Holden K's been writing a great series exploring why depictions of non-ironic utopias are so rare / unappealing.
I really love this suggestion in his latest post—that you can get a feel for a "moderate" utopia thru media centered on sports or performing arts.
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Earnest depictions of utopias often seem dreary because everything's too perfect—no telos!—but of course in these shows struggle for material scarcity is broadly replaced by struggle for creative expression, excellence, actualization, etc. Quite a beautiful vision, in some sense!
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(Of course, in practice much of the conflict and struggle in these shows is "really" about material scarcity—the paucity of scholarships, the practical zero-sum-ness of being an athlete or musician in the world, etc. But I can subtract that away and still get an intuition…)
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At least with Walden Two, the answer is easy: It doesn't feel human. The whole setup looks more like a colony of ants who have learned to paint, rather than a satisfaction of humans' psychological needs.
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As ant researcher E. O. Wilson said of communism: Good idea, wrong species. Walden Two and many others don't describe humans who are good at being human, but some kind of harmony Vulcans.
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