Utopias

I've talked about it a bit and people seemed interested, and everyone has their own. So let's talk about utopias.

In my utopia, we're basically living in a state of "administrated anarchy".

People group themselves together into workable sized "states" (I really don't think anything larger than an ancient city-state is practical) and then within each "state" people would divide up the necessary work for the state to function amongst themselves according to talent and ability. So, talented administrators become the most "valuable" people in terms of actually RUNNING the state. Once the necessary work has been divvied up people can do whatever they like.

Within each state people would do whatever they could offer to assist in the smooth running of their state, be that gardening, night soil collection, architecture, medicine, or whatever. Everyone is entitled to the same share of resources from the state, since all roles played in the state will be of value. The basic unit of currency will be your skills or product and time.

Each state will naturally have its own resources and deficiencies and each state would need "envoys" to communicate with the other states to get what is necessary and to share the resources. Those states that might perhaps seem to lack resources like arable land etc. could provide "services" as their resource. A town might decide to have a huge Library or provide educational or sports facilities or something like that if they lacked the natural resources to support their state.

My utopia is basically about every person finding a "place" in our society as a species and being able to work for the good of other human beings, and have freedom to pursue whatever they consider to be worthwhile.

I think this is only possible if everyone gets a fair share of the resources available and so gets a chance to find themselves and their role on an equal footing with everyone else.

Utopias based on "From each according to his ability to each according to his need" have a chekered past. I would think that the last person we'd want running a Managed Anarchy would be a superb administrator. They can't leave it alone. They would/have/will continue to look for ways that the Anarchy could be improved and for ways to improve the lives of those living in the Anarchy. In other words, anarchy is innately unstable. It always drifts toward some form (Usually extreme form) of control based government. Start with the French Revolution to test that assertion.

So I doubt that utopias are possible for groups greater than one. If it was just me, I could arrange things just the way I want them. But as soon as I let someone else in, poof either they or I would be unhappy.

Anything any government might do will be seen as too much government by someone. I have even met folks willing to abandon traffic lights. Something about reducing the Surplus Population. Even if we could find a small group that agreed mostly on things, their kids would break it as soon as they had the chance.

Maybe rather than utopian, we might try to define a government that is least intrusive, or least oppressive, or least expensive with a rather limited job description. But it won't be utopian. It will still be government and it will still piss everyone off.

I used to belong to a scheme locally called LETS - local exchange trading. They had an artificial currency, and the idea was that if I did some work for person B, they would pay me in the artificial currency, which I could use to buy services from person C.

The good thing about this scheme was that everybody's time was priced the same, irrespective of what they did. So walking someone's dog paid exactly the same as writing them a computer program.

In practice, working in such a system was very satisfying, and it was nice to experience an alternative way of valuing people's work.

Jinny, I was thinking about your utopia, but in such a system, what do you do with the people whose primary goal in life is fighting?

Your utopia should give them the chance, and maybe it allows them to only fight people from other city-states who feel the same, but it is still limiting their freedom.

If you look at Greece as the best known (over here) city state model, look at the number of wars between the states, is that really what you want?

I've been thinking about my utopia, but each time I try I come up with issues of human nature, like this one. I am left wondering if the desire for paradise/nirvana etc. is an abstraction of utopian thinking - it can't happen here so we will imagine it somewhere else, in the afterlife.

While a utopia is a nice idea it is at best impractical and in reality impossible in the current human state.

In part, "to each according to their need" is a very ambiguous statement. Who defines the need? If the individual does not define what they need then some, if not all, will be dissatisfied with their dictated allotment. What if I want a bigger car than someone else has defined I "need"? That surmises the basic problem. While fulfilling my needs might be done it ignores my wants, which to me may be a psychological need.

Additionally the basic premise ignores another part of want which is greed. Greed unfortunately is a loaded word in today’s culture. Greed is not evil, without it why would anyone aspire to be the best at anything. People aspire for many different reasons, however greed always enters the picture. A person would desire say the recognition for having done something. They are being greedy as they desire to be seen as the greatest at it. Perhaps they simply desire to help their fellow human; desire is simply another word for greed, just not as loaded.

Jinny did however hit upon a point which is important to realize. That is the size of these communities. Communism, which is what we are basically discussing, can work. The problem it runs into is size and the current human state of development. No society has been able to escape the basic state of "us vs. them". While this does not always take the form of war or fighting it does display itself in other ways. The former Soviet Union showed this when farmers, who were far removed from those they were feeding, failed to properly till their fields resulting in poor yields of food. I propose they did this as an extension of "us vs. them" even if they were unaware of it. Without a direct connection to those who they were working for many of these farmers saw no incentive to do more than they had to do. Therefore, they performed the minimum work necessary to prevent punishment (from the government) and yet still provide for themselves and the ones who they did have a direct connection with, call them loved ones, neighbors, what have you. But if you limit the size of the government to small groups Communism has been shown to work.

Of course to move from the philosophical to the reality is where the idea of a Utopia falls apart. As it is most likely impossible to implement a Communist city-state society worldwide at the same time it means their would be some transition state where part of the world is organized as a, say, confederation of city-states and the remainder is not. How long would it take for a neighboring country, lets call them Orangeland, who is not communistic but rather capitalist and needs greater outside resources to continue their own lifestyle of "lets out-do the Jones", to invade or abuse this budding Utopia. Even under the best of circumstances there would eventually be some type of war. And history has shown that when a strong central government takes on a city-state confederation the war has a very bad outcome for the city-state as far removed neighbors don't come to the aid quite as quickly as is needed. Rather this support eventually arrives as the "Barbarians" get closer to their doorstep. By which point is most likely to be too little too late.

But by some fluke let’s say the entire world does shift to this city-state confederation instantly and overnight without any war. How do you restrain the people from desiring more than they have? Otherwise to each according to their need cannot work. And if pay is always equal how do you get people to improve? Where is their incentive? You can't offer them more pay as a street sweeper makes as much as the neurosurgeon. Why would a person put in longer hours of study and work to get the same pay? Is it only because it’s what they are "Best suited to do"? Who would determine this, the individual, if so how do you prevent those with higher ambition than ability from wasting community resources on trying to be what they never can?

Perhaps we could medicate people to lack desire and by extension will as without desire to overcome what would the will do? In that scenario it may be possible to direct people to do certain jobs, but who does the directing? Who gets to decide, perhaps we simply build a massive computer that can make those decisions so we remove the human judgment from the equation. But the problem is we never can remove that human element from the equation as it is such a vital piece of it. The programmers who write the software, or the engineers who developed the chips that form this self-aware and self-taught AI will have been in the equation and thereby prevented their removal from it.

In summary, there are no easy answers, and in my own belief the question of a Utopia for Humanity proves that it cannot exist for individual humans. So we would have a choice. Do humans exist to serve all other humans or would the government exist to serve the individuals. If the former I cannot see it being described as Utopia and if the later how could you ever make a Utopia when individuals will all desire so many diverse and different things. In conclusion you can't have it both ways, at least not until Humanity has moved so far from its current state that I very much doubt we would recognize it, let alone imagine it.

Greed like all vices is a perversion of a neutral drive or quality found in humans. Humans quite naturally want the best and nicest things possible, this is a vital urge in order for our species to survive, innit?

Our society, frinstance, is flawed because a lot of it is based on greed. This is of course true in most societies. Having a big shiny sports car is much like having the biggest gourd strapped to your groin. It is a symbol of power represented by whatever that particular society values. Societies that value virility go for gourds, societies that dig money go for bling.

The drive to possess valuable things is not in itself a bad thing. What is necessary for humans is to percieve the things that are truly of value and to desire those instead of flash cars and bigger gourds.

Any Utopia depends on the majority of citizens being people who value these truly precious things- frinstance harmony and the general well being of Earth and its inhabitants.

That's what makes them utopias and not political theories. But how terrible that we have such a low opinion of the human species. What a rotten bunch of "sinners" we are, we admit every time we dimiss a Utopia for being what it is.

Greed makes people fight. Most human systems themselves depend on greed in one form or another, modern society being a the best example ever. These systems perpetuate the greed they depend on, keeping the people within the sytem "slaves" to whatever the carrot is that the rulers are dangling in front of them. A system that didn't dangle carrots wouldn't perpetuate so much greed to begin with.

I think there is a big difference between greed and desire, or ambition or need. You might enjoy food excessively, and always to take a large share. That is normal. However if you deplete your local grocery so that no one else can buy food, that is greed. If you want to earn lots of money, that is normal, if you your desire for money comes at the expense of your family, that is greed.

I've always had a Utopian fantasy of a society where everybody had access to free basic shelter, free basic heating, a limited quantity of free water, free basic diet. Salaries would obviously be lower, but if you desired things above the basic level you could work hard to get them. That would be a society where no one was unintentionally homeless, where no one was cold, or hungry. Only a fantasy, but a nice one.

Well, I think greed is just desire used inappropriately. Which seems very similar to what you actually said.

"If your desire is X, that is greed" reads to me that greed is just a form of desire, albeit a negative one.

Jinny,

I think, on reflection, that what I was actually trying to say was that desire becomes greed when it impacts negatively on someone else's life.

So when desire becomes greed, it is *no longer* desire?

That would be where I disagree.

I think that all vices are twists or extremes of the same thing that give us virtues. Frinstance, I'm a risk taking type of girl. I could perhaps use that property to be something like a fireman or mountain rescue person. But that same drive can also make me a gambler who puts food money on the horses. A morally neutral expression of that ability would be becoming an extreme sports enthusiast or something.

I think this is true of all abilities, properties and tendencies.

I sit somewhere between Jinny and Shorahmin on the naming of things - I think it is the same basic human force that drives greed/desire, which Jinny certainly said explicitly, and I think Shorah implies. But they are ends of a spectrum IMO, and simple desire for a bigger gourd is distinct from greed where I starve the family to get it.

The reason I think they are different - because actually they feel different. Anger, whether justified or not, is a single area of human emotion. But we have lots of words, frustration, rage, fury, etc. etc. to describe those different feelings. We can all agree they are aspects of anger, but we would mostly say they are different things as well.

Thinking about it, and not sure how to bring it about, I think Shorah's world sounds pretty utopian to me. Of course it would have to include free broadband and a computer so I could continue in SL, but enough food, water, heating and housing for all free of charge, that sounds great. The chance through choice to work and get more, also good - I don't want to be rich, but I do want enough income to enjoy my vices, SL, reading and all.

Eloise has, more clearly than I, described my image of "Enlightened Capitalism". People have a RIGHT to be cherished, fed, clothed, housed, educated, entertained, and challenged physically and intellectually. These are the basics of a "Good Life". But, unless there is an incentive for someone to provide these things, fewer and fewer will actually receive them. That's the essential ingredient of Capitalism - not greed, reward.

It's interesting to me that we commonly conclude that the current state of the species will not fit into our utopian speculations. Therefore, we change the species instead of our current utopia. Aldous Huxley used a mixture of breeding, conditioning, and extreme drugs to make his horrific vision even slightly plausible. He understood.

The rule for any utopias we manufacture in the future should be that we don't mess with the species. We should leave us as we are. Perhaps some extrapolation of the good that is already in us, but nothing more. Then construct your utopia. These dreams then, might actually come true.

P.S. The need for limits on the entitlement to a "Good Life" is at the core of the present sociological debate. So I'm starting a new thread to continue just that part.

First of all, I assume the small scale states would only function in a large scale setting, comparable to ideas I have heard about "Europe of regions". In that model, political stability is achieved at a supra-national level, but the individuals mostly interact in their own region, at infra-national level.

And the strangest thing is that the nations fade away from the equation, perhaps unimaginable for some, but then again, we left feudalism behind, why not nationalism as well.

I believe that if the small-scale states were to be really independent, the system would be unstable, an a new Alexander "the Great" would stand up almost immediately.

A second point against small-scale states is that not every ambition will be fullfillable there. I did not read in the original model if people would be allowed to emigrate to a 'better' state, i.e. better fitting for their needs. This isn't an easy decision, as it could destabilize the whole system.

As to fighting, it is not only caused by greed, but also by a person's need for recognition. It can only be brought under control if the old (European?) honor code is replaced by the new (American?) idea "soldiering is a mostly thankless job but somebody has to do it".

It was said that we have to base utopias on the same species that we see today, future people won't be that different.
I disagree because people are determined not only by slow-changing genes but also by fast-changing memes (ideas).

(Sideline: The only real progress in history is that memes always increase in number, never decrease. There are always more ideas to choose from, although that doesn't make the choosing any easier.)

So if this Utopia happens to be the one missing meme we all have been waiting for, or the best adaptation of the human race to the problems that await us in the 21st century, we may still get there.

I think anyone who proposes a future Utopia also has to propose a Darwinian path to get there: the original society isn't abandoned or reformed overnight, but transformed step by step, with each step representing a viable society (better but still not best).

These small states are a commonwealth of people and resources. One would be free to travel and settle wherever one likes.

For example... imagine a state has a great deal of agriculture, and you're the world's biggest hayfever sufferer with an allergy to cows. One uses the communication network between states to find a place where you can be more useful. Maybe in a desert city state whose greatest resource is its library. Or you could spend time travelling around the world to find somewhere to settle.

My Utopia is dependent on trade between the various states. This trade extends to people and skills too. So if you have a talent lacking in another state your vital work might be there rather than in your "home" state.

Actually, although we are sort of nibbling at it, the UK is sort of looking at it too, internally. Scotland, NI and Wales have their own 'ruling' bodies - assemblies/pariliaments that have some freedoms and powers, but some are retained nationally. There are rumours of local referenda in the pipeline to offer devolved 'regional assemblies' to amongst other regions Yorkshire.

The rationale seems to be that governing on a UK wide scale fails to address the needs of everyone, things that are good for London and the SE are not so good for Rural Wales, or even Yorkshire.

Whether it will work, and how well, that has yet to be seen, but I have to say both the Welsh and Scots seem to be fairly happy from what I hear I hear (being effectively ex-pat Welsh I hear quite a bit from that side). The one in NI works less well, but that has (IMO) something to do with their interesting history rather than any inherent flaw in the concept.

The groupings are all bigger than Jinny's utopian city states, but it does seem like a step back to our pre-Norman state, with the heptarchy, and one that might work...