Utopias/Dystopias

[cissalj]

So: I am reading this book of "dystopian" stories, and it is making me think. A lot.

A few of the stories are, to my mind, more utopian than dystopian. This raises the question: How does one define such?

The subjective approach: "I think I have a fair chance of being happy/contented/satisfied in this system." I think this is a fair analysis, albeit subjective... but that's because my own definition of what makes a utopia/dystopia is how happy/contented/satisfied its inhabitants are. This is my own definition, based (of necessity) on my own experiences of life.

I do argue that by that criterion, "Brave New World" is arguably a utopia; its citizens are h/c/s. Would I be h/c/s in it? no... but that's a lot because I haven't been raised to it. Even as it is, I'm happy to be a Beta; I got a lot of pressure growing up to be an Alpha, and it just didn't fit; I'm probably smart enough, but my personality is happier with doing cooking and wedding rings, rather than cutting-edge research. So: Beta.

The problem with more "objective" approaches is that one can easily see the mote in that eye, while ignoring the beam in one's own (to get all biblical). Complaining that the utopian citizens are brainwashed- and being oblivious to the ways WE are brainwashed- does not strike me as objective.

So: mental exercises: read an ambiguous dystopia and reframe it as a utopia. Read an ambiguous utopia and reframe it as a dystopia. Reframe our current society as both a utopia and a dystopia.

And- think your way into any of these: could you be h/c/s there? If not, why not? if so, why?

What SHOULD our society look like?

Comments

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

I think the pivotal point about Brave New World is that no one was given a choice in the matter; they were genetically tweaked, socially programmed, and drugged. That said, it is sometimes hard to tell which the utopia and which the dystopia. LeGuin's The Dispossessed is an interesting case in point: two worlds, one impoverished desert climate and one with a climate rich in fauna and moisture, one culture anarchic and one with a dominant world government--which is the utopia? It's the one you choose.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

With "The Dispossessed"- I'd love to live in the moon culture (the anarchic one). But- those questions are one of the reasons I love Le Guin as an author.

As far as choice goes- how much actual choice are we given in our own culture? I'd say limited... and that does tend to make me think that BNW is arguably a utopia; the citizens don't get a lot of choice... but then, neither do we.

And they're happier than we are.

I don't think that's the way we want to head, politics-wise; but happiness/satisfaction IS a social good, and our current society makes that really hard for damn near everyone, thus making ours a dystopia, potentially.

But again: what makes a utopia/dystopia? It gets really complex, really fast.

And- that's what makes it fascinating: how do we value various benefits, stacked up against each other? What would we tolerate, vs. what would we resist?

In what sorts of cultures could we be happy and contented and satisfied and productive?

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Also- when reading "The Dispossessed"- it was ALWAYS clear to me that the moon was the utopia. Ambiguous, yes, because of human primate politics- but the utopia.

The world was NOT that- just look at the position of women in it; they were wasting half of their potential that way. Yes, they had a richer environment- but they used that to be stupid and wasteful, as a matter of principle.

Whereas on the moon, there was some stupid waste- but it was not VALUED in the same way; it was not as much a priority of the culture; it was more accidental- and so amenable to change.

[two-star.livejournal.com]

If I were to take an objective approach, I'd base it on Kolmogorov complexity. Of course, estimating the Kolmogorov complexity of a society is no easy task, and it would be prone to subjective error just like anything else. And I'd argue, like one of Kim Stanley Robinson's mouthpieces does, (I think in Pacific Edge?) that there are no "pocket utopias": if one society gets to be a Utopia by exploiting others, that doesn't count. (And furthermore, that we can't judge "society" as separate from its ecological context. This is one problem with a happiness metric for judging a society: it places no intrinsic value on, say, a coral reef. Fortunately nature is at least as susceptible to a complexity analysis as human society.)