research assistant form!
Given how soon it's been since then you must have been working on it long before that, but it's cool that we had similar ideas.
I was genuinely astounded when I came across the suggestion. It made me laugh! You are correct that this was already in production, but I wanted to say that did genuinely impress me.
~ Tim
if I recall correctly, the actual definition of the word implies that it is impossible to achieve. there is no such thing as an objectively ideal society.
You would be correct. Thomas Moore coined the word in the mid 1500s. The word translates as "No Place"
The utopian fallacy is one that rubbed my fur the wrong way, now and as a kid, cause I could imagine a better world. As a kid i remember looking for optimism amongst all the cynical media and finding little, then getting frustrated that their wasn't more stories where the utopia just got to be that. Maybe that's why I'm drawn to the slice of life genre, and stories that incorporate parts of it.
A perfect society can't exist without perfect people.
@@hellblaze10 the problem is that you don't need perfect. You need the best currently possible society made, and then let them figure out what the best possible society actually is. If one is impossible, pock the one immediately worse than it. We have bajillions of ways to improve on the current one of the world got together to make it happen rather than crushing each other economically
@@gabrote42 Youre going to run directly into the brick wall of what people will agree and disagree on.
It's true. It's exhausting people equivalent "cynical and misanthropic" to "realistic and mature" all the time.
I've been working on a world building project that is the aftermath of my own answer to this idea. My answer was to show the child kindness even if the civilization crumbles as a result, even if I become the devil because of it. If a civilization requires suffering to exist it has already failed.
In my world building project the civilization of Eden was created at the end of a conflict known as the Eternal War. It was a war started by the gods of this world. By it's end only two goddesses remained Sophia the goddesses of humanity and Sephirot the Devil. Sephirot desired children of her own but Sophia refused believing the war would only start again. But Sephirot went behind her back and created a young demon girl named Eve, and placed her at the bottom of the largest tree in Eden and created fruit that would show those who eat it the truth of the world and what will happen if Eve is removed from the tree.
Sophia eventually discovered what Sephirot had done and did her best to hide the tree, marking it as forbidden. For nearly a thousand years the tree went unnoticed. But eventually four children found the tree and ate the fruit. They were Ferdiad, Aífe, Cú Chulainn, and Scáthach.
Three of them choose to go ignore Eve but Scáthach chose to befriend the demon and eventually removed her from the tree. This resulted in Eden crumbling and the world was ripped apart into a upper world of floating islands and a dark and dangerous lower world. And what became known as the Curse of the Devil was unleashed on to the world causing a number of people to randomly be born with demon blood.
at about halfway through the story what i am hearing is very nihalistic ideas towards utopias but then when it comes to utopias they tend to be an end goal of a story or the backdrop for some status quo shattering event to trigger the heroes journey or a thing to be protecting. utopia stories without some kind of crisis to threaten it or outright destroy it makes for a boring story usually
that being said and of relevence is that my favorite utopia is the city in the appleseed anime
My one problem with the evil utopia is the failure to dedicate to an actual utopia, the utopia is always sustained through suffering or something of the sort, the suffering is needed, very few writers commit to an actual utopia were everything is perfect period, because there is no analysis there, we would all like to live in a perfect utopia the utopia is merely a background for moral discussions about suffering and sadly i find that slightly disappointing because it has been done so often. But I also find it very fun when authors use sci fi stories to have full philosophical debates with one another across time, that is writing at its finest, and actually investigating a utopia criticizing the cinism the thought that perfection is impossible and therefore should not be pursued is a very sad way to see the world and le guin tells the reader to not give in and to try and fix things
You ever think about how someone's utopia is someone else's dystopia.
@@hellblaze10 that's my problem, having a utopia that exists through suffering isn't a utopia, it's a copout to begin discussing societal problems, which is of course valid, but for my liking it's done way to often
@@hellblaze10 presumably in the making of one such utopia the education systems would have persuaded and raised people to value whatever was determined to be the best possible society for the maximum amount of people, and the ideologies and differences that made it a dystopia would have been selected against and eventually erradicated. Therefore it'd only be a dystopia to some readers, few of them if the author has experience in arguments, ethics, and other disciplines
i imagined a evil utopia. that must mean, that all utopias are evil. maybe they are... but by that logic, every state of being so far was and will be forever evil. and if everything is evil... then this video has no point to make. utopias are about minimizing evil. its not about perfection (that would be silly), its about a vision on how we can do better.
I agree with you. Utopias are "evil" because there will always be someone who doesn't like the rules of a certain regime and will rebel against it.
That is why humans settled on democracy as the "best" form of government. At least, (in theory), the majority of citizens are satisfied with the rules in place and the minority try to peacefully convince the others to change their mind before the next election or vote.
Some people will imagine a utopia where no animals are eaten, while to others, that would be an authoritarian regime. Just different opinions
States a r e evil, they can only hope to be less evil than alternatives. What we call "society" is a system of compromises and the "state" is the authority making and enforcing these compromises.
Take traffic for example, theoretically, we could make traffic in a way that nobody will ever die or get injured. But then traffic would be so inconvenient, it would be completely useless (which would, admittedly, make it double safe). Traffic laws are a compromise between safety and convenience.
But utopias do not compromise. They are already perfect, compromising would be admitting they are not perfect, and if it is not perfect, it is not an utopia.
I friend of mine said it best once "we can't build a perfect world, but we can build a better one."
It feels kind of like how "all powerful" vs "maximally power" technically mean different things when discussing a god-like entity. Sure we may not be able to build a world that is "perfect" I don't even know what the requirements would be for such a place but, we can imagine in the landscape of possible cities there are a subset of them which are among the best. There could even be many different ways of making wildly different cities which are similarly good. Whether there is an arbitrarily high point is moot when we have so much further to climb.
States a r e evil, they can only hope to be less evil than alternatives. What we call "society" is a system of compromises and the "state" is the authority making and enforcing these compromises.
Take traffic for example, theoretically, we could make traffic in a way that nobody will ever die or get injured. But then traffic would be so inconvenient, it would be completely useless (which would, admittedly, make it double safe). Traffic laws are a compromise between safety and convenience.
But utopias do not compromise. They are already perfect, compromising would be admitting they are not perfect, and if it is not perfect, it is not an utopia.
to minimize evil and improve society, and to keep doing so infinitesimally, you would eventually reach a state of perfection. that is how i understand a utopia to be. its just that because real life is so messy and flawed, itll always scuff up our efforts of achieving a utopia. we can keep trying, and for goodness' sake we better keep on trying, but by God if it isnt sisyphean...
In engineering and the insurance industry we need to acknowledge what many don't want to, that zero risk is mathematically impossible. We have no choice but to put dollar values on lives because attempting to achieve perfection would literally be infinitely expensive. It comes down to math, statistical probability and cost vs gain curves. Perfection can never be achieved, but it would be infinitely expensive to attempt it. This is why any attempt at Utopia could only result in dystopia. Simple math. Keep in mind the laws of economics don't just apply to money. The costs I speak of can come in the form of lives, freedoms ect. One of the biggest scams ever is tricking people in to giving up their freedoms for security. It never pans out well.
The mouse utopia experiments suggest that the dark side of "utopia" isn't just a human thing.
Tbf, the mouse utopia experiments don't work very well...after all they didn't include stimulation. Games and all. Humans and animals alike waste away without stimulation. We go crazy.
@@Ange.revolte games and drugs do not replace ambition, struggle, and stress. growth, evolution and progress requires challenge.
@@Cassandra112 Interesting that you're instantly going to addiction instead of you know. PHYSICAL games; hockey, basketball, toboganning, tag, rockclimbing, hopscotch, petanque, croquet, minigolf, or even puzzle games like jigsaws or puzzleboxes or rubix cubes.
Instead you instantly thought of the worst interpretation you could think of, very bread and circus style, instead of thinking about what the mice were deprived of: space and physical and mental stimulation.
Like no shit if I locked you in a bare apartment building with too many people you'd all start getting pissy and mental health would deteriorate: that's what happens in PRISONS and in ZOOS.
Good point. Humans are technically still animals. Our moral system is built on the fear of punishment, and there is no such thing as morality in nature, which means you can't build a utopia with people.
@@Cassandra112 there is literally no point in having ambition, growth evolution or progress if the society is already perfect. Stress and struggle have absolutely no place in a utopia. Utopia is defined by their absence.
Also, games 100% provide all of those things.
I had to study Those Who Walk Away from Omelas and The Ones Who Stay and Fight in university. Feel like i got dragge back into thw class room haha
I prefer the idea of Utopia not as a perfect place, but as a place that is better than now. That is why I love Star Trek, of all ongoing franchises in fiction, it is basically the only one that imagines a future that is better than the present. Everything from Babylon 5, The Expanse, Blade Runner, etc always imagines a grim late-stage capitalist future these days. Not Star Trek.
Now, on the "utopia doesn't mean perfect" thing, Star Trek itself had that problem. When it tried to portray the Federation as perfect (TNG), it felt weird. But then DS9 came and gave us a flawed utopia. One that is orders of magnitude better than today and where most problems we have now are not present anymore, but with new problems. In DS9, utopia is not perfection, it is the constant striving to be better.
Now, it pains me but to admit, but in recent years Star trek has focused less and less on its utopian ideals, that when it is not actively "grimfying"its idea of the future. I really hate that.
It's almost like there's no perfect solution, and dogmatic adherence to a single, rigid social order always leads to widespread suffering
OR famous authors just have limited imaginations.
Using dystopian fiction to draw conclusions about real world social science is really sketchy at its absolute best. Fiction, especially dystopian fiction, is illustrative hyperbole.
@@pufthemajicdragon I don't think the stories discussed in this video were drawing conclusions _from_ the fiction, but rather designing the fiction to reflect elements of the real world.
Also them having to kill children sounds like a trump strawman (you know the eating dogs and cats part) the author couldn't figure out an actual criticism and therefore made stuff up to make them look bad.
I mean you could just say perfection is literally impossible because that would require an objective measure of perfection, and like pratchett wrote in the hogfather there is not a single atom of justice in this world. Therefore anyone trying to sell you a utopia is manipulating you.
But nope, gotta kick the puppy instead. "Nice argument but i already drew you in this meme as the soyjack and me as the chad" ;)
@@pougetguillaume4632 The intellectualized jump from there being no objective measure of justice, to a utopian vision of future society being inherently fictional is over a pretty steep chasm. Discworld is pretty Nihilistic overall, but often the point is found meaning, sentient expression, and just how powerful the will of man truly is (and how sometimes man thinks himself far too powerful.) The point here is less that utopias can't exist, that there is no objective view of perfection, it is that we can not imagine a world were suffering isn't an intrinsic part of it.
We can imagine many shapes and forms of our own "perfect" world, but at the corners of even our deepest dreams there is a dark hole with a child inside it.
@@Disgruntled_Grunt No the fiction mentioned in the video did not draw conclusions from the fiction, salaufer did.
Thanks for reinforcing what I was trying to say. Dystopian utopian fiction says more about our present world, and is meant to, than it says about any future world.
A utopia isn't evil, it's an imagined concept of a perfect place. A utopia is a bad story with no conflict, no such story exists beyond thought exorcises because to have a "perfect place" where everyone and thing is in harmonious union doesn't pose as a good narrative backdrop unless there is some hidden evil, or different "other" place to drive conflict. I think of Utopia in this context, it is a trope for story telling more than just an idealization of what we want society to be.
Not being able to accept Utopia reminds me of the Netflix Fallout series which has an episode where the characters think there is something evil going on behind the scenes but ultimately learn it was just a misunderstanding and get kicked out because of it.
Do you mean the Amazon fallout series? Are you talking about the vault?
I think she means The Fallout.
@@abford03 Yeah. When the drop into the Vault with all the Mutants they suspect something is up. But really the mutants were the lab rats that were mistreated by the original Vault dwellers. After they took over they made a nice little utopia with no downsides.
So when the main character finds records of the past vault dwellers deeds she assumes it was done by the current people there.
@@pluto9000 no in the amazon fallout series the two go into a vault that seems perfect and they think theres something evil going on, but nope it was actually a perfectly fine society and they get kicked out because in their attempt to find the truth they inadvertently cause the only actual bad thing that happened in the vault
@@SemicolonExpected I'll have to watch it again! I thought they found evil experiments.
😂
You know what I always wanted? An anthology of stories where a character starts noticing the cracks in the utopia and then, every time, there’s a perfectly innocent explanation. Like demolition man but Spartan is a fool and everybody’s right to laugh at him
Yes. This is a great idea. Any ideas for where it would go?
@@lazulenoc6863 I wish. I suppose the easiest way would be to take standard utopiae and come up with a reason why they’re reasonable eutopiae.
So, let’s say you’re in a post scarcity society where nobody has to work but you keep seeing these people in blue outfits and they’re always young and they don’t seem to be enjoying any of the modern conveniences. Lots of subterfuge and investigation happens and when you finally lay it all out to the person that’s been guiding you through this new world it turns out that everybody’s final year of compulsory education is doing actual, fully time, labour, as a way of grounding people and so people can have a taste of having a purpose as well as socialising them in a broader way than co-education. A few people will end up devoting themselves to public service (you tend to not see them because why would anybody show you civil service offices? ), about 70% of people have small jobs which they do ad hoc for a couple of hours a day (which you also don’t see because they tend to do it at home) and the rest of the people just do what they like and that works fine.
Let’s see, another one could be that you stumble upon an underground warehouse full of emaciated bodies hooked up to grotesque machines. You go to expose them to the world and it turns out that every baby is cloned after birth and that clone is genetically engineered to not have higher brain functions, they’re just bodies that stay alive and nothing else. They also have genetic diseases removed. The bodies are then sustained with a bare minimum of nutrition so that everybody has a donor if anything goes wrong and the fact that the clone doesn’t suffer from genetic conditions means that you don’t have to worry so much about those kinds of conditions that present in old age (and thus less pesky eugenics problems).
OK, here’s one. Opposite of the first one, you turn up somewhere but everybody’s young, you don’t think you’ve seen anybody over thirty. People tell you that society has defeated aging so you think that maybe that means everybody just looks young but, no, everybody you meet tells you they’re in their twenties. Then one day the leaving ceremony happens and everybody that’s thirty is crying because they’re going to leave their friends and families so you go to put a stop to this barbarism. Turns out that if you stop aging and death you have a massive population problem so everybody is sent to a different, already colonised and terraformed planet to spread the population out. It’s just that the journey takes a hundred years so you’re likely to not see a lot of people again unless they follow you to the same planet when it’s their time, but it still means they won’t see you for at least a year so it’s still sad.
Those were just off the top of my head. I’m sure we can do better
Yes pls!
@@lazulenoc6863 I definitely wrote a response to this previously but I’m not seeing it anymore. Let’s see if I can remember what I can up with.
Utopian society but there seems to be a sub class of people that are doing dirty work in the background and nobody mentions them. Turns out that everybody spends a year doing service work after graduating as a way to ground them and that’s who the sub class are.
While at an important person’s house a clone is found of that person in some sort of stasis. Turns out all the important people have these clones and then there’s a matrix style bunker just full of these clones. Turns out everybody is clones when they’re born but the clone is engineered to not have any genetic diseases or anything more than a brain stem so they’re never able to be conscious but everybody has an organ donor and you don’t need to do eugenics to prevent genetic diseases.
For some reason everybody seems to be young and beautiful. Then there’s a big farewell ceremony where everybody cries and the olds are never seen again. Turns out that overpopulation was a big problem so humanity colonised other planets. Everybody that turns thirty goes to the other planet but it’s a big hypersleep journey so there’s a good chance people will never see each other again and even if they go to the same place they won’t see them again until they turn thirty so it’s always sad.
Not sure any of these are actually good ideas. Ideally they’d be simpler and more “obvious”
utopias may not necessarily be evil. but they certainly aren't obtainable. in a society without any problems we lose the thing that we need the most. the thing we literally evolved for: solving problems.
we see that even today. people get the feeling their jobs are pointless and it takes away all motivation for it. if you can not do any really meaningful work, you are bound to become depressed at some point. and if everyone is depressed, society dies.
or maybe you start to invent problems that aren't there.
also, suffering is essential to turn a kid into an adult. learning how to deal with difficult situations is the definition of growing up. if you never suffered for a second in your life you remain a child forever. you will never learn how to deal with unexpected emotional stress. think about a particularly annoying and entitled person and you might say "this person has never been told 'no' in their life." being told 'no' causes emotional stress and this makes you grow up. the dots are all there. you just have to connect them.
"Let us in. Let us end the suffering of the Child in the Hole."
The guards let them in. They go down and they shoot the almost form of a person. It screams, but doesn't die. They try again, and again, each act just causes more pain but it doesn't die. Above them, there has been a sudden breakthrough in medicine, people will live longer, suffer less. There is a breakthrough in energy, they can go farther into the unknown wastes, maybe find the people who walked away.
In the hole, they try one final desperate act, they burn the place. Vocal cords that have only spoken screams, and are thick with scar tissue, vibrate so harshly they tear and go silent. Silent not from a reprieve of pain, but because it no longer has the capacity to express the pain.
In the city above, there is a breakthrough they can reach other habitable planets, but more importantly the burned bodies of those that would save the Child have become a Child and can be placed in a new hole elsewhere.
"Utopia" is a paradox. The only reason you know that something is "good" is in comparing it to the "bad". The only reason you know something is "light" is in CONTRAST to "darkness" (or absence of light).
**Without Contrast,** - [life, existence, reality and all the rules of this dream we are living,] - **wouldn't be possible, hence, a paradox.**
Eh, no, that paradox doesn't work. Yes, without good, there cannot meaningfully be something bad, but this kind of paradox is only meaningful when we're talking about _a priori_ axioms as a starting point for philosophical discussion. If we are in a universe without light, we would never develop the concept of darkness, and so clearly darkness cannot be something _a priori_ but is something derived from our observations of the world _a posteriori._ While this is an interesting point, it has no relevance to this topic at hand, because the discussion of whether or not a utopia is possible has no relevance to _a priori_ axioms. If we build a society without anything bad, we could still distinguish good from bad because it exists prior. The distinguishing factors would still make sense to us because we would have a historical record of them and could learn how to identify the bad, especially in case it returns and corrections need to be made.
@@amihartz That is naive at best. Paradox = something that can’t be.
Yes, you can think of theories, but in practice/reality, the “ecosystem” of existence would correct and happen always in a way that has both bad and good, in reality, even in your argument, you say “especially in case it returns and changes need to be made” meaning it just a futile act of emptying water from a boat with a hole in it or swimming against a stream.
“It” will always “return” (the bad) because its like any other ecosystem (soil, pond, universe and even reality and existence itself)
Some notes;
Using “good” and “bad” for simplicity sake.
You cant control everyone at once, and even if you could, you cant maintain for long. (Communism)
The only utopia in my mind is the grace of the animals just existing not knowing of their deaths and of shame.
Just like the chase of happiness, utopia too is a fallacy.
Experience everything as much as you can, the fear, anger, love, happiness, hate etc, and don’t choose one over the other. As much as I hate the saying, but, just go with the flow and exist to the fullest and involve yourself in the “act” of humanity as it is at the moment of your existence/ POV
@@amihartz also, the thing is that we “can’t” be in a universe without light, and we are not, hence, paradox (things that can’t be and not worth doing the mental gymnastics since no useful conclusions will be drawn). Things just are, as they are.
"Imagine the perfect city, a utopia..." Bro, you lost it at city.
Did I seriously catch this seconds after release?!
I think the story where they fight the corruption has the solution.
I genuinely don't see anything bad about it.
If we do it irl the world would be perfect
The problem with it is it's too naive. Everyone thinks their Katniss and "the other side" is The Capitol. Thinking in terms of revolution against corruption tends to simplify the complexity of why systems fall apart. We can't fight corruption because we don't really know what it is exactly or what causes it. I believe it's a lot more complex than the "greed of the rich" or "tribalistic fear" or what ever simplicist cause people tend to give it.
9:28 social workers with guns… it’s like a joke about American social policy.
For those of you from central capitalist countries with a high standard of living (which is not my case, as I come from an underdeveloped peripheral capitalist country, Brazil), this child represents the reality of peripheral capitalism.
The high living standards and "freedoms" you enjoy are possible because of us. They are built upon both early and late forms of colonialism. Your more manageable workloads exist because millions of people in countries like mine work under harsh, precarious conditions to sustain that lifestyle.
I don't hold anything against you guys, workers from developed capitalist countries. But it’s crucial that you understand this dynamic.
A video has to be transcendently good to not be extremely annoying with a title like this. I think the character of a person can be directly measured by how clickbaity their titles are.
I think the short answer is that a story is boring without conflict. In reality, I have no issue imagining a utopia and I think a utopia is certainly possible. The part I fear is that the same path for a utopia also happens to rival the path of dystopia. I can only hope that we, both as society and the governments that we live under, will make the right choices in the end.
My idea of a perfect world is simple. A perfect world is an imperfect world. Every time someone wants to impose their ideas and beliefs in to the society usually goes down to drain after some time. A world who has some problems, but it's relative stable, peaceful and prosperous is far more believable than any utopia.
That's why we need to fight
I fundamentally disagree with most takes like this solely because I treat perfection as "without flaw". Drawing from Chinese philosophy, it is only once one is perfect at the art that you can truly improve. Never was a fan of the weird fear of the word "perfect". I almost find it offensive. xD
@@EksaStelmere I think it's because people often treat perfection as being ideal, or rather you HAVE to be perfect, or you're not "good enough"
@@chrisdiokno5600 I pin that mindset as the reason so many people are so stressed these days.
@@EksaStelmere Yeah, and TBF, that mindset has been drilled into quite a fair number of people
Imagine the ones who walk away from Omelas go and build a better city, and then, using the skills and knowledge and wisdom they acquired while living in Omelas, they succeed. They know how to make a prosperous utopia because they have seen it work, and because they have seen it work, and because everyone is united by the common purpose of seeing it work without being powered by the suffering of the forsaken child, they commit to making it work ... but then... does this Utopia also rests on the suffering of the forsaken child? What do their children do, when they grow up, and come of age and learn that all their wonders and all their wisdom and all their culture come from the suffering of that child.
Do they walk away, too? Where do they go?
Why would the people walk away from the corrected form of the city? They got rid of the only real issue
@@lost_to_the_woods Because the city was formed with the knowledge acquired in Omelas, and the forsaken child is still there, therefore Omegas still benefits from the suffering of the forsaken child, even as it proves the suffering of the forsaken child is unnecessary.
And so, the youth of Omegas, to show that their experience is reproducible, some of them walk away in turn. Not to free the child - that would be dangerous, people would die, and their success is far from certain, but to build another city. Spread their knowledge and show once more that the suffering of the forsaken child is unnecessary.
In the end, scores of cities spawn from Omelas, and from their shining example, Omelians are convinced to free the forsaken child. And I don't think it does anything. The forsaken child is just a rhetorical device - they are there so that us, the reader, are able to believe, but they serve no role in the story.
And then it's no longer a story about how we think suffering is more realistic than joy and happiness. It becomes a story about how the lessons of history can continue to have a real motivating impact on those who seek justice for its own sake.
I'd imagine that once there's enough of them they walk back to Omelas, take it over, and take the child out of the hole.
@@lluviathewolfgirl The child isn't real. they are only in the story because their alleged presence makes the Utopia "more realistic".
There was never any child.
Always a good day when there's a new Hello Future Me upload
Right now there are thousands of children living in worse conditions than the kid in the hole, and societies are built on their bones, and the people doing it will claim it's neccesary to get to the "bad guys"
The problem with Utopias is they deal in absolutes.
And as Sith Lord Obi-wan taught us, "Only Sith deal in absolutes." ;)
A society is made up of people. A perfect society can only exist with perfect people. I've always thought the underlying flaw of utopia is how does it handle imperfections, crimes, etc. without creating a dystopia.
Your standard for utopias is too high. If everyone could just live normal modern life (Job good, has house, has free time)
It would be a utopia but unfortunately this basic needs are becoming less plausable irl
@@lessar2721 how do you force everyone to not fall between the cracks and lock that down? generally most attempts seem to result in dystopia. That is as I said, the underlying flaw, and yes, tends to be caused by imperfect people live in imperfect societies because society consists of people. I do think everyone has their basic needs met and room for happiness is sufficient to call it a perfect society, which makes my standards not crazy high; it's just that regardless of the standard you set, it's STILL flawed people and how society tries to deal with those flaws getting in the way.
@@lessar2721 some people used to think heaven was just a place with enough food to eat.
@@definitelynotcole There is a story floating around the internet called Pantheocide that plays with this exact idea. The short of it is that modern humans invade hell and heaven, and what they find in heaven looks to them like a third world country under a brutal dictatorship, yet people living there counter such: We know no illness, nor strife, we have food, we have homes and families, and nobody is coming to kill us and steal that away. Is this not the heaven we were promised?
Thank you for this! I wish more writers would make stories about utopias without a downside. I feel like part of the problem is that writers feel like the only interesting conflict they can create is the downside.
It likely because a utopia is about one group forcing their morals and values onto everyone based on what a small group of people want , a state dictated happiness.
I'm sure the people at the top think whatever system they romanticised is the best .
The people at the top of a cyberpunk society most likely think it's an amazing system as well
Western media is incapable of producing genuinely optimistic utopian-oriented media due to the influence of the Cold War. Ever since the 20th century, it has become a deeply seeded interest of western states to promote a pessimistic mindset as a way to combat eastern optimism. The mindset that "a future better society is possible" has to be routinely combated in all aspects of life until it has been drilled down into people's heads sufficiently enough that they repeat it as if it were mere common sense that any attempt at constructing a better world must necessarily end in failure.
Because humans can die, so too will righteousness and society. It is only a matter of time.
I think that Firefly answered why. They had the perfect utopia and it essentially led to death through apathy. It is because we believe, and perhaps correctly, that struggling against something is necessary to remain human. A utopia is fatal to us as a person.
This was also touched on in The Good Place. Where they make it to heaven and realize that an eternity in paradise is terrible.