Utopia Is A Dangerous Ideal

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Riddick
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Utopia Is A Dangerous Ideal

Post by Riddick » 04-05-2018 10:53 PM

Utopias are idealized visions of a perfect society. Utopianisms are those ideas put into practice. This is where the trouble begins. The belief that humans are perfectible leads, inevitably, to mistakes when “a perfect society” is designed for an imperfect species. There is no best way to live because there is so much variation in how people want to live. Therefore, there is no best society, only multiple variations on a handful of themes as dictated by our nature.

For example, utopias are especially vulnerable when a social theory based on collective ownership, communal work, authoritarian rule, and a command-and-control economy collides with our natural-born desire for autonomy, individual freedom, and choice. Moreover, the natural differences in ability, interests, and preferences within any group of people leads to inequalities of outcomes and imperfect living and working conditions that utopias committed to equality of outcome cannot tolerate.

The fatal flaw in utilitarian utopianism is found in a 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.

Yet this is precisely what happened with the grand 20th-century experiments in utopian socialist ideologies as manifested in Marxist/Leninist/Stalinist Russia (1917-1989), Fascist Italy (1922-1943), and Nazi Germany (1933-1945), all large-scale attempts to achieve political, economic, social (and even racial) perfection, resulting in tens of millions of people murdered by their own states or killed in conflict with other states perceived to be blocking the road to paradise.

Most 19th-century utopian experiments were relatively harmless because, without large numbers of members, they lacked political and economic power. But add those factors, and utopian dreamers can turn into dystopian murderers. FULL STORY
A mind should not be so open that the brains fall out; however, it should not be so closed that whatever gray matter which does reside may not be reached. ART BELL

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Re: Utopia Is A Dangerous Ideal

Post by Doka » 04-06-2018 12:21 PM

Quote from article:


Utopian dreamers can turn into dystopian murderers. 


" People act on their beliefs, and if you believe that the only thing preventing you and/or your family, clan, tribe, race, or religion from going to heaven (or achieving heaven on Earth) is someone else or some other group, then actions know no bounds. From homicide to genocide, the murder of others in the name of some religious or ideological belief accounts for the high body counts in history’s conflicts, from the Crusades, Inquisition, witch crazes, and religious wars of centuries gone to the religious cults, world wars, pogroms, and genocides of the past century."

When hunting monsters.......Take care you don't become one.
KARMA RULES

Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities': Voltaire

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It All Depends On The Definition

Post by Riddick » 04-06-2018 08:48 PM

Can you commit mass murder and not be a monster?

'We did it in self-defense judge. We are the victims. They were infringing our natural rights as human beings.'

'And what rights would those be?'

'All of them!'

'Can you be more specific?'

'Why?'

'Because I'm asking'

'What gives you the right?'

'The law'

'Oh, that unnatural bullsh!t.'

'I find you in contempt of court!'

'INFRINGEMENT! INFRINGEMENT!'

'I also sentence you to death for 15 million counts of murder'

'That says more about you than us. It just proves you're a monster.'

'That's absurd!'

'Not so! We didn't kill those people. They did it to themselves...Murder is just extroverted suicide.'

'If that's the case, by your own logic you've granted your own death wish.'

'Uh-oh. Would it help if we said we've changed our minds!?!!'
A mind should not be so open that the brains fall out; however, it should not be so closed that whatever gray matter which does reside may not be reached. ART BELL

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