Dear Ed,

My question is: is it possible/worth saving it or putting it back together?

How many Utopian novels have you read? The ones i know all have certain elements in common. They all depict a society in which people live in harmony with Nature and one another. Community is strong. People build their own modest, serene homes, among gardens, orchards, fields and clean water. They grow wholesome food or have other meaningful work - usually cottage craft - which gives them both pleasure and status. They may be assisted by draught-animals or robots, but in no case are humans yoked to a machine. No people in these stories are destitute, hopeless or self-destructive. They are healthy, have enough leisure time, fresh air and space. They never procreate irresponsibly - that is, beyond the capacity of the land to support population. Children are nurtured and instructed by all the adults. Right and wrong are clearly understood; the rules are therefore liberal, but equitably and universally applied. The able contribute to the commonweal: help to nurse the injured, rear the young, protect the feeble and cherish the old. Those who would take more than their share, or try to wield unearned power, are corrected, sometimes exiled, rarely executed. Everyone has a voice in decisions. When the group undertakes a large project, it is with the co-operation of all, under the leadership of the most skilled.

Do you notice any discrepancies between that picture and our current situation?

Could such a society exist? Would you like to live in one? How do you draw a roadmap from here to there?

Assuming yes to the first two questions, the third is still a brain-buster. Because we lack the means? I don't think so. In fact, we now have the capability; arguably, we've had it all along. And yet, Technology has not given us Utopia, as many fervently believed it would. The Scientific Method had not done it. Nor had Christianity, the Industrial Revolution, the American War of Independence or Communism. None of the great social experiments fulfilled their theoretical promise. Why?

Let's see if there are social structures that really do work. Ants have got the hang of it. But then, ants don't need much intellectual elbow-room. Prairie dogs seem to manage pretty well. And wolves, who are fairly bright, and dolphins, and gorillas. Where in evolution is the cutoff point, beyond which a reasonable division of territory and food, an equitable standard, becomes impossible?

I don't pretend to have researched the subject, but one hears rumours of the Kalahari Bushmen, Hawaiians before the missionaries arrived, the Inuit before contact with Europeans - perhaps Europeans before that continent was named. What these peoples have in common is that they travel or settle in groups small enough for each member to know every other and that, whether their environment is kind or hostile, they live simply and have few possessions. There are communities extant today which approach that description. Canada, with 22 million people, was creeping up on the ideal, in living memory. Even the U.S., a population far more unwieldy and affluent, has taken baby steps in the right direction.

The problem isn't that we can't conceive of social justice, nor that we can't figure out how to accomplish it. We have learned lessons from History; studied previous societies and what was good in them and why they failed. We have been attempting to improve on them. Only, something went wrong - again. The System got away from us; ran amok. We can't reform it without tearing much of it down.

But, haven't many of us been uneasy for some time? Haven't we known that the status quo is unsustainable? Aren't we aware that the Financial-Industrial Complex has taken on a life and purpose of its own, independent of - and contrary to - the Will of the People? It has already subsumed Democracy, all but demolished Reason. It has already grown beyond human control. A voracious, lunatic monster that befouls its nest; destroys, root and branch, the very tree in which that nest is built; gnaws, once its young have been digested, on its own limbs.

What difference does it make whether the monster is slain by a heroic knight or hacked to bits by a peasant mob with pitchforks and flails? I don't much care whether it starves to death when there is nothing left to devour, or collapses under its own weight, or succumbs to a viral infection. However it happens, the monster must die.

Difficult and painful as the process may be, it is inevitable. When something large and heavy - such as an empire - falls, there are always people underneath, unable or unwilling to stand clear. I cannot rescue them. I can do nothing to soften the blow. I am saddened by the hardship and suffering it will bring, but I cannot regret the passing of an insane socio-economic system. I mean, a 40-foot-tall Barbie doll wouldn't be my first choice of monument to leave for extraterrestrial anthropologists.

What I'm preparing for is a (very bumpy) road from Here to There. We'll end up with a lot less stuff - mine will include books, serviceable clothes, gardening tools and durable pots. I'm been putting by food and seed, as our ancestors have always done. I'm trying to become more self-reliant; learning to bake bread without a mix, to crochet a blanket without a kit. To see a white sheet as bandages; a field of chamomile, as a whole winter's cold remedy. Getting better acquainted with my neighbours - the soapmaker, the chimney-sweep, the dairy-man, the weaver. Finding beauty in the seasons and pleasure in my surroundings, rather than in the acquisition of garishly-coloured plastic objects or the lure of faraway places.

This preparation didn't just begin last month; nor is it restricted to us few nut-cases. It has been going on, quietly, for three decades. I'm only one more rat, exhausted by the race - or losing confidence in the seaworthiness of our vessel. Rats are intelligent, practical creatures: neither analogy is insulting.

I expect, over time, to see a re-formation of interdependent small communities; a rediscovery of individual skills and self-worth. Home-fires and quilting bees? Barn-raising and sleigh rides? No, it's not all bad.

Maybe Y2K, worst-case, TEOTWAWKI, is our chance to start over.

Vera Mont

-- Vera Mont (vera@montland.com), August 14, 1999

Answers

well, I'm not sure it is an answer but a comment. This is a good question. We have confused ourselves by sang that as a species we went from Hunter-gathers to agriculture to industry to a post- industrial or information society. If the reality is we have gown from Hunter-gathers to agricultural empires and we are still in that phase we get a different picture of what our options might need to be. My own view is that information technology is not so radically different, but mostly a tool for further rationalization and centralization of power in the context of Empire.

there probably all our limits to scale in human organization that are co-determined by the elasticity, or lack of it, of our human nature.just as architecture has since Vitruvius and and other classical architects, up to and including Chris Alexander, have worked hard to adapt buildings to people as social beings, so we need to rethink software design.

-- Douglass Carmichael (doug@tmn.com), August 14, 1999.

A Utopia, by definition is that which cannot be.

You make the common error of romanticising primitive cultures. For instance, the Eskimos would leave defective or Down's syndrome babies out in the open to freeze to death. Before the European settlers came, the Native Americans massacred each other in wars. Before Europe was named as such, barbarians engaged in pillage and human sacrifice.

We may be justly critical of so-called 'civilized' societies such as the Romans, or the European settlers of America, but the fact remains that such societies represent a higher level of order than primitive tribal cultures, even though individuals within these societies are still subject to human nature, in its nobler as well as its more savage characteristics.

As far as the human material we have to work with, what you see is what you get. We may have a culture which is less technologically oriented, and this will have good and bad aspects. You may know your neighbors better, but you may also have no access to a doctor if you get sick. All of the problems we have that are human in origin will remain with us. There is no getting around it.

All of the mass Utopian movements of the past, religious, Communist, Fascist, New Age or whatever, have foundered on the rock of human nature, and they always will. This is because reality wins all ideological struggles. A much more practical approach would be to assume that everything will be pretty much as it always has been, except that the breakdown of the technological infrastructure wiil deprive us of some of the solutions we have used so far, such as police, courts, government social programs, and our ability to isolate ourselves from life's troubles through television and computers. Life will be much more 'in your face' and I predict that people will lose their patience with many things for which they no longer have time or tolerance, such as crime. This will cause a hardening of attitudes and result in draconian measures. Not much fun, but real, so get used to it.

-- Forrest Covington (theforrest@mindspring.com), August 14, 1999.

I agree, Dr. Carmicheal, we need to rethink software design, also technology in general, as well as agriculture and social organization. But "rethink" and "design" are perhaps not quite the right words. Other than mechanical paraphenalia (baskets, arrowheads, ships, nuclear reactors), what have we ever thoughtfully designed?

Certainly there have been deliberately structured social orders down the millennia, and carefully contrived worldviews or religions. But these are the rare exceptions; I can't think of many significant examples offhand, although I hope other contributors to this thread might enlighten me. All of human "planning" has been reactive---a response or adaptation to environmental circumstances. "The lesson of history is that he (mankind) never avoids catastrophes; he just spends his time recovering from them" - Gordon Rattray Taylor

I appreciate and concur with your observation that we have progressed from nomadic hunter-gathering to sedentary agriculture [period]. Our highly vaunted technology has merely allowed us to increase the efficiency of our agriculture, thus allowing us to support a concomitant increase in population and to provide some of us with luxurious comfort. Granted, the quantity of that provender permits a significant percentage of us to pursue other providential but discretionary endeavor in art and science, most of which is arguably merely entertaining or interesting.

Recent anthropological evidence suggests that our ancestor's nomadic lifestyle provided the essentials of a healthy existence with a maximum investment of fewer than twenty hours per week. The remaining time was spent socializing, bonding and in ritual and thought---a breakdown not so very different from that which I practice today. How much, in the way of additional nutrition and comfort, is derived from the extra twenty-plus hours spent per week by the typical Western person? In terms of what is really important to a fulfilling lifestyle, I suggest very little. In fact, it seems that personal production precludes many of the activities we value---socializing, bonding, ritual and thought.

What seems different to me is, for the first time, some few of us seem to be deliberately thinking and planning for a sustained future for our planet, based on science and a knowledge of complex systems, and an awareness of history unavailable to our forebears. Alas, apparently, too few and perhaps too late. Even then, an intellectual awareness is less likely to influence the range and numbers of people who will have to contribute to this effort.

Only a different worldview could possibly avoid disastrous consequences and lead to a social order similar to that outlined in Vera Mont's sensitive and eloquently drawn essay. And that goes beyond my meager vision into the realm of the poet and the shaman.

Hallyx

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."---Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

-- (Hallyx@aol.com), August 14, 1999.

Good for you, Forrest. I've admired your frequent posts on this forum. You're more of a curmudgeaon than even I. Are you also a fan of Garrett Hardin, Robert Heinlein, G B Shaw, Daniel Quinn and their intellectual cohort?

Hallyx

"No matter how cynical we become, it's never enough to keep up" --- Jane Wagner and Lily Tomlin

-- (Hallyx@aol.com), August 14, 1999.

Very interesting comments above...

The following ruminations are merely my own personal opinion.

I find myself uneasy with the utopia as described. It sounds rather bland and homogenous. I would imagine that it would be highly structured through social convention and ritual - that there would be great social pressure for conformity. Life would be framed in terms of the "group" and group experience.

I would point out that the nomadic style of life would support a mere fraction of our current population. I can see that the factor of human social experience through relationships in a tribal context could be rich in texture. On a personal level, it could bring great satisfaction. But for humanity in general, it would simply be endless repetitious of pattern. [Pardon this analogy as I try to articulate this thought] It would be like every other animal group. Like a herd of buffalo. It would be existence for its own sake.

The arts and other creative endeavors are rooted in man's need to self-actualize - to impact or change the pattern or to cognitively participate in its unfolding. Creative endeavors are generally intensely individualistic, in counterpoint to the social factors.

Perhaps what I want to ask is whether the culture's above would have produced the magnificant symphonies of the West. If not, do such works make life and humanity any more "meaningful?" Do they make humanity somehow different than the other critters?

-- marsh (armstrng@sisqtel.net), August 15, 1999.

Marsh,

Your problem with Vera Mont's essay is that you did not read it carefully enough. Forrest Covington made the same mistake: we are so swamped with information that we speed-read most of the time - if something looks familiar, we assume to have understood it and skip to the next paragraph.

Yes, it is a typical mistake that people idealize primitive cultures for their simplicity, not realizing that when they get rid of their frustrations thay lose a lot more that they took for granted, just as one of the comments pointed out correctly. This kind of mistake is made by young or immature people and beyond a certain age and IQ it is hard to make.

Nowhere does it remotely suggest in Vera's essay that she prefers to live in a primitive culture. She is merely trying to find an answer to her question: "Where in evolution is the cutoff point, beyond which a reasonable division of territory, food, an equitable standard, becomes impossible?" And this answers your main concern: the "blandness" of her described Utopia. The Utopia does not suggest uniformity, primitivity, ("assisted by ... robots") or lack of individuality or creative imagination. It ONLY deals with the aspect of human relationships that has to do with "division of territory and food, an equitable standard" (and I would treat "food" symbolically, meaning posession of resources and products). There is no way to avoid these issues, they exist in primitive as well as advanced societies. We have to live together. We use devision of labour, we have to distribute the products. And the choices are limited: We can have what we have today: war, poverty, pollution, crime, exploitation, inhumanity on a global scale, or we can strive toward some kind of Utopia that is self-sustainable instead of self-destructive. That is the essence of the Utopia described in Vera's essay and it (in theory) can be realized in a super-modern, individualistic, creative society, just as well as in primitive, tribal ones.

-- Francis Mont (francis@montland.com), August 15, 1999.

You're right - it was only a daydream.

Douglass - I love William Gibson's novels and wouldn't be a bit surprised if his vision of the future proved accurate. Software design and empire-building may very well continue to evolve on their present conjoined track. I doubt if anyone in a position to do so is prepared to rethink either one.

Forrest - I don't believe primitive peoples are nicer than we are - as a woman, i sure wouldn't want to live there! - just maybe more aware of the essentials. Certainly, we can afford to carry more non-productive people the Inu could - for the moment. The question is not whether we ought to forego modern conveniences, but how well we can cope if/when we lose them. Marsh - Overpopulation is at the top of my list of things we need to fix. The vast majority of people are not able to fulfil their higher aspirations; are barely surviving. They might welcome a bit of homogeneity. As for art... Beethoven is hardly a typical product of hi-tech culture. Is your choice of example significant? Maybe not: genius can crop up anywhere, any time. Self-expression is a constant human drive. Whatever portion of art springs from pain, i'm willing to do without. Fortunately, artists also create from joy, love, the perception of beauty, the desire to share experience, to give pleasure and just for fun. We'd still have that part.

Halley - Thanks.

By the way, that isn't my Utopia; it's an informal compendium of all the Utopias I've read about. Merely an illustration of how a few bright and educated humans have imagined a workable society. That we are able to imagine such a thing, and in quite similar ways. That consesus on the basics is theoretically possible. We could argue the details later, when everyone is adequately fed and housed, healed of their wounds and provided with the means of birth-control and self-control. I'd like us to work toward the basics...

Of course we're not going to do anything of the kind. What we'll probably do is the usual: try to keep the world the way we have become accustomed to it, eventually fail, become frustrated and angry; kill one another in heaps, eat our neighbours' pets, destroy things we'll miss afterward, and suffer a lot. The decline and fall of technology - unless it goes up in one big chain-accident next January - would only mean that we can't erase most other life on the planet as fast as we've been doing it. This gives the cockroaches more time to organize their Utopia.

But what the heck - we've had a good run. I mean, we highly privileged late 20th century North American middle-class. No complaints - maybe a few regrets.

V

-- vera mont (vera@montland.com), August 16, 1999.

I am getting more POed day by day. I no longer care whether this society survives. In fact, I hope it's a 9 or 10, and goes down the tubes, even though my chances are slim in such a scenario (being an old fart and not as agile as I once was). Everywhere I turn, the screws are tightening. Drug laws, money laundering laws, prostitution laws, gun laws, tradesman registration laws, tax laws, travel restriction laws, ID to work laws, ID to get your mail delivered laws, wage and hour laws, independent contractor laws, business registration laws, waste disposal laws, hate crime laws, sexual harassment laws, liquor license laws, insurance requirement laws, zoning laws, building permit laws ....

Government monitoring EVERYTHING (look up "Echelon" in your search engines). Fingerprints and DNA samples. Cameras everywhere. Postal "Service" monitoring of everything that comes from overseas (Ever wonder why it takes more than a week to get something from even other countries with good postal services?) Super computers listening to your phone conversations with voice recognition programs for words like g*e*r*m, n*u*c*l*e*a*r, c*r*a*c*k, g*u*n .... My efforts henceforth will be to try to make the situation WORSE, to try and bring this system down. Any of you feel the same, here is something I clipped from another site. I'm going to revise it and e-mail it to everyone in the world. You could do the same, if you feel the same. Y2K and Your Money Later this year, the BANKING system is going to go BELLY UP. Why? Simply because there is not enough CASH in existence to cover the additional demand for actual cash by people wanting to build up a cash stash in preparation for Y2K problems. How? Because years ago big government in cahoots with big banking created a fraudulent money/credit/banking system. Banks create money out of thin air (but, naturally, it's illegal for YOU to do it) far in excess of actual cash in existence. Most of the "money" is just bits in computer files. This is the "magic" of fractional reserve banking. Basically, there is only enough cash in the "system" to cover 1% to 2% of the amounts in -- basically -- all the checking and savings accounts. This means that if you and everyone else at the same time wants cash instead of electronic numbers, there's only enough cash to give you 1% to 2% of YOUR MONEY in cash. Or, only enough cash to give just 1% to 2% of everyone all their money in cash. If you are number 3+ in a line of 100 people, you will be S.O.L. Bottom line -- get some extra cash out of the bank NOW. By Labor Day it may be too late. Y2K (Year 2000): http://www.garynorth.com http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a.tcl?topic=TimeBomb%202000%20(Y 2000) Money/banking: http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_99/teetmyer041399.html http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_99/dfisher032699.html S.O.L.: Sh*t out of luck

-- A (A@AisA.com), August 21, 1999.

Maybe, I misunderstood you. But if you want what the wolves got, you might want to reconsider. Alpha can kill or exile any member of the pack (including pups) as alpha sees fit. There is also a strict pecking order which involves ongoing acts of submission and dominance. Those who protest or fail to submit are dealt with in a severe, unmerciful, and quick manner.

I have a 70 pound puppy that has a hard temperament and she tests my alpha status-- even if that means she has to wait until I'm sleeping to jump on top of me and get her nips in. I also know someone who literally had to beat their adult dog into a corner with a heavy text book until the dog wet itself and whimpered like a puppy in order to come to a decisive conclusion about who was alpha. If she had not acted in that fashion, it is likely that the dog would have killed her. Of course, the dogs that I am describing are not nearly as hard tempered as actual wolves (I also know people who have wolves).

Sincerely, Stan Faryna

-- Stan Faryna (info@giglobal.com), August 25, 1999.

Yeah, Stan, I understand your first paragraph. Is that philosophically different from what we have now, or have ever had down the ages?

Hallyx

"What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument."--- C.S. Lewis

-- (Hallyx@aol.com), August 25, 1999.

Hallyx,

Our expanded capacity to do good is unfortunately matched by our expanded capacity to do evil. Yes, our situation is both better and worse than that of wolves.

Sincerely, Stan Faryna

-- Stan Faryna (info@giglobal.com), August 27, 1999.

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr near Monterey, California

What would you keep? I'd keep telecommunication, personal computing, the internet, high speed travel, the space program, movies, trauma centers, microwave ovens, solar & hydro & wind power... Would any of this stuff interfere with the utopian visions?

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), September 21, 1999.

it,s GODS way-or the death way.--we are ALL born evil & need a re-birth.[spirit]

-- i get it. (dogs@zianet.com), September 21, 1999.