4 ms·

Is it possible for utopias to be both boring to talk about and incredibly exciting for the people who live in them (as they probably should be, given they're ut

• krapp 8y ago
  Probably. But the problem is they have to be exciting for the reader or viewer. Star Trek's utopia is supposed to be one where humans have evolved beyond petty desires and base instincts. There's no violence, no greed or vice, no intolerance, no scarcity or inequality. People choose to work out of intellectual or creative desire, or simply to better their community, or choose not to work, because everyone already has access to infinite free energy, matter replication and holodecks that can create any fully immersive scenario imaginable. It would be a wonderful place to live, but less wonderful to read about or watch, at least not without an external force disturbing its placidity (or getting on a starship and taking the plot somewhere more... lively.) YMMV, of course.
  • davidivadavid 8y ago
    But that's my point, and to lay it all out more clearly — I just think writers are being incredibly lazy when it comes to thinking about utopias. The very concept of a utopia conveys the idea of a world, or a trajectory of constantly increasing excitement and betterment. The idea that a utopia would be boring because "everything is already as good as it can get" betrays a fundamental misunderstanding: if people born in a "utopia" consider it normal and boring, it's probably not a utopia.