We continue our speculative politics week with this question:

Should utopian visions of future societies inform our thinking or like marxism are these primrose paths to misery?

MT: I have to confess to having a crush on utopian visions. I suspect that’s a side effect of a happy childhood and reading too much science fiction growing up. On the flipside however whenever people get the idea in their heads that the world would be perfect if only we did X, Y and Z then they tend to be a bit ruthless in their pursuit of it. There’s a big gap between a vision of utopia and realizing utopia (if that’s possible). Still I think the idea that the world we live in isn’t the best we can hope for and that we can make it better incrementaly is a healthy one. And utopian visions can inform that thinking as long as you take them all with a grain of salt. The opposite idea, that the world can’t be improved on and all that remains is the playing out of some kind of zero sum game, is by far the more dangerous one. You can probably find plenty of examples of that kind of thinking in the headlines of today’s papers.

Now on to our commentators:

James Pinkerton:
Inform yes, dominate no. I am with Aristotle, the Founders, and Isaiah Berlin: All “master ideologies” are suspect. I mistrust Hegelians, Marxists, Feminists, Randians, Queer Theorists, Deconstructionists, End-of-History-ists, and all the rest. I mean, they should all be free to peddle their ideo-wares, if only to keep everyone else in check, in good pluralist fashion. A few years ago, James C. Scott published a book entitled, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, which did a great job of summarizing the various efforts of utopians to refashion society. Building on the work of earlier Hayekians such as Jane Jacobs and Peter Bauer, Scott reminded us that most of these efforts–some of them insane but obscure, like the German prince who wanted all the trees in his forest to be in straight rows–ended in disaster. Most new ideas are bad ideas–that’s why you need the market, including the political market, to test them and thresh them.

One dilemma, of course, is that technology does tend to be totalizing. If some people get electricity, then eventually, just about everyone gets electricity. And the same Mumfordian push toward technical maximization holds true for cars, TV, medicine, computers etc. Not everyone gets everything, but most people seem to want everything. And that holds true, of course, for things that are dangerous, from cigarettes to greenhouse gases to weaponry, including WMD.

Unfortunately, many inventors and entrpreneurs have a totalizing streak in them, thinking to themselves that if everyone can be persuaded, or forced, to do something in a new way, the world will be saved–or at least they will get rich. I’m neither a socialist nor a Luddite, of course, so these people must be permitted to walk freely. However, they must be checked-and-balanced by the political process, just as the political theorists mentioned in the previous paragraph must be checked-and-balanced.

The result of all this non-hubristic pluralism will, hopefully, be a society of “well-regulated liberty,” which is what Adam Smith wanted.

James Pinkerton worked in the White House under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Since leaving government in 1993, he has been a columnist for Newsday; a contributor to the Fox News Channel and a regular on its Newswatch show.

Diane L. Walton:
My impression is that any work of literature (or other media) that showcases a “utopian” or near- perfect society, generally does so at the peril of the society in question. In other words, the reader or viewer soon learns that nothing is perfect, and eventually the society is either crumbling in ruins, or it has been forced to make some revolutionary changes to reinvent itself before it implodes. The original “Star Trek” made a lot of mileage from this particular plot device.

The society, itself, becomes a major (albeit flawed, psychotic and near death) character in the book, rather than something that would make us all say “gee I want to live there”. For the most
part we end up saying “There’s no way I’d ever want to live there.” So I guess I have to lean in
the “primrose path to misery ” direction, don’t I?

And at the same time, a book that can effectively show a “utopian, yet really, really scary” society that is only a couple of steps removed from our own (like “The Handmaid’s Tale”) can do a lot to, as you say, inform our thinking. This is the “if this goes on” theme that much SF uses to great effect.

Diane L. Walton has been Managing Editor of On Spec for several years, and was a Fiction editor
for On Spec from the start of the magazine. Her own fiction has appeared in On Spec, Northern
Frights and Divine Realms.

Doughas Rushkoff:
That’s kind of heavy. I’m not into being to goal-oriented when it
comes to shaping societies. They depend on longterm narratives that
tend to discount the present for some unseen future. And that’s a real
recipe for repression. In other words, it makes no sense to cut off
heads now for the liberated future.

Utopian visions are more often used to justify inhumanity than as
paths to anything enduring, so I usually prefer a more incremental
approach to change. How can we, in this very moment, do things better?
Meditating outward from the microcosm of actions leads us to look at the broader and longer-term implications of our actions. I prefer that to its opposite.

Douglas Rushkoff is a New York-based writer, columnist and lecturer on technology, media and popular culture.

Dr. James Hughes:
I think utopia has gotten a bad rap. Human beings have always been
inspired by the idea that things could be much better than they are
today, and when they lose that optimism they fall into despair. What we
need is a chastened, historically informed utopianism, aware of the
pitfalls of being both millenialist or apocalyptic. There are utopian
possibilities in the present moment, and our work is informed by them,
but those utopias aren’t inevitable and they will have their own
internal conflicts and struggle once we get there. The 19th century
socialists thought that a cashless society would be utopian, but credit
cards really didn’t change that much except make it easier to fall into
debt.

So, as Marx said, yes to critical or scientific utopianism, but no to simpleminded technoutopian determinism.

Dr. James Hughes teaches Health Policy at Trinity College, is the Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and its affiliated World Transhumanist Association.

Steve Gilliard:
Well, we know Marxism was misery personified, so was fascism, corporatism and many other isms, usually backed up by a man in uniform. And now it seems, democracy imposed from abroad.

But without some vision of the future, and I think all visions are in part utopian, then there is no future. People need to have an ideal society to work towards to make improvements in daily life. Without that vision, home use of the internet wouldn’t exist, nor would cell phones or cable TV. Mundane? Sure, until you’re in a bar watching Arsenal lose to Barcelona,. something impossible only a few years ago. Now, worldwide broadcasts of Champion League matches are not some great sign of social progress, but it means a lot to a lot of people.

It is uptoian visions of technology which leads to the mundane improvements in every day life.

Steve Gilliard blogs at The News Blog and guest blogs at Daily Kos

Karmen Franklin:
I believe both utopian and dystopian visions can influence progress–but I doubt
any single vision will ever prevail. Most people believe their utopian vision will be ultimately successful because their vision reflects a universal sense of value. I’m rather skeptical about that sense of value. Contrary to most philosophers, I think things are born out of complexes of values (values in a physical/mathematical sense) rather than having a value as an attribute (value in the spiritual/moral sense.) It is a fault of our reconstructed perception to think we can ascribe whole values to a whole thing or concept, when that thing or concept is a conglomeration of parts, associated by values. By the same token, our attempts to find or create perfection may add diversity, and thereby the increase intrinsic beauty of a whole. Personally, I would find any system which cannot adapt or change to be rather dull–the more ideas influencing the system, the better.

Karmen Franklin is a philosopher and writer who blogs at Chaotic Utopia

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