Why utopia is impossible

Drunken bros, angry hillbillies, and homeless ex-cons are butting heads with ex-military chefs, body-positive feminist hunters, and free-spirited survivalists. It's what you might call a devolution; and it's making it abundantly clear why dystopian literature, rather than its utopian counterpart, has flourished: true utopia is inherently impossible. Attempting utopia is the surest route to dystopia—and even if you could make utopia happen, it would be unspeakably boring.

The thing is, the producers knew all of this from the get-go. How could they not? Even those who have never picked up a book in their lives have to understand perfect communities are impossible. So why make a series that is doomed to fail? Well, for one, it makes great television. It's not 'Can they create it? A lot of Twitter people are creating drinking games around anytime someone says 'my utopia.

If even people in Western enlightened countries today agree that it is morally permissible to kill one person to save five, imagine how easy it is to convince people living in autocratic states with utopian aspirations to kill 1, to save 5,, or to exterminate 1,, so that 5,, might prosper.

The fatal flaw in utilitarian utopianism is found in another thought experiment: You are a healthy bystander in a hospital waiting room in which an ER physician has five patients dying from different conditions, all of which can be saved by sacrificing you and harvesting your organs.

Would anyone want to live in a society in which they might be that innocent bystander? Of course not, which is why any doctor who attempted such an atrocity would be tried and convicted for murder. The Marxist theorist and revolutionary Leon Trotsky expressed the utopian vision in a pamphlet:. The human species, the coagulated Homo sapiens , will once more enter into a state of radical transformation, and, in his own hands, will become an object of the most complicated methods of artificial selection and psychophysical training.

And above this ridge new peaks will rise. As for Trotsky, once he gained power as one of the first seven members of the founding Soviet Politburo, he established concentration camps for those who refused to join in this grand utopian experiment, ultimately leading to the gulag archipelago that killed millions of Russian citizens who were also believed to be standing in the way of the imagined utopian paradise to come. When his own theory of Trotskyism opposed that of Stalinism, the dictator had Trotsky assassinated in Mexico in Sic semper tyrannis.

In the second half of the 20th century, revolutionary Marxism in Cambodia, North Korea, and numerous states in South America and Africa led to murders, pogroms, genocides, ethnic cleansings, revolutions, civil wars, and state-sponsored conflicts, all in the name of establishing a heaven on Earth that required the elimination of recalcitrant dissenters. All told, some 94 million people died at the hands of revolutionary Marxists and utopian communists in Russia, China, North Korea, and other states, a staggering number compared with the 28 million killed by the fascists.

When you have to murder people by the tens of millions to achieve your utopian dream, you have instantiated only a dystopian nightmare. More writes, in his book Utopia, about a society that is perfect in practically ever sense. The people all work an equal amount and everything they need for survival is provided. Most importantly is that everyone living in this perfect society is happy and content with their everyday lives.

In this society everybody supports everyone. The community is only as strong as its weakest link. For society to progress everyone must work together. Opponents of the Utopian system, however, feel that the strong. In his novel, More explains that a utopia is anything but perfect. More focused on the human imperfections, and deteriorating government. Many works of literature also portrayed the same ideas regarding. Modern society is far from perfect, and even further from fair.

This reality is perhaps why the portrayal of utopian worlds has captivated audiences for decades. This essay will attempt to examine the ways in which the concept of utopia has been portrayed on screen, notably within the genre of science fiction SF. Prior to critically evaluating its links to film, we should start by defining utopia. Utopia is about how we would live and what kind of world we would live in if we could do just that.

What is a Utopian Society? I want to foster trust, and since you are all my compatriots who are acting in good faith, I must do better to be more clear, more trustworthy, and more patient. I would like us to end up with a few guiding principles so that members of one caucus easily understand why the other caucus holds that Utopia is impossible and Utopianism a folly. Toward this end, I think it would be helpful if disagreements are limited to intra-caucus disagreements.

Those are just examples, but I hope they convey my intent. I realize that the comments will proceed however they proceed, but that is my preference. As many of you know, I am an orthodox Catholic. Catholics make quite a few truth claims about human beings, why they were created, their structure and composition, and their nature. Catholics claim that every human being inherits original sin, which was passed down to us from Adam as the result of his disobedience to God.

Original sin is the loss of sanctifying grace; it is not the same as personal guilt. This loss of sanctifying grace results in the darkening of the mind and the weakening of the will.

In short, since every human person is a sinner, Utopia is always an impossibility. I am happy to elaborate or clarify.

Regardless of your caucus, I hope you will consider joining this discussion so that we can all understand each other better. Jennifer Johnson : Why is utopia impossible? We should not strive for Utopia or Teleotopia.

Instead, we should strive for Aritopia. There can be more than one Aritopia. Things can be different and still be good. Um, what you said. If Paul still did things he did not want to do, and did not do what he wanted to do, what chance do I have? Being honest, Bryan being the dictator of the world seems like ideal utopia for me. Does anyone want to sign on to that? Join my cause! One man, one vote, one time. You will be glad you did!

Dissent now, or forever hold her peace under penalty of my law. Seriously, though, this is human nature. I want things set up the way I want them set up. Anything less than that is not utopia. Even if one person gets just what he wants, a lot of other people do not. Utopia by their very idea are static. Things can never possibly get better, since everything is perfect. Humanity strives to improve itself, to not accept things as they are but to ever go forward and make things better. But such a state is impossible in a utopia.

Cause everything is perfect, unchanging everlasting sameness. Every imagined version of Utopia which I have encountered starts with the premise that everyone will think the same way. But people do not all believe the same things. They cannot all be persuaded to believe the same things. They cannot be forced to believe the same things. The very most that the powerful can do is to suppress open dissent though fear.

As a libertarian, I would not claim to be immune to the Utopian impulse. I certainly think that the world would be a better place if more people thought as I do, starting with the lefties. But as a libertarian, I do enjoy one anti-Utopian advantage: The only thing I want other people to agree with me about is that disagreement is acceptable and tolerance is desirable. That means that I am not seeking to control them nearly as much as they want to control me. Material want is essentially infinite but the materiel is finite; thus, there will never be a time when we exist in a post-scarcity environment.