Frank obviously has a good 'handle' on this one; but i would add, an easy way to insure that everyone has access to such a sublime existence.
Eliminate all the visceral demands of our primitive past; instincts, and behaviours which no longer provide a useful role in our modern environment - power, territory (ownership/property), lust, greed, competetiveness, savagery, aquisitiveness, etc., etc.
Without the misguided desires, and behaviours that used to insure our survival (at least to the point of reproduction) in whatever jungle from which we came, we would no longer treat each other as 'rungs' in a ladder, to ease our 'climb' to the mythical 'top', but as fellow creatures with whom to equitably share the wealth and enjoyments of this planet.
[Utopia comes from joining hands, not filling them with 'loot'!]
Bo: I've always thought the best way to make a good civilization is to re-draw the political landscape every generation, so I identify very strongly with your "primitive instincts" argument. There are so many laws that are based on the views of a century ago (just look at the Texas Constitution...grrr...
) if we just made everything anew every generation, this would involve people in the process more, lead to more cooperation, and just make the world better.
I couldn't answer the poll because I think utopias are impossible not due to human imperfectability but because the notion itself is spurious. [E]utopia means, I think, "good place", but in fact it refers to NO-place. All reality involves change while most utopias are described as located outside of history, much like Marx' notion of the communistic classless society in which the dialectic of history stops because there is no longer a driver for change. The best situation (utopia) and the worst situation (dystopia) will always be temporary as change persists for no other reason than that's the way it is.
Well, first of all there's going to be a lot of beer free for the taking and a lot of available urinals or trees.
Coluber, I've wondered what happened to you. Now I know, off drinking and pissing. Well, nobody's perfect (not meant as a pun).
Ha Ha Ha! I was off to Florida making some money. Barely made enough to buy beer.
What ever it may be, we imagine to be utopia....it's a place only your mind can travel to. The simplest life can be 'utopia' to some.
Personally, a teacher's pay check is just right for me. All I want, is to pay my bills,and buy things I like,... books, art supplies, and stuff like bead jewelry
I am not even big on saving, right now. A lot of people work so hard, and put so much away, all their lives...and they don't take it with them
I want to work for a while... but enjoy life, while I am working.
We seem to be talking about two different things in this thread (1) the notion of the ideal society and (2) the notion of each individual's ideal(ized) life situation. I've always thought of utopia in the sense of Thomas More's political satire of the perfect society.
But, as you can see...each person thinks of Utopia, their own way.
I actually like Thomas More's Utopia. But, I have found a lot of people don't. For some, it's the farthest thing, from their ideal society.
There are so many nuances to each of us... each of our Utopia, seems to be parallel, to our individualities.
Do you think Utopia can ever be achieved? NO
Do you think Utopia can ever be achieved?
Difficult question, the answer to this question will depend upon one's definition of Utopia.
What is your vision of "Utopia"?
My vision of utopia is that we live in a world where it is impossible to achieve an ideal utopic society. Why? Because we always want more, always, it would be pretty boring if we thought utopia could be reached/achieved because we would cease to strive for anything else; we would accept the status quo, very boring; we would not continue to strive for anything therefore we would stop to explore and think. I think therefore I am
I think the only way we could ever truly reach a state of perfect happiness is through telepathy. This would solve almost all the problems of the world.
A) You could never hurt anyone else, since you would be feeling their pain.
B) No one would ever starve, since people would be unable to eat if they knew someone was starving 2 blocks away.
C) All(Or most) forms of psychotic disorder would be eliminated, since you would have the stabilizing force of billions of people all at once.
D) All forms of societal intolerance would be eliminated, since everyone would see everyone else's POV.
E) Scientific Advances would be near-simultaneous, with a hive-like mind working on single problems. Anything you don't know - someone else does - any way of approaching a problem - someone else can see it that way.
If only telepathy were real. :wink:
An equally fantastical solution would be a state of universal COMPASSION (based on imagination rather than telepathy).
What do you mean by compassion? (I'm assuming you mean something different from the traditional defintion because of the all-caps.)
CAPS were just for emphasis. By compassion I meant an altruistic attitude in which an individual uses sympathetic imagination to take the perspective of the other. But then if a person is motivated to take the perspective of the other that's all that is needed.
Oh, okay, then I agree. I used the telepathy example to show an extreme situation that would amplify the effects of compassion, or empathy.
Going out on a limb here.
Anyone who looks for utopia by looking for something that is very appealing to the senses or feelings is thinking with the wrong half of their mind. To elaborate on that, imagine having control of the things you think are swell (a capability which technology will bring us in the not-so-distant future). The first thing one might do (not everybody, mind; some people have a condescending "I have a perfect life and I'm very mentally healthy" attitude) is reduce his destructive sexual drive or eliminate the craving for the state that drugs put him in. Maybe you would rather get a big kick out of doing your job and learning than wasting your time on video games or whatever. And you could. So then, utopia would include lots of tedious work opportunities.
Clearly, if we're going to look for a utopia, our senses aren't going to help us, but hurt us (since we could change the things our senses crave with only an appeal to our logic and some future drugs/operation).
Now, do I believe utopia will ever be achieved? I voted yes, but let me put it this way: I think people are slowly moving toward immortality. Call me goofy or whatever you will, but I think that the first steps will be chips in the brain. I saw a tv show a few months ago where a scientist put an implant into a rat's head and was controlling the rat with the keyboard to very good effect; he even told the rat to climb a little rat ladder and halfway up he stopped the commands and the rat got all bewildered and didnt know where it was until the scientist started tapping the keys again, and the rat just moved along up the ladder. Jeez just think of how soon it might be if we paid as much attention to brain research and implant technology as we did landing on the retarded moon or racing the Soviets to a world-threatening number of nukes. That's how it will start, brain implants. Then a link with computers (maybe a cellular internet right in your brain). By the way, there are people NOW that can control a cursor on a screen through nothing but a brain implant--not even a little switch like Stephen Hawking. Consider the rate of transfer of information in a conversation when the other person can see graphic images of your thoughts through a hard-wire directly from the mech. components in your brain to the mech. components in his. The obvious next step is an increase in brainpower. With computers, we have all heard, more is better, or in our case, more is smarter. At this point there is no end in sight.
A lot of people will be resistant to the idea of immortality or cyborgs or whatever, but it will come in such baby steps that no one will notice. Chips, then net, then mechanization. The ones that are truly resistent to the chips may die off before the technology progresses to the next stage. It's gonna happen, only too slowly for most doomsday forecasters to notice it.
So, that's my vision of the future. But the utopia question still remains. Seems to me that it's much more likely that people that have the assistance of corporate AI logic checkers right in their brains and near instant communication of all thoughts with anyone anywhere will be able to agree on the nature of reality and the goals we all should have. Because, as I said, that's the real question: what goals should we have? Many would have us believe the main goal we should have is the acceptance of Jesus as our Lord and Savior, and to convince as many others as possible of the same, and nothing else matters too much, since it's all over soon anyway. But I digress from that and say that well-informed cyborgs with very good communication will be able to slowly develop meaningful goals based on the true nature of reality (which I think exists and is independent of our perception of it). It may take a long time, but I think if there can be a utopia, we (as cyborgs) can make it there. Furthermore, I think there can be.
Regrettably, I am also a nihilist, and I think the utopia we find will be a total devaluation of everything and a withdrawal into nothingness. But I have resolved to try to bring us to that state before I make that notion a fact to myself (because if it was a fact, I could just kill myself now without the fuss).
