Great piece. I really connected with the part about the vastness of the possibility of conscious experience.
That said, I’m inclined to think that Utopia, however weird, would also be, in a certain sense, recognizable — that if we really understood and experienced it, we would see in it the same thing that made us sit bolt upright, long ago, when we first touched love, joy, beauty; that we would feel, in front of the bonfire, the heat of the ember from which it was lit. There would be, I think, a kind of remembering. As Lewis puts it: “The gods are strange to mortal eyes, and yet they are not strange.” Utopia would be weird and alien and incomprehensible, yes; but it would still, I think, be our Utopia; still the Utopia that gives the fullest available expression to what we would actually seek, if we really understood.
It sounds a little bit like you’re saying that utopia would be recognisable to modern day humans. If you are saying that, i’m not sure I would agree. Can a great ape have a revelatory experience that a human can have when taking in a piece of art? There exists art that can create the relevant experience, but I highly doubt if you showed every piece of art to any great ape that it would have such an experience. Therefore how can we expect the experiences available in utopia to be recognisable to a modern day human?
Great piece. I really connected with the part about the vastness of the possibility of conscious experience.
It sounds a little bit like you’re saying that utopia would be recognisable to modern day humans. If you are saying that, i’m not sure I would agree. Can a great ape have a revelatory experience that a human can have when taking in a piece of art? There exists art that can create the relevant experience, but I highly doubt if you showed every piece of art to any great ape that it would have such an experience. Therefore how can we expect the experiences available in utopia to be recognisable to a modern day human?