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On the Rise and Fall of an American Utopia
- Animats 11y agoFrom the article: "Today, thinking grandly about the future is regarded as a sin in and of itself. Calling a proposal “utopian” is among the more routine slurs on Capitol Hill." Yes. There's a political mindset that the "free market" determines the future. This is a relatively new concept. From 1851 to 1970, there were frequent World Fairs, heavily supported by industry, showing utopian visions of the future. Expo '70 in Osaka was the last of the great fairs. World fairs continue; Expo 2015 in Milan, with a food theme, closed last October, if anybody cares. But they do not reflect national or corporate plans for a better future. We have more productive resources than ever in the developed world, but no collective vision of what to do with them.
- gozur88 11y agoIt has nothing to do with the free market. The reason people don't trust utopians is they tend to leave big piles of bodies in their wake.
- RobertoG 11y agoThat's a little unfair to utopians. I think that what happens is that people only listen to calls for utopia when they are discontent. This discontent is used by ambitious characters to take power, frequently in the name of utopia. Free market proponents are frequently utopians themselves.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jwhitlark 11y agoWhile you make a valid point, one of the major problems with utopian visions is they offer an infinite good, so they give cover to commit anything up to infinite evil. I think offering paradise throws our moral calculations out of whack, which is one reason they do seem to lead to large numbers of casualties.
- alanwatts 11y agoWhat exactly do you mean by "the free market"?
- my5thaccount 11y agoThe first thing we need to do is reject the myth of the free market. There is no free market. It's never worked. There is no existing free market in the world and no one appreciates the consequences of it. A free market would equate to anarchy and very few want that even its proponents.
- gozur88 11y agoA free market doesn't mean anarchy. Like all freedoms, economic freedom is a range. In practice, the closer we are to the "free" side, the better things work.
- hollerith 11y agoAmericans have a healthy distrust of collective utopian visions after seeing how well that worked out for Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, for China in the 1950s and 1960s, for Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, etc. My family and I attended Expo 67 in Montreal, and although it was a good time, it did not have any salient effects on the life aspirations or political beliefs of anyone in my family.
- maxerickson 11y agoUS eugenics programs continued into the 1960s-1970s. I'm not sure their small scale is sufficient reason to write them out of history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States It's interesting to examine A Brave New World in the context of a world where there were active programs (across the world) aimed at making better men. It seems horrifying to chemically stunt a fetus, but the book was written in a reality where compulsory sterilization was being carried out over at the asylum.
- ZeroGravitas 11y agoI always read that section of brave new world as being a satire of the then current society and it's social classes. Basically the poor live in deprived circumstances and so geow up stunted compared with better fed and nurtured kids from other backgrounds. Surely it's not a coincidence that they were stunted via alcohol, rather than random scary chemical X. Though so many other people seem to not see this interpretation, I've started to wonder if I've just invented it.
- maxerickson 11y agoHuxley speaks his mind later on: http://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/ http://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/ It doesn't really support the idea. I think that is an interesting way to look at it (and even if he wasn't intending it to be satirical, it was a response to the times he lived in).
- gozur88 11y ago
- yummyfajitas 11y agoSure we do. Many major tech companies provide us extremely long term utopian visions of what to expect. Uber's vision is robotic transportation on demand, unmarred by corrupt regulators. Amazon's vision is global centrally planned logistics, bringing goods to the consumer efficiently. Alibaba's vision is a world where global B2B sales are easy and efficient. This may not be promoted in a "world's fair" venue, but many corporations operating in semi-free markets have grand plans for a better future. As for "national" (I assume you mean government) plans, we do seem to lack those. The most we ever get are grand plans to throw money around and hope for the best via the magic of multipliers.
- javajosh 11y agoGood read. It certainly resonated with some of my own existential angst about modern society, and I was vaguely aware of this period in history, but I really like Jenning's take that there's so much to learn from these, like social experiments done in miniature. Another part of me believes that these experiments are probably worth doing again, this time using technology (particularly computers) to help organize things. Indeed, my own naive personal utopia would involve living in a nice place with individual apartments and a communal kitchen, day-care, and daily meditation/yoga. It would be cool if we all worked together too, perhaps as a software company. Note that this is an excerpt from a recently published book, "Paradise Now: The store of American Utopianism! http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?keyword=Paradise+Now%3A+The+Story+of+American+Utopianism+&mtype=B&hs.x=0&hs.y=0&hs=Submit http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?keyword=Paradise+Now%3A+Th...
- loginwashere 11y agoWhy would you need communal kitchen?
- RobertoG 11y agoI suppose he miss explaining histories around a fire after a day of hunting in the wildness. There are something alienating in the way we live in big cities. We miss the palaeolithic.
- mhurron 11y ago> We miss the palaeolithic. Speak for yourself. All I see is forced interaction with people that are around you for reasons that have nothing to do with your choice to spend time with them.
- adrusi 11y agoExcept in the paleolithic these people would be your extended family, the friends you grew up with, etc. And because of the cultural homogeneity of such societies, you would get along better with them than people get along with their families today. In the modern context, these would be people you selected.