• CallMeDirac
    72
    Everyone has different opinions on politics and the best ways to run a nation.
    For this, assume humans are as imperfect as always so that it is at least realistic to nature.
    When you do give your utopia make sure you include why it is better than others and why the flaws are lesser than other ideas.

    I personally have tried to make a utopia but have been unsuccessful and will only be pointing out flaws rather than giving my own utopia as I am conflicted between many.
  • 8livesleft
    127
    I think a society that bases it's laws on the principle of preventing unnecessary harm and suffering would be a good start. The ultimate goal would be to enhance everyone's sense of well-being.

    To achieve this as well as sustain it, I'm thinking that we should try integrating better with the environment - only taking what we need while giving back whatever we can to support the balance of nature - not change it as we're doing now.

    We have examples of how this was being done with the native cultures worldwide who managed to survive and even thrive for thousands of years before being conquered.

    We could integrate those principles and add our scientific knowledge to further enhance the relationship.
  • Outlander
    2.2k
    One where everyone is told or otherwise believes it's a dystopia, and so constantly seeks and works to achieve one. No time for petty squabbles, strife, or discord- inevitable outcomes of human nature absent of any agreeable purpose or dire urgency. Only pursuit of what was lost, with little time for anything in between. Tried and true you know. Just watch Independence Day.
  • Marchesk
    4.6k
    or The Walking Dead, starting around season six.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    The ultimate utopia is God's heaven -- many religionists bellieve that.

    The ultimate utopia is the worker's paradise as Marx, Engels and Lenin envisioned it -- according to Marxists-Leninists.

    The ultimate utopia is reaching Nirvana, which is not exactly heaven, it is more like the concept of Self-Actualiziation as mentioned (but not described) by Maslow.

    The ultimate utopia is Socrates' world of the ideals.

    The ultimate uto-pia is port. (Oporto wine, an after-dinner drink, because in my original language "uto" means "that comes after", and "pia" is slang for alcoholic beverage of the hard liquor type.
  • SkOwl
    5
    Well, with the fact, that there are too many people, the Utopia is becoming more and more real. I will use
    The ultimate goal would be to enhance everyone's sense of well-being
    @8livesleft
    to continue - well-being means, at least from my point of view - doing whatever they want as long as it dont act toward somebody else without their own permission - for example, you cant make me believe your god, you cannot punish me for not believing what you believe.
    If you want just play chess for a whole day, then, if society lets you play chess for a whole day, you live in utopia. Living in society means voluntarily loose some of your freedom. If society makes your "loose" less problematic, for example if you have to work for, for example (due to massive amount of people in world), four hours a day, then its so small price for having your own heaven.
    We are not far from utopia, but there are still forces not allowing us to live it :)) At least I think :))
  • 8livesleft
    127
    well-being means, at least from my point of view - doing whatever they want as long as it dont act toward somebody else without their own permissionSkOwl

    Well-being for me is more like a state of being. As in being content, secure, comfortable etc... In the context of being part of a community that's living in an environment that's constantly changing.

    That's one major element that I find missing in a lot of "utopian" models - the ever-changing environment.
  • SkOwl
    5
    @8livesleft
    I am not pretty sure, if its matter, whether its changing or not. But, actually, I think that we are in the point, where is good to say what we really what to find - social utopia, economic utopia? I think, that you can have utopian life, if there is nobody trying to convice you, to actually do something with you against your own opinion or without your permission.
  • 8livesleft
    127
    I think, that you can have utopian life, if there is nobody trying to convice you, to actually do something with you against your own opinion or without your permission.SkOwl

    Yes that would be ideal but again living with others means that we have to forgo some freedoms as you said in order to maintain a peaceful coexistence.

    But, the education, justice/mediation systems would have helped ensure that issues never get blown out of proportion.
  • Olivier5
    6.2k
    On the OP, a serious while funny book is The Curious Enlightenement of Professor Caritat, by Steven Lukes. He concludes that any system of governance that is fixed once and for all and obeying to a single ideology is in practice imperfect, because human beings are always unsatisfied, there's always more than just one or two things they need.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    I got this gem of a definition from Merriam-Webster.

    Utopia (noun):

    1. A place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions

    2. An impractical scheme for social improvement


    It says a lot, doesn't it, when a "place of ideal perfection" has also come to mean "an impractical scheme"?

    Is this intuition justified? What makes something so desirable also impractical?

    As far as I can tell, the biggest obstacle to utopia seems to be human nature. What's the problem in formulating laws, establishing governments, and ensuring social conditions that define utopia? I'm sure there are experts in those fields capable of putting together a practical proposal only if human nature didn't get in the way. Were we more reasonable creatures, willing to see past our differences and focus on the collective good, we wouldn't be just daydreaming of utopia, we would actually be living in one.

    If what I say makes sense, the following paradox presents itself to us:

    People will change only when utopia becomes a reality. There's no way people will change their competitive, confrontational, attitude - a force I reckon creates, maintains and perpetuates the unsatisfactory status quo, either directly or indirectly - unless utopia is actualized. Those involved would view it as downright stupidity to change only on the basis of a mere possibility - a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush logic.

    Utopia can't become a reality unless people change. The procedure, if I may refer to it as such, to create utopia requires, as a necessary step, a fundamental change in attitude towards a more cooperative mindset - in unity there's strength logic.

    In short, for utopia to be a reality, we need people to change but for people to change, utopia has to be a reality and therein lies the rub, the vicious cycle - neither can be achieved because to achieve either the other has to be achieved first.This is the paradox, the reason why utopia may not be just an "impractical scheme" but worse, impossible.
  • turkeyMan
    119
    A society that uses simple and complex bartering software using modern computers and networks
  • Daniel
    460
    A society in which every kind of behaviour is allowed without any kind of repercussion other than the immediate risks of performing the behaviour and being in a place where such behaviour is allowed. Such society should provide the physical space (a geographic region in the world) where a given behaviour or set of behaviours are allowed, again, without repercussion. i.e., if you like to kill people, there should be a "country/territory/geographic location" were killing is 100% permitted; the only risk of being in such country is the risk of being killed by other people who also like killing. Variety is the law in the world. So a society that allows the development of variety, I think would be the best society.
  • BC
    13.6k
    The critical ingredient missing from utopian schemes is a population of utopians. Lacking an appropriate population, utopias remain unoccupied.

    That said, our longest surviving social arrangement (maybe 200,000 years, give or take a dozen, was that of the sparsely populated hunter-gatherers. Not very many people spread out on a large planet, and having limited technology is probably the most enduring scheme we are going to get. Of course, we don't know what that was like. It might not have seemed utopian to the wanderers.
  • unprofessional
    3
    With respect to maximizing human welfare/collaboration into the foreseeable future, utopia looks to me like a constitutional credit system that successfully optimizes for cultural variation and nonviolent cultural evolution. I'm less clear on the details of how to get from here to there. It might entail the constitution of a global credit union and currency that ultimately prevails in circulation over national currencies and commodities because it reliably distributes credit to a plurality of popular prosocial entrepreneurs, thus denying antisocial entrepreneurs and consumers access to credit and power over the lives of others.
  • ssu
    8.7k
    The critical ingredient missing from utopian schemes is a population of utopians. Lacking an appropriate population, utopias remain unoccupied.Bitter Crank
    I guess if we redefine the population requirements for a "society" to some odd little cabal of people, give them lots of resources, then I guess extremely bizarre utopias can exist.
  • Book273
    768
    Eliminate people. That is pretty much utopia for everything else. Also for people, as it eliminates strife and government and all the rest.
  • Aryamoy Mitra
    156
    Prior to commenting, I'll preface my stance on the philosophical implications of a purportedly infallible society, under the reasonable inference that a society is best characterized as comprising a state of collective being.

    Conjuring an idyllic state of being, under any doctrine, is terribly perilous in my estimate. It's far wiser to devise a mechanism of approximation to an idyllic state, and valorously adhere to the mechanism under the foreknowledge of its finiteness, as opposed to living under the disillusionment of its possibility. Deceit, malevolence, and every other vice that may be complicit in social adversity, is innately entrenched into the recesses of the human condition - to the extent that its manifestation is necessitated by the very existence of a human society. Devising an equivalent state of being in abstract principle is entirely affirming - as long as one refrains from anthropomorphisms in relation to that principle.

    'I personally have tried to make a utopia but have been unsuccessful and will only be pointing out flaws rather than giving my own utopia as I am conflicted between many.'

    Utopias are inexistent fictions. In order to construct a universally ideal society, one must necessarily convene on a universal conception of what idealism entails. Economic predicaments are oftentimes successful in elucidating this impediment. What might better approximate an ideal society; a) individual sovereignty in the form of untrammeled capitalism, that invariably engenders Pareto Inequities through accumulated wealth, and exploits differences in human merit, or b) a society bereft of abject poverty, that permeates asymmetric socialist constraints, progressive taxation and securities, whilst curtailing free enterprise? Political philosophies may also be analogous in this regard. To ethnocentrists, an ethnically homogenous society, subservient to totalitarian dictates, in the aftermath of a genocide, may well be unconsciously idealistic in comparison to a secular democracy.

    One can, of course, maximize optimally on a cohort of dimensions that are widely consecrated; human welfare, mutual cultural appreciation, atheistic and theistic liberty, and the freedom of speech may all be intertwined with conceptions of a society whose contents are immune both to falsification, and to being ameliorated. Aside from being an imaginative exercise, nonetheless, there's no measurable utility in synthesizing an ideal social schematic. One may demonstrate aspirational proclivities in doing so, and yet the material aim to which they may be ascribed, will forever remain elusive.
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.