Devil's Advocate? Value-neutral? Let me go ponder the irony in that.
Good luck.
Semantic errors? How petty.
If it's too petty for you, feel free not to post.
I'm glad Utopia is just a delusion!
Not a delusion but rather, an illusion.
Devil's Advocate? Value-neutral? Let me go ponder the irony in that.
Semantic errors? How petty.
I'm glad Utopia is just a delusion!
Is it because they feel that original sin burdens us...
Since its inception.Since when has utopia become a negative concept?
No.Is it because they feel that original sin burdens us with the innante inability to create heaven on Earth?
So basically, everything that you like and nothing you don't.To me, utopia is not a political idea. It is not a political system to be forced on an unwilling population. It is our future. Either we are utopian, or we do not survive. Political systems follow from the collective attitudes of the people. Being Utopian is something in the present. What did you do today that is Utopian? Everything is leading there, the rise in a scientific literacy and discoveries, the modern re-discovery of consciousness raising practices like meditation and psychoactives, the global communications network, the growing appreciation of human equality and human rights, sustainability and organic movements
Since its inception.
No.
So basically, everything that you like and nothing you don't.
Sir Thomas More coined the term "utopia" when in 1516 he wrote a book of the same name describing a society that was both "eu-topos" ("Good Place") and "ou-topos" ("No Place"). The name is a play on words meant to evoke the impossibility of a perfectly harmonious society and the folly of attempting to achieve the same.
The original "utopian" treatise was Plato's Republic, which described the ideal society. But the Republic is as much an account of the inevitable process of decay from this ideal state into eventual democracy, then anarchy and dictatorship, as it is a description of its form.
As I shall be wont to insist during my brief stay here, it would be helpful if one were to actually read the relevant texts from classical and modern literature, especially philosophy. We must be willing to remedy by some means the unfortunate side-effect of too much immersion in pop-sci news articles, which is a loss of rigor and imagination and overall decay of the ability to think.
I think it's a lack of imagination that causes your cynicism. Utopia is not necessarily perfection, since that would require an ideal. Utopianism isn't idealism. It's not a political system. My vision of it is as a time when wrong action is simply culturally impossible. Right now, we are an invasive species, struggling to find it's way, like the Cane Toad in Australia. But eventually, after tens of thousands of years, even the Cane Toad would find a balance in the Australian ecosystem.
Someday we will learn to build sustainable societies, after which our growth will be more mental than physical.
Anatomically modern humans had sustainable societies for roughly 200,000 years before civilization came along; the last four millenia have been a race to the finish. Once you start domesticating your food, you are using more resources than nature provides on its own. Then the population grows, and you have to find ways to keep them all fed. The more food you produce, the more babies you have. It's a feedback loop and in principle, it's unsustainable.
But even if we solve the scarcity problem, that still isn't Utopia. Going back to the Republic, we're looking at a primarily social problem, not an economic one. It's the nature of the human condition that makes a morally perfect society unsustainable.