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.
Conversation
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…)
Replying to
Small wonder utopias are both boring and uninviting - a world without problems is a world incapable of progress, novelty, or discovery.
If Deutsch is right - problems are inevitable - then we’ll never run out of intellectual problems, or even existential threats.
