Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's time messing with memories.
But I seem to recall that there used to be more of a long view in public discourse. Be it plans for colonizing the moon or space tourism, maglev trains, international integration, technology, societal changes ...
... who does that anymore, besides excentrics like Elon Musk (or Tim :P ) that often get laughed at, or companies like Google and Amazon who mostly look into ways of selling you more stuff?
Where are the positive views of the future, the utopias that contrast the doom & gloom that seem to be on people's mind?
When was the last time you read an article that painted a hopeful picture of the next 10, 20, 50 years?
Have we become so small minded that we lost the will to dream big?
Or is that still out there, and I'm just overlooking it?
Trump kinda talked about this in his inauguration speech.
Quote from: Trump
Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger.
One thing I think is instructive is the popularity of TV, games and movies with a post-apocalyptic setting. Why are people so drawn to Walking Dead, Fallout, Attack on Titan, etc? I think it's because they like to fantasize about the heavy weight of the rules of society being gone, even if that means they would be incredibly unsafe.
In some ways, the pessimism is actually wishful thinking.
I think the popular entertainment of an era is always pretty illuminating.
The post apocalypse was somewhat popular in the 80s, too, under the shadow of potential nuclear war.
I see several strands at the moment:
- Cynicism. Instead of an idealized version of life, shows often go gritty, detailing the lives and actions of less than savory characters - Sopranos, Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Game of Thrones spring to mind.
- Escapism. It feels like there's more alternate worlds in mainstream media - Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, superheroes, Star Wars and Star Trek being back in force, the popularity of the LotR movies, or the brief hype around Avatar, Transformers, Pacific Rim, Edge of Tomorrow, and countless more. I remember a time when a major sci-fi/fantasy movie coming to the theater was a rare thing. The digital revolution surely helped.
- Nostalgia. Reigns big, esp. at the movies - reboots, remakes, decades late sequels, and appropriating almost any IP of the last 30 or 40 years for a big screen adaptation (with varying success), if it harkens back to "happier times."
Quote from: Syt on January 22, 2017, 02:20:47 AM
Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's time messing with memories.
But I seem to recall that there used to be more of a long view in public discourse. Be it plans for colonizing the moon or space tourism, maglev trains, international integration, technology, societal changes ...
... who does that anymore, besides excentrics like Elon Musk (or Tim :P ) that often get laughed at, or companies like Google and Amazon who mostly look into ways of selling you more stuff?
Where are the positive views of the future, the utopias that contrast the doom & gloom that seem to be on people's mind?
When was the last time you read an article that painted a hopeful picture of the next 10, 20, 50 years?
Have we become so small minded that we lost the will to dream big?
Or is that still out there, and I'm just overlooking it?
Don't worry Syt, over the next few years I will be expounding on my vision for a better future. :D
I guess it's related to the paradox that despite the fact that things are better than they ever were before, too many people perceive the whole world crashing down on them.
Why is there the assumption that the world is "better" than ever before? Because more diseases can be cured and those who can afford the medication/treatment can add more years to the end of their lives? Because more people have more consumer goods than ever? What are the criteria?
Because there other criteria that point to things being worse for a lot of people. Loss of traditions and the richness of community life, increasing instability and uncertainty about life prospects, the creation of new desires that go unsatisfied, an overabundance of choices in rich countries, new forms of communication actually producing more social isolation, etc.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:07:01 PM
Why is there the assumption that the world is "better" than ever before? Because more diseases can be cured and those who can afford the medication/treatment can add more years to the end of their lives? Because more people have more consumer goods than ever? What are the criteria?
Because there other criteria that point to things being worse for a lot of people. Loss of traditions and the richness of community life, increasing instability and uncertainty about life prospects, the creation of new desires that go unsatisfied, an overabundance of choices in rich countries, new forms of communication actually producing more social isolation, etc.
:hmm:
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:07:01 PM
Why is there the assumption that the world is "better" than ever before? Because more diseases can be cured and those who can afford the medication/treatment can add more years to the end of their lives? Because more people have more consumer goods than ever? What are the criteria?
Because there other criteria that point to things being worse for a lot of people. Loss of traditions and the richness of community life, increasing instability and uncertainty about life prospects, the creation of new desires that go unsatisfied, an overabundance of choices in rich countries, new forms of communication actually producing more social isolation, etc.
The world is better than before because, on average, people have enough food and economic security to worry about having an overabundance of choice :P
Quote from: garbon on January 22, 2017, 05:12:26 PM
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:07:01 PM
Why is there the assumption that the world is "better" than ever before? Because more diseases can be cured and those who can afford the medication/treatment can add more years to the end of their lives? Because more people have more consumer goods than ever? What are the criteria?
Because there other criteria that point to things being worse for a lot of people. Loss of traditions and the richness of community life, increasing instability and uncertainty about life prospects, the creation of new desires that go unsatisfied, an overabundance of choices in rich countries, new forms of communication actually producing more social isolation, etc.
:hmm:
:mellow:
I remember that technological advancement used to be portrayed in a much more positive light when I was a kid. I was promised things like robotic workers, hovercars, colonisation of the moon/Mars, mechas etc in the near future, and those would be fantastic. The fear that robots would replace human workers was an afterthought. Now that we are on the verge of getting driverless cars, the first thing everybody mentions is unemployment. Not safer roads, fewer accidents and deaths.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:20:08 PM
Quote from: garbon on January 22, 2017, 05:12:26 PM
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:07:01 PM
Why is there the assumption that the world is "better" than ever before? Because more diseases can be cured and those who can afford the medication/treatment can add more years to the end of their lives? Because more people have more consumer goods than ever? What are the criteria?
Because there other criteria that point to things being worse for a lot of people. Loss of traditions and the richness of community life, increasing instability and uncertainty about life prospects, the creation of new desires that go unsatisfied, an overabundance of choices in rich countries, new forms of communication actually producing more social isolation, etc.
:hmm:
:mellow:
Seems like you had some points that could be arguable but I don't see how that one could be. I think CC said it well.
Quote from: Monoriu on January 22, 2017, 05:23:39 PM
I remember that technological advancement used to be portrayed in a much more positive light when I was a kid. I was promised things like robotic workers, hovercars, colonisation of the moon/Mars, mechas etc in the near future, and those would be fantastic. The fear that robots would replace human workers was an afterthought. Now that we are on the verge of getting driverless cars, the first thing everybody mentions is unemployment. Not safer roads, fewer accidents and deaths.
I'm not sure it is the first thing that everyone mentions but it is true that as we actually care about other people, we realize that some thought does need to put into how those displaced from jobs will cope. We really don't have any good, workable answers to that. Workable as in there is political will to implement.
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 22, 2017, 05:18:10 PM
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:07:01 PM
Why is there the assumption that the world is "better" than ever before? Because more diseases can be cured and those who can afford the medication/treatment can add more years to the end of their lives? Because more people have more consumer goods than ever? What are the criteria?
Because there other criteria that point to things being worse for a lot of people. Loss of traditions and the richness of community life, increasing instability and uncertainty about life prospects, the creation of new desires that go unsatisfied, an overabundance of choices in rich countries, new forms of communication actually producing more social isolation, etc.
The world is better than before because, on average, people have enough food and economic security to worry about having an overabundance of choice :P
In a world that's never probably been more unequal, "averages" do a lot of work, don't they... Global economic and food security is still entirely unrealized.
I don't get why the overload of choice in rich countries is such a joke when we're talking about whether all our contemporary advancements have created a good quality of life. Alvin Toffler was talking about "choice overload" back in 1970, and it's been studied seriously by psychologists for a long time.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:30:16 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 22, 2017, 05:18:10 PM
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:07:01 PM
Why is there the assumption that the world is "better" than ever before? Because more diseases can be cured and those who can afford the medication/treatment can add more years to the end of their lives? Because more people have more consumer goods than ever? What are the criteria?
Because there other criteria that point to things being worse for a lot of people. Loss of traditions and the richness of community life, increasing instability and uncertainty about life prospects, the creation of new desires that go unsatisfied, an overabundance of choices in rich countries, new forms of communication actually producing more social isolation, etc.
The world is better than before because, on average, people have enough food and economic security to worry about having an overabundance of choice :P
In a world that's never probably been more unequal, "averages" do a lot of work, don't they... Global economic and food security is still entirely unrealized.
I don't get why the overload of choice in rich countries is such a joke when we're talking about whether all our contemporary advancements have created a good quality of life.
You seem to be doing something very odd in this post. On one hand you dismiss improvements in food and economic security as they have not been globally realized but then want to also drill in on an overabundance of choice which is only really afforded to a small segment of individuals world wide. I don't really think you can have both points.
Quote from: garbon on January 22, 2017, 05:35:16 PM
You seem to be doing something very odd in this post. On one hand you dismiss improvements in food and economic security as they have not been globally realized but then want to also drill in on an overabundance of choice which is only really afforded to a small segment of individuals world wide. I don't really think you can have both points.
I'm saying that it's not self-evident that peoples' lives are "better than ever" either in poor countries or rich countries -- clearly, the issues differ for the person depending on place and status.
Quote from: garbon on January 22, 2017, 05:35:16 PM
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:30:16 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 22, 2017, 05:18:10 PM
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:07:01 PM
Why is there the assumption that the world is "better" than ever before? Because more diseases can be cured and those who can afford the medication/treatment can add more years to the end of their lives? Because more people have more consumer goods than ever? What are the criteria?
Because there other criteria that point to things being worse for a lot of people. Loss of traditions and the richness of community life, increasing instability and uncertainty about life prospects, the creation of new desires that go unsatisfied, an overabundance of choices in rich countries, new forms of communication actually producing more social isolation, etc.
The world is better than before because, on average, people have enough food and economic security to worry about having an overabundance of choice :P
In a world that's never probably been more unequal, "averages" do a lot of work, don't they... Global economic and food security is still entirely unrealized.
I don't get why the overload of choice in rich countries is such a joke when we're talking about whether all our contemporary advancements have created a good quality of life.
You seem to be doing something very odd in this post. On one hand you dismiss improvements in food and economic security as they have not been globally realized but then want to also drill in on an overabundance of choice which is only really afforded to a small segment of individuals world wide. I don't really think you can have both points.
This is the main point that I was going to make, but the other point I think Mihali fails to understand is that the claim that "world that's never probably been more unequal" is patently untrue, and far less untrue than it was back in his "good old days." We are more aware of poverty than ever before, because of improvements in communications, but the availability of food and clothing to the poorest is far better compared to world averages than it has ever been.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:40:50 PM
Quote from: garbon on January 22, 2017, 05:35:16 PM
You seem to be doing something very odd in this post. On one hand you dismiss improvements in food and economic security as they have not been globally realized but then want to also drill in on an overabundance of choice which is only really afforded to a small segment of individuals world wide. I don't really think you can have both points.
I'm saying that it's not self-evident that peoples' lives are "better than ever" either in poor countries or rich countries -- clearly, the issues differ for the person depending on place and status.
I'm saying that it
is self-evident, except to social conservatives who value "traditional community values" over life expectancy, infant mortality, and education.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:07:01 PM
Because more diseases can be cured and those who can afford the medication/treatment can add more years to the end of their lives?
I wouldn't dismiss that too quickly. I don't want to hijack this thread with another health care debate, but the fact is, it's not just the wealthy and/or elderly who have benefitted from modern medical technology. In the West, even just 150 years ago or so people could expect that a pretty high percentage of newborns would never live to see adulthood. Now, instead of being somewhat expected, the death of a child is considered an unlucky tragedy. The rest of the world isn't there yet, but the situation is improving almost everywhere (and where it's not, it's usually as a result of war, which has never really been good for anyone's life expectancy).
Quote from: grumbler on January 22, 2017, 05:45:01 PM
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:40:50 PM
Quote from: garbon on January 22, 2017, 05:35:16 PM
You seem to be doing something very odd in this post. On one hand you dismiss improvements in food and economic security as they have not been globally realized but then want to also drill in on an overabundance of choice which is only really afforded to a small segment of individuals world wide. I don't really think you can have both points.
I'm saying that it's not self-evident that peoples' lives are "better than ever" either in poor countries or rich countries -- clearly, the issues differ for the person depending on place and status.
I'm saying that it is self-evident, except to social conservatives who value "traditional community values" over life expectancy, infant mortality, and education.
An odd statement, considering that Mihali is the one questioning whether or not it's self-evident, and he isn't a social conservative.
Quote from: grumbler
Access to food and clothing for the poorest does not directly bear on whether or not there is greater global inequality of wealth than ever before, which as far I know is an open, but legitimate, question among people who study it seriously.
And the question is whether peoples' lives are "better" than ever. Although you quite ironically build an enormous strawman argument for me, I'm hardly arguing that things are worse now than "my" "good old days." I'm questioning the tendency to treat it as axiomatic that life is necessarily better now than ever before, in rich countries and poor countries.
I think the tragedy is that people don't care about statistics showing that they are objectively better off than people who died 200 years ago. They only compare themselves with their peers, with their parents' experience, and with their own past experience. By this measure they may not be getting better. Because their peers who work in the right professions are getting richer all the time, their parents can get stable jobs and afford houses with better success, etc.
Another fundamental problem is that people expect a linear relationship between effort and reward, and there is a minimum standard of living even if they don't work. In other words, a reasonable reward for a reasonable effort. The reality is that the curve is somewhat flat and only goes up exponentially toward the high end, and the floor isn't as high as people expect. In other words, winners take all.
Productivity and income used to be correlated until the early 70s. So arguably you could say that effort and reward used to have a more linear relationship than they do now.
Quote from: dps on January 22, 2017, 05:53:50 PM
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:07:01 PM
Because more diseases can be cured and those who can afford the medication/treatment can add more years to the end of their lives?
I wouldn't dismiss that too quickly. I don't want to hijack this thread with another health care debate, but the fact is, it's not just the wealthy and/or elderly who have benefitted from modern medical technology. In the West, even just 150 years ago or so people could expect that a pretty high percentage of newborns would never live to see adulthood. Now, instead of being somewhat expected, the death of a child is considered an unlucky tragedy. The rest of the world isn't there yet, but the situation is improving almost everywhere (and where it's not, it's usually as a result of war, which has never really been good for anyone's life expectancy).
I do see your point, and don't mean to dismiss the enormous advances medicine has made globally. But your bolded sentence really highlights the issue I'm trying to raise. Infant mortality rates as a whole have decreased, but what you write suggests that this has had the consequence of vastly increasing the emotional pain and social isolation involved in having a child die. Someone losing a child today might not have the cultural resources or community support that their ancestors had, and it might not be obvious to them that their life is much better than their ancestors because infant mortality as a whole has decreased.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 06:00:53 PM
Access to food and clothing for the poorest does not directly bear on whether or not there is greater global inequality of wealth than ever before, which as far I know is an open, but legitimate, question among people who study it seriously.
If the measure of quality of life is merely GINI coefficient, then life probably is worse for the non-starving Indians of today than for the starving Indians of 1945.
The problem with your MOE is that it leads to the conclusion that the way to maximize quality of life is to have a nuclear holocaust so that everyone loses everything, and are all thus perfectly equal.
QuoteAnd the question is whether peoples' lives are "better" than ever. Although you quite ironically build an enormous strawman argument for me, I'm hardly arguing that things are worse now than "my" "good old days." I'm questioning the tendency to treat it as axiomatic that life is necessarily better now than ever before, in rich countries and poor countries.
You should probably look up "axiomatic" before using it in a strawman argument again.
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on January 22, 2017, 06:07:36 PM
Productivity and income used to be correlated until the early 70s. So arguably you could say that effort and reward used to have a more linear relationship than they do now.
I think that the issue is that effort and income used to be more closely correlated, rather than productivity and income. Nowadays income inequality is justified by "productivity" arguments (even going so far as to relabel trustafarians as "job creators").
Quote from: grumbler on January 22, 2017, 05:45:01 PM
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 05:40:50 PM
Quote from: garbon on January 22, 2017, 05:35:16 PM
You seem to be doing something very odd in this post. On one hand you dismiss improvements in food and economic security as they have not been globally realized but then want to also drill in on an overabundance of choice which is only really afforded to a small segment of individuals world wide. I don't really think you can have both points.
I'm saying that it's not self-evident that peoples' lives are "better than ever" either in poor countries or rich countries -- clearly, the issues differ for the person depending on place and status.
I'm saying that it is self-evident, except to social conservatives who value "traditional community values" over life expectancy, infant mortality, and education.
The US is actually an outlier in this issue. It's doubled in the last two or three decades.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on January 22, 2017, 06:16:06 PM
I do see your point, and don't mean to dismiss the enormous advances medicine has made globally. But your bolded sentence really highlights the issue I'm trying to raise.
Starvation still the #1 preventable killer globally, and it's still easier to get a cell phone than a bucket of drinking water in too many parts of the globe.
At times like these, I think it's time for A Better Tomorrow II.
We don't do visions anymore, we do bottom lines.
We're too efficient these days.
Dreaming doesn't have a easily quantifiable cost-benefit ratio so....
Quote from: PDH on January 22, 2017, 11:47:54 PM
We don't do visions anymore, we do bottom lines.
And plenty of overprescribed ADHD medication, so none of that daydreaming, young man.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on January 23, 2017, 01:02:04 PM
Quote from: PDH on January 22, 2017, 11:47:54 PM
We don't do visions anymore, we do bottom lines.
And plenty of overprescribed ADHD medication, so none of that daydreaming, young man.
Actually, adults today are all about visions.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Faminy.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fvisualize-your-future-vision-board-1024x590-e1457973053290.jpg&hash=a5cb8c35c4b36498f336c22d223c6a91e9e5afae)
Quote from: garbon on January 23, 2017, 01:07:56 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on January 23, 2017, 01:02:04 PM
Quote from: PDH on January 22, 2017, 11:47:54 PM
We don't do visions anymore, we do bottom lines.
And plenty of overprescribed ADHD medication, so none of that daydreaming, young man.
Actually, adults today are all about visions.
Enough about the hallucinatory side effects of the drugs you peddle. :rolleyes:
Quote from: mongers on January 23, 2017, 01:22:23 PM
Quote from: garbon on January 23, 2017, 01:07:56 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on January 23, 2017, 01:02:04 PM
Quote from: PDH on January 22, 2017, 11:47:54 PM
We don't do visions anymore, we do bottom lines.
And plenty of overprescribed ADHD medication, so none of that daydreaming, young man.
Actually, adults today are all about visions.
Enough about the hallucinatory side effects of the drugs you peddle. :rolleyes:
I don't peddle drugs. I'm a researcher. :)
Quote from: garbon on January 23, 2017, 01:26:45 PM
I don't peddle drugs. I'm a researcher. :)
I have a vision your job is going to get a hell of a lot easier.
If the "vision" era was the 50s and 60s, it is easy to see why things changed. A 75 year old man in 1969 had lived through the invention of the plane and a man walk on the moon, and seen cars replace horses. There were radical improvements in health care, such as the invention of penicillin and the polio vaccine.
There have definitely been major technological changes since then, but they have been less inspiring and in general more incremental.
As a society, we have no real enemies anymore. The enemies left are just different sized reflection of ourselves.
The rich are getting richer, they don't need to dream anymore. The system works for them.
Our vision: harmonize synergies to maximize the creation of value for shareholders. [/cdm]
(https://kidtimes.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/sugar-plums-danced-in-their-heads.jpg)
Quote from: CountDeMoney on January 23, 2017, 02:17:25 PM
Quote from: garbon on January 23, 2017, 01:26:45 PM
I don't peddle drugs. I'm a researcher. :)
I have a vision your job is going to get a hell of a lot easier.
I'm not sure I follow. Increased regulations in my sector has only made my life more paperworky.
Quote from: garbon on January 23, 2017, 03:40:46 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on January 23, 2017, 02:17:25 PM
Quote from: garbon on January 23, 2017, 01:26:45 PM
I don't peddle drugs. I'm a researcher. :)
I have a vision your job is going to get a hell of a lot easier.
I'm not sure I follow. Increased regulations in my sector has only made my life more paperworky.
Well, lucky for you, those "regulations" are going to be a thing of the past, one the FDA gets reduced to vitamins and power drinks.
https://thebaffler.com/blog/high-on-dystopia-crispin?utm_content=buffer8ff1c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=writersfb&utm_campaign=buffer
QuotePARADISE TOSSED
High on the Apocalypse
Team Orwell is rooting for the end of the world
I've watched the ozone layer disappear, the whole world frying unprotected under the gaze of the sun, all human life lost. I've watched a man climb the glacier that used to be New York City, and I've watched sentient machines take apart the city of Chicago. I've watched society crumble, leaving only a teenager to save us. (I've seen this many times.) All of this was done to entertain me.
Mark Fisher, who died earlier this month, said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Certainly it's more fun. Our imaginations are so overpowered and outmaneuvered by the toxic gravity of the global economy that we are happy to amuse ourselves watching the whole world burn instead of doing anything to keep that from happening.
It seems clear that real life will only inch closer to TV as we consume the apocalyptic spectacles of environmental catastrophe, mass detentions of refugees, drone wars, and a billionaire world order. The confirmation hearings of Donald Trump's cabinet nominees already look like the set-up for some new superhero movie. Now that we have unleashed an army of mutant ants on the world, only one man can save us, and that man is . . .
But our taste for disaster can't be entirely reduced to escapism. A staggering number of our political theorists believe that the only way to make the world better is to destroy it. "After the apocalypse, the Kingdom" is how Deborah Danowski and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro sum up this line of thinking in The Ends of the World. First, we must reach this world's final end; then, we can begin again fresh. We know that this delusion has firmly taken hold of the political right, with nations laying waste to other nations in the hope of paradisaical "rebuilding," but it also continues to infect the left, with accelerationists aiming to speed up the rate of capitalist and environmental disaster so we can finally get past it.
Disaster hawks on both the right and the left forget that when all is lost, people have a tendency to return to what they know, to simply recreate what they once had, like Poland rebuilding its cities after World War II by replacing each brick that had been destroyed with another in the exact same spot. Meanwhile, our greatest engineering minds are working not on levees to protect us from the approaching floods, but on spacecraft to get us to Mars.
It doesn't help that every time we roll up our sleeves to try to solve the daunting problems we face we are reminded we are dealing not only with our generation's screw-ups, but those of our parents, and their parents before them. One look at the Paris Agreement—in which participating countries said yes, let's keep the global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius—reminds us that no one really has any idea how to achieve that goal, or even if we can. The chaos continues, and indeed accelerates. As Danowski and de Castro note, "We are about to enter . . . a regime of the Earth System that is quite unlike anything we have ever known. The near future becomes unpredictable, if not indeed unimaginable outside the framework of science-fiction scenarios or messianic eschatologies." That immediate unpredictability is what makes a fertile ground for dystopia, as it turns out. And dystopia seems to be where our imaginations stop.
Whatever happened to the utopians—the ones who believed that there is an inherent goodness in man just waiting for a little societal reorganization to bring it out? Whatever happened to the ones who could imagine beautiful futures, built not from the rubble but from whatever we have available on hand today? Are the only people who still put stock in utopia our corporate overlords, who so blandly chirp, "The Chinese character for crisis is the same as opportunity," or whatever that overly simplistic mantra is?
Maybe we all just decided it was cooler to be George Orwell (who came from money) than H. G. Wells (who did not)—cooler to be the smirker saying, "Pah, it'll never work," than to be the kid chirping, "Here is what we can do." The H. G. Wells we find profiled in Krishan Kumar's Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times was someone who suffered greatly and wanted to help prevent the suffering of future generations. He was someone who cycled through great optimism and great despair, but kept coming back to optimism, believing that equality is possible without totalitarianism. He treated his ideal society—in which property would be held communally, the state would be run by the enlightened, and all would be free to express their eccentricities without being marginalized for it—as neither an impossibility nor an inevitability, but as something that could be willed closer by way of the imagination. Yet his critics, like Orwell and Aldous Huxley, felt free to mischaracterize his work and compare his vision to the vision of the Nazis. You know who has a vision of the future? Those actively working to destroy it.
The Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski was adamant in his conviction that "the Left cannot renounce utopia; it cannot give up goals that are, for the time being, unattainable, but that impart meaning to social changes." In 1969 he wrote:
Why is utopia a condition of all revolutionary movements? Because much historical experience, more or less buried in the social consciousness, tells us that goals unattainable now will never be reached unless they are articulated when they are still unattainable. It may well be that the impossible at a given moment can become possible only by being stated at a time when it is impossible. The existence of a utopia is the necessary prerequisite for its eventually ceasing to be a utopia.
In other words, giving a voice to the impossible, the impractical, and the fantastical makes it all the more possible. Aiming high, rather than resigning yourself to what is practical and reasonable, is the important thing. In Greek mythology, Ouranos was the sky god, the god of ideas, the god of all that was possible. His son was Kronos, the god of time, the god of limits. Kronos castrated Ouranos, because that is what reality does to potential: it removes some of its power. Ouranos's testicles were thrown into the sea, the realm of Poseidon, the realm of the imagination, and from that interaction was birthed Aphrodite, the goddess of art, beauty, and love.
Donald Trump, with his characteristic desire to reduce anything of rich complexity to a footnote in his next ghostwritten memoir, is currently making a play to annex the imagination, threatening to suck it into his regime of propagandistic "alternative facts." Meanwhile, the left is working to distance itself from fake news by backing away from anything that smells like creativity. But when we move to reject imagination itself, we risk overcompensating. We shouldn't cede the ground. Maybe it's time for us to put thanatos away for now, if only to defy Trump's deadening propaganda, and remember eros instead. Prophets and geniuses see potential in this world. Without their hysterical imaginings, we would be stuck with Kronos alone. Then, there would be no beauty, no love—just the god of limits bringing down the sickle.
We have a clear vision. A future where trucks and cars are driven by AI. Where entire factories are operated remotely by a handful of people. Where AI can beat the best humans in games. You may or may not like it, but there is a vision.
Quote from: Monoriu on January 31, 2017, 06:14:00 PM
We have a clear vision. A future where trucks and cars are driven by AI. Where entire factories are operated remotely by a handful of people. Where AI can beat the best humans in games. You may or may not like it, but there is a vision.
Heh, turns outs I was largely wrong. :Embarrass:
Quote from: mongers on January 31, 2017, 06:35:48 PM
I predict Mono's post in the visions thread will be along the lines of 'Orwell's vision of boot stamping on a face'
Quote from: Monoriu on January 31, 2017, 06:14:00 PM
We have a clear vision. A future where trucks and cars are driven by AI. Where entire factories are operated remotely by a handful of people. Where AI can beat the best humans in games. You may or may not like it, but there is a vision.
Pretty sure computers are pretty much capable of doing those things now Mono :hmm:
I also see it all being clean and renewably powered by self operating power systems designed by one particularly genius Power Engineer who is celebrated as the world's greatest hero.
Quote from: Monoriu on January 22, 2017, 06:04:24 PM
I think the tragedy is that people don't care about statistics showing that they are objectively better off than people who died 200 years ago. They only compare themselves with their peers, with their parents' experience, and with their own past experience. By this measure they may not be getting better. Because their peers who work in the right professions are getting richer all the time, their parents can get stable jobs and afford houses with better success, etc.
Another fundamental problem is that people expect a linear relationship between effort and reward, and there is a minimum standard of living even if they don't work. In other words, a reasonable reward for a reasonable effort. The reality is that the curve is somewhat flat and only goes up exponentially toward the high end, and the floor isn't as high as people expect. In other words, winners take all.
I remember reading a paper about how people measured satisfaction, not by objective standards, but in relation to their perception of how well off others around them are.
This would mean a medieval peasant may well be "happier" than a modern urbanite. Even though the peasant is objectively worse off in every conceivable way, he or she judges their relative well-being by their fellow peasants, who are all more or less the same - not by the rare noble, whose lives they never see enacted, and whom they have no realistic chance of emulating.
The urbanite is surrounded by people, many of whom are far better off then they, and whose lives are public: hell, even in commercials and TV shows, the supposed "average person" lives a life of extreme luxury (for example, a sitcom involving "ordinary people" living in NYC may well show them living in a massive apartment no "ordinary person" could reasonably afford).
Thus, the average urbanite has a high standard of comparison as far as material wealth is concerned. To them, "average" may well be unrealistically out of reach - in my city for example the "average" couple wants a house and two cars, something that the average person cannot really afford. Add in that many lack even job security, and you get a lot of dissatisfaction.
Quote from: Valmy on January 31, 2017, 06:57:53 PM
I also see it all being clean and renewably powered by self operating power systems designed by one particularly genius Power Engineer who is celebrated as the world's greatest hero.
Maybe you should be working in a lab then. :hmm:
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2017, 04:01:42 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on January 22, 2017, 06:04:24 PM
I think the tragedy is that people don't care about statistics showing that they are objectively better off than people who died 200 years ago. They only compare themselves with their peers, with their parents' experience, and with their own past experience. By this measure they may not be getting better. Because their peers who work in the right professions are getting richer all the time, their parents can get stable jobs and afford houses with better success, etc.
Another fundamental problem is that people expect a linear relationship between effort and reward, and there is a minimum standard of living even if they don't work. In other words, a reasonable reward for a reasonable effort. The reality is that the curve is somewhat flat and only goes up exponentially toward the high end, and the floor isn't as high as people expect. In other words, winners take all.
I remember reading a paper about how people measured satisfaction, not by objective standards, but in relation to their perception of how well off others around them are.
This would mean a medieval peasant may well be "happier" than a modern urbanite. Even though the peasant is objectively worse off in every conceivable way, he or she judges their relative well-being by their fellow peasants, who are all more or less the same - not by the rare noble, whose lives they never see enacted, and whom they have no realistic chance of emulating.
The urbanite is surrounded by people, many of whom are far better off then they, and whose lives are public: hell, even in commercials and TV shows, the supposed "average person" lives a life of extreme luxury (for example, a sitcom involving "ordinary people" living in NYC may well show them living in a massive apartment no "ordinary person" could reasonably afford).
Thus, the average urbanite has a high standard of comparison as far as material wealth is concerned. To them, "average" may well be unrealistically out of reach - in my city for example the "average" couple wants a house and two cars, something that the average person cannot really afford. Add in that many lack even job security, and you get a lot of dissatisfaction.
Are they actually dissatisfied by that, or do they just also dream of more? I'm not dissatisfied with my urban existence but of course, would not say no to any extra cash.
Quote from: garbon on February 01, 2017, 04:18:42 PM
Are they actually dissatisfied by that, or do they just also dream of more? I'm not dissatisfied with my urban existence but of course, would not say no to any extra cash.
Tocqueville called it the persistent disquiet that is at the heart of the democratic condition.