New Humility and Utopia.

How can we as a society address the tension between a “new humility” and the desire to pursue utopian visions enabled by development and technology. How should we respond to such visions? What moral values or virtues are present in this?

reply to post by RobFox


Who is in charge of this "utopia"?

Who will run its government?

Does it seem like a trick to have control over people (forced smiles and laughter)?

These are the important questions to be asking regarding such an idea.

It may seem like this is so obvious in your own mind, but to me (one reader), it seems really vague what you are talking about here.

I think that many view utopia as something unattainable (and an existence with no problems whatsoever is not realistic) and this results in many not working towards... much of anything.

Technology has definitely put us at an interesting place in our history, but it seems like most want to continue living under the same paradigms instead of adapting and utilizing our modern capabilities to approach old problems. I feel most of this is derived from the motivation of greed before need.

Ill refrain from posting much more, since I am unsure of what you are really saying here. Being in the science forum, I suspect it has something to do with technology and how to better use it to pursue a better life for all of humanity. But, that would be my bias.

The problem is the land and rights to use resources, and multi family property usage, for example, and that takes wide awake people who refuse to be kept as slaves. They run this system so that a certain percentage do well, and another percentage do so so and well in bigger groups, and they in turn are programmed to blame the rest, and won't shake loose of their programming. And they're propping up this system.

Crashing it only brings bad guys in as overlords and regression. Think Mad Max.

Its not what is needed. Groups of citizens and solidarity, starting with the poor, who often have very low esteem and shame and don't want to make waves or speak up or be targetted or embarassed. So it really takes people working with them and lending a voice and large presence with solutions from the bottom up.

What is surprising to me is that people don't do things like eco farms for the homeless, many different ones for you have to divide them up, in every town. For there are enough people who retire early or have the means to sell expensive homes and get land for their families and land for donation. And if a few families like this partnered up and ran a non profit, this would already be done and the way of life. In all this time, this hasn't been done, its not the way of life.

That tells me that the majority of people who ever make money or own big priced homes, even if they're mainlyl rich in land, are not wide awake and very programmed as to why there are poor to begin with, blame the poor, or feel justified in their well being and are just greedy.

Wow guys excellent posts, let me digest this. Thanks for the outstanding posts! Yes, how can we use technology to better the society and get on a path to a possible utopian society event. What moral principles and virtues would be needed to be applied to technologies to make this happen?

What a weird little thread. I'm with Serdgiam in that I think I know what you're talking about, but I'm not really sure of it at all.

My take is that I think you're question is very interesting. However, I don't necessarily see a conflict between technology and progress and emerging ideas of compassion, justice, equality and the bidding of farewell to old paradigms of power and violence where might makes right regardless of the consequences to the environment and safety and welfare of all individuals and society.

Technology is progress. Like anything, though, it is a doubled-edged sword with probable unintended consequences. As always, we will have to dip our foot into the water and figure things out. Sometimes, it'll be too hot and we'll make mistakes and probably suffer for it. Other times, it'll be too cold. But sometimes, it'll be just right and we'll be able to wade in and reach whatever it is we were striving for. Hopefully, once we do that, we can write that progress down in our book and move on from there with vital new knowledge.

I feel like technology can condemn us to suffering and regression, but it can also be the one thing we need to make progress. The balance is the bitch, as always. But given the pervasive issues we've faced as a species on the planet on which we've found ourselves, we don't have too terribly much else to offer ourselves but the hope that comes with compounded wisdom and the technology that either helps us track that wisdom or helps us find new solutions.

No question in my mind, though, that we should embrace technology and, even though it's a mine field or all sorts of threats, certainly including ones of morality and ethics, we should carefully attempt to navigate it to find out what's on the other side. Otherwise, we're just staying where we are and getting blown to bits like the proverbial moron who relentlessly bangs his head against the wall because he doesn't know of any alternatives.