"When Utopia is achieved everyone will be conservative"

[Hygro]

That's Gary Childress's signature right now. It's something I've often wondered. Would there be meaningful distinctions? What would that even mean? Will everyone be a synthesis of The Political's dialectic? Or will the system render personal biases irrelevant?

 

[Tahuti]

Well, I have come to accept 'conservative' as label for my political beliefs; I'm not sure whether the quote is logically consistent, since conservatism is pretty much anti-utopian by definition. Improvement of mankind will largely come internally and not externally from government and technology and thus I think that society is largely unmalleble without any display of willpower on part of mankind.

 

[Gary Childress]

Hi, Kaiserguard,

just a clarification on my part. I don't intend to mean that conservatism is necessarily or inherently "wrong" and should only be valued when utopia is achieved. Who knows perhaps we have a good world now and should seek to conserve some or most of our ways and traditions as much as possible.

Really I just thought it a kind of humorous truism. Utopia is supposed to be a "perfect" society where everyone lives a perfect life and is perfectly happy and no one would desire to change that state of affairs. Obviously in today's world as in pretty much every historical era there are people who are in favor of change and often for what seem to be legitimate reasons. (Sometimes some are in favor of change for illegitimate reasons). In any case there are those who want to conserve traditions and ways of life and those who want change or what is determined to be improvement.

I figure when utopia is achieved (and I also don't mean this in a sense that it is inevitable that it will) everyone will agree and want to conserve the world the way it is. This does NOT rule out the possibility that everyone might agree to be conservative in a world that is not utopian.

 

[Tahuti]

I know that Gary. I just wanted to address the questions explored by Hygro in the OP.

 

[Shaihulud]

Conservatism is a mindset that accepts minimal changes, therefore when a society achieves a state of utopia, the common mindset will be conservative, to reduce changes. However there is no utopia for everyone, and change is the only constant.

 

[Kyriakos]

"When Utopia is achieved everyone will be conservative"

Due to the nature of Utopia (which literally means 'nonexistent place') the above quote is like someone saying:

"When this spiral progression reaches infinity nothing will change again".

Yes. But it won't happen by the very definition of the distinction. If you are not in a finite road to X, you won't reach X anyway.

 

[El_Machinae]

Due to the nature of Utopia (which literally means 'nonexistent place') the above quote is like someone saying:

"When this spiral progression reaches infinity nothing will change again".

Yes. But it won't happen by the very definition of the distinction. If you are not in a finite road to X, you won't reach X anyway.

An engineer, a mathematician, and a theoretical physicist went to a dance. Shyly they positioned themselves against a wall where they had a good view of the dance.
The mathematician sighed heavily and said “I wish I could go ask one of those people sitting at that table over there to dance with me, but it is impossible.”
“Why is that?” asked the theoretical physicist.
“If I go halfway over to the table, I will still have halfway to go” replied the Mathematician.
“Yes” Said the engineer.
“Then if I cover half the remaining distance I will still have a quarter of the way to go” Said the mathematician.
“Yes” Replied the engineer.
The mathematician continued “I can then cover half the remaining distance, but a 16th of the distance remains.”
The theoretical physicist chimed in “Everytime you cover half the distance to the table a small but calculatable amount of distance remains.”
“Right!” said the mathematician “So it impossible for me to go over there and ask for a dance”
The physicist was about to commiserate with a “too bad for us” when the Engineer got up and walked over to the table.
The physicist and the mathematician watched in amazement as the engineer asked a particularly attractive young lady to dance, proceeded to dance with her, gave her a lingering kiss, and then came back to their place on the wall.
“How did you do that?” asked the physicist in awe.
“Although you were correct I calculated that I would be able to get close enough for any purpose I could think of”.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Zeno's Achilles parable (and paradox) was not really about the issue of getting close to something

It most likely was meant to signify that humans have a dual ability of establishing a model of something (the same object) both as finite and infinite (like that road which gets divided all the way, when in 'real time' you move without the divisions being part of your movement in such a preventive manner).

But if something by definition is after something you can get to, then you pretty much cannot get there through a finite road.

 

[El_Machinae]

The point, of course, is that while you can technically never reach Utopia, you can get there for all intents and purposes

 

[Kozmos]

Utopias will become boring and people will start wrecking stuff just for the lulz. Imagine like the internet but in RL.

 

[Ironsided]

There isn’t even any remote consensus on what Utopia would be, is there? Kind of a futile effort to make plans for an undefined destination. So all we can do is progress one step at a time. I'm fine with everyone being conservative if utopia is ever reached so long as we keep progressing in the meantime.

 

[Kyriakos]

I always loved this Utopia anyway:

Best Amiga (space) strategy game of all time

 

[Tahuti]

Utopias will become boring and people will start wrecking stuff just for the lulz. Imagine like the internet but in RL.

That something I always thought would happen as well if Utopia's were feasible to begin with.

 

[Gigaz]

Totally unrelated question:

While Utopia isn't achieved yet, why would anyone want to be conservative?

 

[El_Machinae]

If you believe that all momentum will be regressive, you'd be conservative.

 

[Tahuti]

While Utopia isn't achieved yet, why would anyone want to be conservative?

Humanity must improve by itself. Enacting government policies and technological progress will help very little and may actually weaken humanity.

 

[Cutlass]

The Great Depression made liberalism dominant. 40 years of liberal dominance resulted in no one really knowing hard times, so conservatism became dominant. There is a certain conservatism which comes from not feeling the need to change things for the better. So in a utopia you'd expect people to see things as so good that no change should be made. Hence conservatism.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I expect that somebody will think that man isn't made for utopia and needs to be saved from it.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Humanity must improve by itself. Enacting government policies and technological progress will help very little and may actually weaken humanity.

Hm Kaiserguard, I can not really follow you.
Should somebody have told the Agrarian societies of Pre-Industrialization
"No, no. No mass production or republics for you. That will only weaken you. You must improve things by yourself."

 

[Gary Childress]

I expect that somebody will think that man isn't made for utopia and needs to be saved from it.

In a sense, if there is a person who is discontent with "utopia" is it really then "utopia"? So it sounds like maybe it would be "utopia" for some but not for others. But utopia is supposed to be a society where everyone is happy and content with their society. If EVERYONE is happy and content then almost by definition no one would want change and by definition it would be Utopia. If a person wants to save people from utopia, then that means that person is not happy with utopia and therefore everyone is not happy and therefore it is not REALLY utopia...is it?