Utopianisms are those ideas put into practice. That's where the problem starts. Thomas More coined, for good reason, the neologism utopia for his book which, in 1516, founded this modern genre. The word means “no place” because when imperfect humans attempt perfection—personal, political, economic, and social—they fail. Therefore, the dark reflection of utopias are dystopias, with its failed social experiments, repressive political regimes, and authoritarian economic systems that result from putting utopian dreams into practice. The belief that humans are perfectible inevitably leads us into error as the "perfect society" is designed for an imperfect species. There is no single best way to live, because there are too many variations on how people want to live. Therefore, there is no such thing as a better society, there are only various variations on the handful of themes dictated by our nature.
Utopias are especially vulnerable when, for example, a social theory based on collective property, communal labor, an authoritarian regime, and a command-and-control economy collide with our natural desires for autonomy or individual freedom and choice. Likewise, the natural differences in abilities, interests and preferences between any group of people lead us to inequalities in results and living and working conditions that utopias committed to equality as an end cannot tolerate. As one of the original citizens of the New Harmony community, founded in the 19th century by Robert Owen in Indiana, explains:
We tried every conceivable form of organization and government. We had a miniature world. We decreed the French Revolution again and again, and the result was desperate hearts instead of corpses… It seemed that it was the law of inherent diversity in nature that had won us over… our “united interests” were squarely at war with the individualities of the people, the circumstances, and the instinct of self-preservation.
Most of these kinds of nineteenth-century utopian experiments were relatively innocuous because, without crowds among their members, they lacked economic and political power. But add these factors together and utopian dreamers can become dystopian killers. People act according to their beliefs, and if you believe that the only thing keeping you, your family, clan, tribe, race, or religion from going to Heaven (or reaching Heaven on Earth) is some other group of people, actions know no limits. From homicide to genocide, the killing of others in the name of some religious or ideological belief contributes to the body count in conflicts throughout history: from the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts and religious wars centuries ago, to the cults, world wars, the pogroms and genocides of the last century. We can see the calculation behind the utopian logic in the now famous “trolley problem”, in which most people say they would be willing to kill one person in order to save five. The scene is presented like this: you are standing next to a fork in the train tracks, where there is a switch to divert the tram that is about to kill five workers. If you activate the bypass, the tram will go the other way and kill only one worker. If you do nothing, the tram kills all five. What would you do? Most people say they would activate the bypass. in which most people say they would be willing to kill one person in order to save five. The scene is presented like this: you are standing next to a fork in the train tracks, where there is a switch to divert the tram that is about to kill five workers. If you activate the bypass, the tram will go the other way and kill only one worker. If you do nothing, the tram kills all five. What would you do? Most people say they would activate the bypass. in which most people say they would be willing to kill one person in order to save five. The scene is presented like this: you are standing next to a fork in the train tracks, where there is a switch to divert the tram that is about to kill five workers. If you activate the bypass, the tram will go the other way and kill only one worker. If you do nothing, the tram kills all five. What would you do? Most people say they would activate the bypass. the tram will go the other way and kill only one worker. If you do nothing, the tram kills all five. What would you do? Most people say they would activate the bypass. the tram will go the other way and kill only one worker. If you do nothing, the tram kills all five. What would you do? Most people say they would activate the bypass.
If even people in today's enlightened Western countries agree that it is morally permissible to kill one person to save five, imagine how easy it would be to convince people living in autocratic states with utopian aspirations to kill a thousand to save five. five thousand, or to exterminate a million so that five million can prosper. What are a few zeros when we are talking about infinite happiness and eternal joy? The fatal flaw in utilitarian utopias can be found in another difficult experiment: you are an innocent bystander in a hospital waiting room where an ER doctor has five patients dying of various ailments. Everyone can be saved if you sacrifice yourself and donate your organs. Would anyone want to live in a society where they can become that innocent bystander? Of course not, so any doctor who attempted such an atrocity would be prosecuted and sentenced for murder. Yet this is exactly what happened with the 20th century experiments in utopian socialist ideologies that occurred in Marxist/Leninist/Stalinist Russia (1917-1989), Fascist Italy (1922-1943), and Nazi Germany (1933). -1945). All large-scale attempts to achieve political, economic, and social (and even racial) perfection, resulting in tens of millions of people killed by their own states or in conflict with other states perceived as roadblocks to paradise. Marxist theoretician and revolutionary Leon Trotsky expressed the utopian vision in a 1924 pamphlet:
The human species, the coagulated Homo sapiens , will once again enter a state of radical transformation and, with its own hands, will become the object of the most complex methods of artificial selection and psychophysical training […]. The average human will reach the level of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And on this ridge, new peaks will rise.
This unattainable goal led to experiments as far-fetched as those led by Ilya Ivanov, who was commissioned by Stalin, in the 1920s, to cross between humans and apes to generate a "new invincible human being." When Ivanov failed in his quest to produce this ape-human hybrid, Stalin had him arrested, imprisoned, and exiled to Kazakhstan. As for Trotsky, once he consolidated his power as one of the first seven founding members of the Politburo of the former Soviet Union, he established concentration camps for those who refused to join his great utopian experiment, ultimately leading to the assassination of Trotsky. millions of Russian citizens in the gulag of the archipelago, who also seemed to stand in the way of the imagined paradisiacal utopia to come.Sic semper tyrannis .
In the second half of the 20th century, revolutionary Marxism in Cambodia, North Korea, and numerous South American and African states led to state-sponsored assassinations, pogroms, genocide, ethnic cleansing, revolutions, civil wars, and conflicts; all in the name of establishing a Heaven on Earth which required the elimination of recalcitrant dissenters. Around 94 million people died at the hands of revolutionary Marxists and utopian communists in Russia, China, North Korea and other states; an extraordinary number compared to the 28 million murdered by fascists. When you have to kill tens of millions of people to achieve a utopian dream, only another dystopian nightmare has been established. My fight written by George Orwell in 1940:
Hitler […] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude towards life. Almost all Western thought since the previous war, at least all "progressive" thought, has tacitly assumed that the human being desires nothing beyond lightness, security and the avoidance of pain [...] [Hitler] knows that the human beings do not want only comfort, security, reduced working hours, hygiene, birth control and, in general, common sense; the human being also desires, at least intermittently, fights and self-sacrifice.
As for the broader appeal offered by fascism and socialism, Orwell adds:
While socialism, and even capitalism more reluctantly, have told people "I offer you a good time", Hitler proposes to them "I offer you fight, danger and death", and as a result, an entire nation throws at his feet […] we should not underestimate its emotional appeal.
What, then, should replace the idea of utopias? An answer might be found in another neologism: protopia , an incremental progress made up of steps toward improvement, not perfection. Futurist Kevin Kelly describes his invention as:
A protopia
Protopia
Protopia is a state that is better today than it was yesterday, although it may be only slightly so. The protopia is much more difficult to visualize. Because a protopia contains as many problems as benefits, this complex interaction between things that work and things that are broken is very difficult to predict.
In my book The Moral Arc (2015), I discussed how protopic progress is the term that best describes the monumental moral achievements of past centuries: the attenuation of warfare, the abolition of slavery, the end of torture and punishment. death penalty, universal suffrage, liberal democracy, civil rights and liberties, same-sex marriage, and animal rights. All of these are examples of protopic progress in the sense that they have occurred one small step at a time. A protopic future is not only practical, it is feasible.
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