I took a philosophy course on utopian literature. My biggest takeaway is that every utopia has some marginalized group for which the society is less than a utopia (more like a dystopia). In Thomas More’s Utopia, this was a literal caste of gold-chained slaves.
In the latter half of the course we studied dystopias and it became pretty clear these are two sides of the same coin. The issue with utopias is that they don’t admit a plurality of lifestyles: they force everyone to conform. That, in itself, is dystopian to a lot of people.
Real life is messy and people are different. A “proper” utopia for all is always going to be messy and imperfect; a work in progress.
Did you by any chance read Aldous Huxley's "The Island"?
The moral is that a utopia where tolerance for plurality is permitted is ideologically incapable of defending itself from external threats.
> "The moral is that a utopia where tolerance for plurality is permitted is ideologically incapable of defending itself from external threats."
See also the Paradox of tolerance[0]: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
Perhaps I was too young and naive at the time, but I took "The Island" to be an instruction manual on how to do it right (except for the ending, of course).
It works reasonably well at the level of the entire planet. Every conceivable lifestyle is acceptable somewhere, and nobody has yet managed to conquer all nations to undo that. Where that doesn't help in practice is relocation is often difficult logistically and emotionally, communities exert a grip on people forcing them to stay, some countries forcibly won't let you leave, and, as far as I know, no country lets you freely enter and stay.
No mention of The Culture? I suppose it's not "history" per se, it's quite recent. For interested people, a short description of The Culture, as written by the author, can be found here: http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm
In short, it's literally "Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism" and it's viewed by many as a perfect utopia. A few take a dimmer view, in my opinion because it exposes the underlining meaninglessness and purposelessness of the universe.
The Culture forms the background for a excellent series of books written by Scottish author Iain M Banks; I fully recommend it.
There’s nothing particularly gay about it aside from a few instances spread across the series. Why attempt to poison a well that has such a devoted following?
The Culture doesn't have gendered pronouns and you can change your sex by thinking really hard (really); there's a social expectation that each individual should sire a child and be pregnant with one during their lifetime. Most people in the XXI century would agree that's at least a bit gay :)
Of course there are pronouns, that’s how everyone is referred to (he, she, him, her etc.). Every book in the series uses them, even for some of the minds. There is an ability for an actual sex change, the genetic changes for which can be kicked of by wanting to change. No expectation whatsoever. That whole sequence is touched on in one book for about 3 pages and this is a series with 12+ books.
Basically the phrase humorously sums up explorations of what happens when everything is so advanced that among other things, someone can just flippantly choose however they want their body to be. Which means lots of things that we intuitively consider as static go right out the airlock.
Imo it's Banks' attempt to portray "as close as you can get to utopia, whilst still having humans". What stops it short of perfection is the Minds (especially Special Circumstances) and their power to direct events. They never directly limit the freedoms of Culture citizens, but they happily use them as unwitting pawns in their galactic power games (e.g. the subtly titled Player of Games). The imbalance of intelligence and strength between humans and Minds means that the Minds are effectively dictators, albeit benevolent ones.
I mean, there's always the choice of splitting from The Culture and taking with you non-sentient AIs... In one of the books there's a guy who did just that, but he keeps talking to the air, perfectly convinced the Minds were still monitoring them (which they might or might not do).
As for Special Circumstances... it's Special Circumstances.
I would argue that the Minds enable The Culture's utopia. Special Circumstances may theoretically have the capacity to direct events within The Culture, but their efforts are near-exclusively directed without and in the only example to the contrary, those efforts fail rather spectacularly (Excession).
Special Circumstances was not involved in the Excession mess, that was a sub-group of Minds who had _ideas_ and _principles_ (I somehow agree with them, the Affront are, well... an affront)
I was going to bring up the Chelgrians (as a fuck-up), but that was Contact fault, if I recall correctly.
Been a while since I read Excession but SC was definitely involved to some degree.
> The Interesting Times Gang (ITG), an informal group of Minds loosely connected with Special Circumstances, try to manage the Culture's response to the Excession.
> Whilst it appeared that the Sleeper Service had been Eccentric for 4 decades, it had in fact been a dedicated, if secret, military resource acting on behalf of a sub-set of Special Circumstances Minds known as the Interesting Times Gang
The Culture is a utopia made of unobtainium. It has FTL travel and communications, strong AI, teleportation, molecular nanotechnology, advanced biological engineering, immortality, replicators, and effectively unlimited access to energy, materials, and living space. This places it well off into science fantasy territory, but I enjoy contemplating just how much of its liberation from want could be realized within the constraints of known physics.
I love to compare the Culture to Star Trek because Star Trek's Federation has almost identical fictional technologies available to it. The first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas, was published in 1987 -- the same year that Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered. The Federation just gets a lot less utility out of its imaginary technologies. In-universe this is somewhat explained by the Federation being incredibly conservative about technologies like genetic engineering due to historical scars.
The deeper explanation is that Banks wrote for a print audience but Star Trek writers had to write for broadcast TV. If the TNG writers used their imagined technologies as well as Banks did, the Federation too would be full of immortal transhuman pets gently nudged around by their AI minders, enjoying lots of parties and occasional adventures. Almost every Culture conflict is an ethical problem at its core, because they have systematically eliminated problems of material deprivation and conflict over property. But that would be harder to sell as a TV series, especially in the 1980s.
Every dystopia starts off being someone else's utopia.
Even the Federation. Just the existence of interplanetary hybrids (Spock being the basic example) combined with the repression of genetic engineering indicates the existence of a profession which may not be spoken of to make such things happen. (Yes, The Progenitors, they were fun, and the female Changeling to boot, but you still couldn't get easy cross-breeding) The Federation still keeps a lot on lockdown. They're not handing out Class 5 replicators easily, they still ration holodeck usage, and so on. If anything, the Federation has always looked like a society where people are funneled into various professions based on some kind of convenience. Starfleet looks like a great way to give the ambitious and rambunctious something to do while the rest of Earth pushes softly-glowing widgets around. And then there's Quark's "root beer" analogy ...
> Starfleet looks like a great way to give the ambitious and rambunctious something to do
Reminds me of the u/dys/topia depicted in "The 10th Victim" (1965). In a peaceful future, those with bloodlust (or a death wish) can sign up for The Big Hunt. Ten rounds of hunter and hunted. Make it to the tenth and you get a cool million (and hey you're still alive too!). And for gadget freaks there's Ursula Andress's double-barreled bra. And the music, the costumes, the whole production design, it's way way fab.
Forerunner to The Running Man (1987), Battle Royale (2000), The Hunger Games (2012), ...
It’s not resolved but Dennis Taylor’s Bobiverse series has a post scarcity faction that wants to enact the prime directive from Star Trek after a few hundred years of space exploration and some not quite Trek like first contact with alien races. The contrast with Star Trek is interesting.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 69.5 ms ] threadIn the latter half of the course we studied dystopias and it became pretty clear these are two sides of the same coin. The issue with utopias is that they don’t admit a plurality of lifestyles: they force everyone to conform. That, in itself, is dystopian to a lot of people.
Real life is messy and people are different. A “proper” utopia for all is always going to be messy and imperfect; a work in progress.
See also the Paradox of tolerance[0]: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Here and now, boys!
In short, it's literally "Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism" and it's viewed by many as a perfect utopia. A few take a dimmer view, in my opinion because it exposes the underlining meaninglessness and purposelessness of the universe.
The Culture forms the background for a excellent series of books written by Scottish author Iain M Banks; I fully recommend it.
Basically the phrase humorously sums up explorations of what happens when everything is so advanced that among other things, someone can just flippantly choose however they want their body to be. Which means lots of things that we intuitively consider as static go right out the airlock.
As for Special Circumstances... it's Special Circumstances.
I was going to bring up the Chelgrians (as a fuck-up), but that was Contact fault, if I recall correctly.
> The Interesting Times Gang (ITG), an informal group of Minds loosely connected with Special Circumstances, try to manage the Culture's response to the Excession.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession
> Whilst it appeared that the Sleeper Service had been Eccentric for 4 decades, it had in fact been a dedicated, if secret, military resource acting on behalf of a sub-set of Special Circumstances Minds known as the Interesting Times Gang
https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/Sleeper_Service
I love to compare the Culture to Star Trek because Star Trek's Federation has almost identical fictional technologies available to it. The first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas, was published in 1987 -- the same year that Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered. The Federation just gets a lot less utility out of its imaginary technologies. In-universe this is somewhat explained by the Federation being incredibly conservative about technologies like genetic engineering due to historical scars.
The deeper explanation is that Banks wrote for a print audience but Star Trek writers had to write for broadcast TV. If the TNG writers used their imagined technologies as well as Banks did, the Federation too would be full of immortal transhuman pets gently nudged around by their AI minders, enjoying lots of parties and occasional adventures. Almost every Culture conflict is an ethical problem at its core, because they have systematically eliminated problems of material deprivation and conflict over property. But that would be harder to sell as a TV series, especially in the 1980s.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/opinion/ezra-klein-kriste...
There's a transcript there if you prefer to read.
Even the Federation. Just the existence of interplanetary hybrids (Spock being the basic example) combined with the repression of genetic engineering indicates the existence of a profession which may not be spoken of to make such things happen. (Yes, The Progenitors, they were fun, and the female Changeling to boot, but you still couldn't get easy cross-breeding) The Federation still keeps a lot on lockdown. They're not handing out Class 5 replicators easily, they still ration holodeck usage, and so on. If anything, the Federation has always looked like a society where people are funneled into various professions based on some kind of convenience. Starfleet looks like a great way to give the ambitious and rambunctious something to do while the rest of Earth pushes softly-glowing widgets around. And then there's Quark's "root beer" analogy ...
Count me as someone who fears the utopia.
Reminds me of the u/dys/topia depicted in "The 10th Victim" (1965). In a peaceful future, those with bloodlust (or a death wish) can sign up for The Big Hunt. Ten rounds of hunter and hunted. Make it to the tenth and you get a cool million (and hey you're still alive too!). And for gadget freaks there's Ursula Andress's double-barreled bra. And the music, the costumes, the whole production design, it's way way fab.
Forerunner to The Running Man (1987), Battle Royale (2000), The Hunger Games (2012), ...