Is modern society the closest we've gotten to a utopia?

Of course first-world, industrialized countries have their own share of problems (and I'm assuming those are the countries most of you hail from, deducting that from the fact you must have enough money and leisure time to visit a website about such a trivial thing as media conventions), but compared to how humans have had it for most of history, we live in a wonderland.

I mean, seriously. Most first-world citizens can expect a fairly healthy, stable life of around 60-80 years, plus access to countless medical and surgical procedures should a health concern arise. And we cant underestimate the fact that we live after the invention of general anesthesia for when surgery is under-gone.

The law and criminal justice system is usually, or at least I'd like to think, a secure, righteous system that can be depended on to provide equal and just representation for the average citizen. Free Speech, Free Enterprise, Universal Human Rights; all incredible compared to the numerous dictators, kings, and emperors of the past, who rarely ever cared for the needs and concerns of the common man.

The amount of money and leisure time available today is also astounding. And so much of it, as this very wiki shows. Movies and TV and Books and Games, all of them available for almost anyone. And all this technology as well, to help us learn and communicate better and more than ever before.

And on a purely personal level, the idea of arranged marriages has pretty much died out in the west. People can actually date and mingle with others of their choosing, and marriage is thought of as a bond of love; another scandalous idea for people of the past.

I don't know, maybe I'm just gushing about my own, closeted perspective on modern society, but I for one try to be a bit more happy about all the wonders we have today at our disposal.

We can always do better, even if it seems perfect.

I hope not.

That's not true.

I laughed at all the paragraphs from the second onwards. I'm not sure neither we are close to "utopia", whatever that is, nor closer than we have been at any point in the past, in particular when thinking back at some particular periods in the past.

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?

This guy is basically right. Life is too relative to have this social construct we made up that's called "Utopia" actually exist.

"Utopia" means a perfect society. Perfection is impossible, but insofar as some societies are better for the people living in them than others, and those societies are therefore "closer" to perfect, then modern society is the closest we've yet come to utopia. But that's kind of like saying that a modern lifespan is the closest we've come to immortality. Technically true, but there's really no comparison between the two.

Perfect is socially constructed, and changes depending on the cultural majority, but also on issues like socioeconomic groupings and...(so on, so forth, ad infinatum ad nauseum)

so it's impossible to 'define' or agree to a definition of utopia, beyond 'a perfect society'

And you can't even say 'post-scarcity facilitates a utopia' (if you were going to) because by the time an economy has shifted to a post-scarcity stance from a material perspective, that same economy's largest sector is in tertiary services, ie people, and their time. The point at which you need a time machine to make an economic system work, is the point you need a new economic system

The terrible downside to multiple identities: multiple tax returns

Nope, especially with the singularity happening in about 35 years we'll probably have evolved so far technologically and intellectually utopia will be a pastime between watching quarks and constructing realities on our toenails.

The Blog The Art

If by "singularity" you mean "a point in the future beyond which we in the present can make no reasonable predictions due to technological advances", there's no guarantee that it would be a utopia. The fact that technology will never advance faster than human beings can think it up (unless and until a true smart AI is developed), makes it unlikely that there'd be any sort of society that would be considered "utopic" by common consensus. The fact that we are unlikely to ever change human nature renders a utopic society most likely impossible.

Yes.

Not that we are all that close, mind you, but I cannot think of any other time or place when we have been closer than that.

Now if we could only resolve these annoying environmental issues, and if we could make it so that our prosperity did not (partly) come at the expense of third world countries, I'd say that we would be doing really well.

edited 6th Apr '11 8:44:24 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

The idea of Utopia lies in the people that make it and live in it and, as a people, generally speaking, we haven't changed much in the past couple of decades.

There might be "better" living and such, but that's incredibly relative, as well as one-sided. There's always the other side of the coin that isn't so bright and great. You won't hear about that much unless you seek the information out yourself.

It's an ideal to shoot for, but we'll never make the grade.

Indeed. As soon as we get rid of that pesky sentimental attachment to an abstract ideal of "mother nature" that neither exists nor would be a good thing if it did, there will be no limit to mankind's advancement.

*

*

^{What I said is still true, though.}

edited 6th Apr '11 8:28:03 PM by Wanderhome

Sure. I mean, you won't find many people lamenting the extinction of the smallpox virus anyway...

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

the question is kind of unclear do you mean the closest we've gotton if so that is self-explanitory but ifyou mean the closest we'lle ver get then I sure hopenot.

edited 6th Apr '11 8:45:59 PM by tnu1138

We must survive, all of us. The blood of a human for me, a cooked bird for you. Where is the difference?

If you look at utopia as Plato or Thomas More envisioned it, I would say we are way off.

"Si vis pacem, para bellum"

I think we should probobly follow the model of Plato.

We must survive, all of us. The blood of a human for me, a cooked bird for you. Where is the difference?

Oh but tnu, that is a dictatorship, with Philosopher Kings dictating how matters should be done. Doesn't sound to democratic oh our Liberties may suffer, but I wouldn't mind.

edited 6th Apr '11 8:57:35 PM by izumoshep

"Si vis pacem, para bellum"

No Plato advocated a Republic and not an Oligarchy or Monarchy.

We must survive, all of us. The blood of a human for me, a cooked bird for you. Where is the difference?

Plato proposes a categorization of citizens into a rigid class structure of "golden," "silver," "bronze" and "iron" socioeconomic classes. The golden citizens are trained in a rigorous 50-year long educational program to be benign oligarchs, the "philosopher-kings."

Of course a republic.

"Si vis pacem, para bellum"

that's strange. an oligarchy? damnit words mean things people!

We must survive, all of us. The blood of a human for me, a cooked bird for you. Where is the difference?

And a dictatorship prevents an Utopia how, exactly?

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?

Yeah, they do. "Republic" means any form of government in which rule is spread out among some sort of electorate, which means that pretty much any unified state without a monarch counts. Including oligarchies, assuming their decisions hold sway over the entire state, rather than each of them ruling their own fiefs.

EDIT:

Well, if you have a perfect dictator who is capable of making everyone else act perfectly, then nothing. That's about as likely as everyone spontaneously becoming perfect on their own, though.

edited 6th Apr '11 9:39:52 PM by Wanderhome

Still not worth it as far as I am concerned. Lack of freedom is humiliating and debasing.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Nah, by modern definitions of republic Plato's Republic obviously wasn't one. He was just using Personal Dictionary.

Plato's Republic really resembles Nazi Germany more than any other state. All they'd need is the orgies. And maybe some actual wisdom. But mostly orgies.

EDIT: I tend to agree with the Connecticut Yankee where he says that monarchy always turns out worse than democracy even if the ruler is benevolent, because no human is both perfectly benevolent and perfectly knowledgeable and so any one human will either selfishly withhold things from the people or else miss things he could have done to make the people's lives better.

edited 6th Apr '11 9:45:57 PM by BlackHumor

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1