“the only relevant-seeming academic field I found (Utopian Studies) is rooted in literary criticism rather than social science”
“most of the people there were literary scholars who had a paper or two on utopia but didn’t heavily specialize in it”
“Rather than excitement about imagining designing utopias, the main vibe was critical examination of why one would do such a thing”
I know a scholar who heavily specializes in the study of Utopia from the social sciences perspective (history) rather than literaty criticism: Juan Pro Ruiz, coordinator of the HISTOPIA project (~30 researchers, link in English). In their latest project, they are:
“analyzing the locations and geographical spaces of utopianism—both of unrealized or merely imaginary utopian projects (literature, cinema, art...) and of utopian experiments tested with greater or lesser success (in the form of social movements or intentional communities) - throughout contemporary history (19th to 21st centuries), while making an exceptional foray into the Modern Age in search of precedents and long-term trends.
[...] even testing the heuristic possibilities of the human body as a space for the realization of utopias and dystopias in the field of contemporary science fiction or the transhumanist movement.”
I recently attended a symposium on Utopian thinking by Juan Pro in Madrid. He seemed extremely knowledgeable in the subject, and quite positive about the usefulness of serious Utopian exploration as a tool for navigating the present towards a better future. From the HISTOPIA web page:
“HISTOPIA seeks to go beyond the philological approach that predominates in Utopian Studies and to historicize the study of contemporary utopias and dystopias, showing how they respond to the contexts in which they arise, since they reflect the problems and frustrations of a society as well as the aspirations for change it contains, and the conditions of possibility that a particular cultural and emotional framework offers for developing them.
[...] to recognize a new surge of the utopian impulse in the present times, asserting its need to provide a channel for the “hope principle” and stimulate the emergence of innovative ideas that constitute responses to the problems of the present. In short, the group explores the meaning of utopia (and its alternatives) for contemporary societies, as a mechanism for the construction of possibilities, a true laboratory of thought and action, in which we experiment with the forms of political, economic and social organization of the future.”
I found this email online if you want to contact him: juan.pro@uam.es. If you prefer, I could make an introduction.
As far as I’m aware, the first person to explicitly address the question “why are literary utopias consistently places you wouldn’t actually want to live?” was George Orwell, in “Why Socialists Don’t Believe in Fun”. I consider this important prior art for anyone looking at this question.
EAsphere readers may also be familiar with the Fun Theory Sequence, which Orwell was an important influence on.
On a related note, I get the impression that utopianism was not as outright intellectually discredited and unfashionable when Orwell wrote as it is today (e.g., the above essay predates Walden Two), even though most of the problems given in this piece were clearly already present and visible at that time. That seems like it does have something to do with the events of the 20th century, and their effects on the intellectual climate.
My favorite utopia is probably Scott Alexander‘s Archipelago of Civilized Communities, a world in which humans can form communities on any principles they desire on a new uninhabited island, while individuals have the freedom to leave at any time. The central government does very little except keeping peace, preventing some negative externalities and such. It doesn‘t sound too dull, I hope for a vast complexity of different communities and histories, the ability to travel between communitie, etc.
Holden, have you had a look at the Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer? It’s one of the better explorations of a not-quite-Utopia-but-much-better-than-our-world that I’ve come across, and it certainly contains a large degree of diversity. It also doesn’t escape being alien, but perhaps it’s not so alien as to lose people completely. My one caveat is that it is comprised of four substantial books, so it’s quite the commitment to get through if you’re not doing it for your own leisure.
The best fictional description I’ve ever read of utopia is in Worth the Candle’s epilogues—in that it made me feel “yeah, I’d enjoy living there”. Some broad principles:
People choose which kind of heaven they participate in
All physical needs met, no resource constraints
Everything is consent based; there are p-zombies to act out other urges
I recently rewatched the movie Her (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/) which is one of the few examples of unironically utopian fiction I can find. The total extent of conflict and suffering in the movie is typical of a standard romantic comedy—the main character is going through a bad breakup with an ex, and dealing with a new relationship (which happens to be with an artificially intelligent phone operating system). It’s got its own amounts of heartache and loss, but it’s utopian in that all the bigger problems of the world seem to be gone. The main character lives in Los Angeles, but the city is full of skyscrapers, and it seems to be easy for people to afford a spacious apartment (and it’s decorated in warm woods and gets lots of natural light, rather than being the sort of cold glass and steel thing people imagine in a skyscraper city). All the outdoor scenes are in beautiful pedestrian-oriented spaces, full of clean air and happy people of all races and genders, interacting in a friendly way. He can take the subway to the beach and the high speed rail up to Lake Tahoe. He has a fulfilling job helping clients compose thoughtful handwritten letters to their loved ones. He’s worried about being judged for dating an operating system, but his best friend down the hall stays up late sharing videos with her new operating system friend, and his work friend suggests they go on a double date to Catalina island—it’s only the ex who reacts poorly to his relationship with a computer. Other than the computer relationship, the thing I’ve heard the most negative reactions to about the movie is that it’s a future where men wear high-waisted pants in 1970s colors. It might be worth studying that movie to see how to depict a utopia in a realistic way that people can like.
I feel like the main blocker is homogeneity. A utopia in which everyone is free to design their own sub-community as they see fit (provided certain rights are respected) should appeal to pretty much everyone, surely… It can even contain conflict, in the form of law-abiding struggles over the only inherently scarce resources (status, attention, etc.). Like sports.
I have a suspicion that people often dislike talking about utopias for fear of hope.
A personal example: when asking a few friends why they didn’t want to live forever, I got responses that seemed to indicate something like:
“I don’t want false hope. I’ve spent years trying to make peace with the fact that I’m going to die. I don’t even want to entertain the idea unless you have extraordinarily strong evidence it’s possible.”
Erik Olin Wright, a sociologist and former member of the ‘non-bullshit Marxists’ (which included analytical philosophers GA Cohen and Jon Elster and economist John Roemer amongst others), has a good book Envisioning Real Utopias (full book on his webpage here) that I think would be a profitable read for those interested in utopias work.
I think utopias would be by definition perfectly good, and the fact that they sound boring to current humans is more a symptom of Darwinian evolution (we can’t be happy without narrative and challenges). If satisfaction is biochemical, future humans juiced up on a satisfaction drug forever would—again—by definition be perfectly happy with the utopian condition of their world; few humans today would choose that future though. Thus I think the problem with describing utopia is not that utopia designs are flawed, but that literature itself—which necessitates narrative change and tension building and challenges etc—is incompatible with true utopias.
Every single human spending their entire lives high on a futuristic opiate-like drug
Special AI working day and night to optimize the human brain to sustain this level of opiates for hundreds of years without losing the sense of please or dying
Another AI working to convert all matter in the universe into human brains and opiates (without destroying other brains of course)
Its not very fun to read or discuss but isn’t this the true endgame for humanity? Why settle for a “good life” when everyone could have a “perfect life”?
Very few people actually want to wirehead. Pleasure center stimulation is not the primary thing we value. The broader point there is the complexity of value thesis
[Placeholder for Describing Utopia comments]
In response to the following parts of your post:
“the only relevant-seeming academic field I found (Utopian Studies) is rooted in literary criticism rather than social science”
“most of the people there were literary scholars who had a paper or two on utopia but didn’t heavily specialize in it”
“Rather than excitement about imagining designing utopias, the main vibe was critical examination of why one would do such a thing”
I know a scholar who heavily specializes in the study of Utopia from the social sciences perspective (history) rather than literaty criticism: Juan Pro Ruiz, coordinator of the HISTOPIA project (~30 researchers, link in English). In their latest project, they are:
“analyzing the locations and geographical spaces of utopianism—both of unrealized or merely imaginary utopian projects (literature, cinema, art...) and of utopian experiments tested with greater or lesser success (in the form of social movements or intentional communities) - throughout contemporary history (19th to 21st centuries), while making an exceptional foray into the Modern Age in search of precedents and long-term trends. [...] even testing the heuristic possibilities of the human body as a space for the realization of utopias and dystopias in the field of contemporary science fiction or the transhumanist movement.”
I recently attended a symposium on Utopian thinking by Juan Pro in Madrid. He seemed extremely knowledgeable in the subject, and quite positive about the usefulness of serious Utopian exploration as a tool for navigating the present towards a better future. From the HISTOPIA web page:
“HISTOPIA seeks to go beyond the philological approach that predominates in Utopian Studies and to historicize the study of contemporary utopias and dystopias, showing how they respond to the contexts in which they arise, since they reflect the problems and frustrations of a society as well as the aspirations for change it contains, and the conditions of possibility that a particular cultural and emotional framework offers for developing them. [...] to recognize a new surge of the utopian impulse in the present times, asserting its need to provide a channel for the “hope principle” and stimulate the emergence of innovative ideas that constitute responses to the problems of the present. In short, the group explores the meaning of utopia (and its alternatives) for contemporary societies, as a mechanism for the construction of possibilities, a true laboratory of thought and action, in which we experiment with the forms of political, economic and social organization of the future.”
I found this email online if you want to contact him: juan.pro@uam.es. If you prefer, I could make an introduction.
As far as I’m aware, the first person to explicitly address the question “why are literary utopias consistently places you wouldn’t actually want to live?” was George Orwell, in “Why Socialists Don’t Believe in Fun”. I consider this important prior art for anyone looking at this question.
EAsphere readers may also be familiar with the Fun Theory Sequence, which Orwell was an important influence on.
On a related note, I get the impression that utopianism was not as outright intellectually discredited and unfashionable when Orwell wrote as it is today (e.g., the above essay predates Walden Two), even though most of the problems given in this piece were clearly already present and visible at that time. That seems like it does have something to do with the events of the 20th century, and their effects on the intellectual climate.
My favorite utopia is probably Scott Alexander‘s Archipelago of Civilized Communities, a world in which humans can form communities on any principles they desire on a new uninhabited island, while individuals have the freedom to leave at any time. The central government does very little except keeping peace, preventing some negative externalities and such. It doesn‘t sound too dull, I hope for a vast complexity of different communities and histories, the ability to travel between communitie, etc.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-communitarianism/
Holden, have you had a look at the Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer? It’s one of the better explorations of a not-quite-Utopia-but-much-better-than-our-world that I’ve come across, and it certainly contains a large degree of diversity. It also doesn’t escape being alien, but perhaps it’s not so alien as to lose people completely. My one caveat is that it is comprised of four substantial books, so it’s quite the commitment to get through if you’re not doing it for your own leisure.
The best fictional description I’ve ever read of utopia is in Worth the Candle’s epilogues—in that it made me feel “yeah, I’d enjoy living there”. Some broad principles:
People choose which kind of heaven they participate in
All physical needs met, no resource constraints
Everything is consent based; there are p-zombies to act out other urges
Highly worth a read!
I recently rewatched the movie Her (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/) which is one of the few examples of unironically utopian fiction I can find. The total extent of conflict and suffering in the movie is typical of a standard romantic comedy—the main character is going through a bad breakup with an ex, and dealing with a new relationship (which happens to be with an artificially intelligent phone operating system). It’s got its own amounts of heartache and loss, but it’s utopian in that all the bigger problems of the world seem to be gone. The main character lives in Los Angeles, but the city is full of skyscrapers, and it seems to be easy for people to afford a spacious apartment (and it’s decorated in warm woods and gets lots of natural light, rather than being the sort of cold glass and steel thing people imagine in a skyscraper city). All the outdoor scenes are in beautiful pedestrian-oriented spaces, full of clean air and happy people of all races and genders, interacting in a friendly way. He can take the subway to the beach and the high speed rail up to Lake Tahoe. He has a fulfilling job helping clients compose thoughtful handwritten letters to their loved ones. He’s worried about being judged for dating an operating system, but his best friend down the hall stays up late sharing videos with her new operating system friend, and his work friend suggests they go on a double date to Catalina island—it’s only the ex who reacts poorly to his relationship with a computer. Other than the computer relationship, the thing I’ve heard the most negative reactions to about the movie is that it’s a future where men wear high-waisted pants in 1970s colors. It might be worth studying that movie to see how to depict a utopia in a realistic way that people can like.
I feel like the main blocker is homogeneity. A utopia in which everyone is free to design their own sub-community as they see fit (provided certain rights are respected) should appeal to pretty much everyone, surely… It can even contain conflict, in the form of law-abiding struggles over the only inherently scarce resources (status, attention, etc.). Like sports.
I have a suspicion that people often dislike talking about utopias for fear of hope.
A personal example: when asking a few friends why they didn’t want to live forever, I got responses that seemed to indicate something like:
“I don’t want false hope. I’ve spent years trying to make peace with the fact that I’m going to die. I don’t even want to entertain the idea unless you have extraordinarily strong evidence it’s possible.”
I’d love to research this question.
Erik Olin Wright, a sociologist and former member of the ‘non-bullshit Marxists’ (which included analytical philosophers GA Cohen and Jon Elster and economist John Roemer amongst others), has a good book Envisioning Real Utopias (full book on his webpage here) that I think would be a profitable read for those interested in utopias work.
I would be interested in reading a summary of real utopias if one is available.
Chapter 5 summarizes some of the book’s themes.
This Guidelines article by Erik is an even shorter high-level take.
Maybe this recent book could be of interest: Anna Neima—The Utopians: Six Attempts to Build the Perfect Society.
I think utopias would be by definition perfectly good, and the fact that they sound boring to current humans is more a symptom of Darwinian evolution (we can’t be happy without narrative and challenges). If satisfaction is biochemical, future humans juiced up on a satisfaction drug forever would—again—by definition be perfectly happy with the utopian condition of their world; few humans today would choose that future though. Thus I think the problem with describing utopia is not that utopia designs are flawed, but that literature itself—which necessitates narrative change and tension building and challenges etc—is incompatible with true utopias.
Wouldn’t a true utopia include something like:
Every single human spending their entire lives high on a futuristic opiate-like drug
Special AI working day and night to optimize the human brain to sustain this level of opiates for hundreds of years without losing the sense of please or dying
Another AI working to convert all matter in the universe into human brains and opiates (without destroying other brains of course)
Its not very fun to read or discuss but isn’t this the true endgame for humanity? Why settle for a “good life” when everyone could have a “perfect life”?
Very few people actually want to wirehead. Pleasure center stimulation is not the primary thing we value. The broader point there is the complexity of value thesis