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Imagine…
Since a number of us have hijacked @drbastiat‘s Grand Unifying Theory thread, I thought I’d begin a new one with this proposition:
The desire to improve human life can (and has) become a determination to perfect it. Utopianism pits the real against the ideal, and insists it is possible for the former to become the latter.
When Utopians take power, the end result of their effort appears virtually guaranteed to be unfathomable cruelty and pointless destruction.
On a small-ish scale, a reasonably effective, earnestly equitable, fair and decent college (Evergreen, for example) in which students and faculty are encouraged to think that a perfectly equitable, perfectly fair, perfectly painless educational experience is possible is a college that will devolve into mayhem, violence, the expulsion of its best and brightest minds, the abandonment of its educational mission.
On the larger scale of a nation — Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union — the same thing happens, only more spectacularly. In the end, the survivors/liberators stand around amidst the rubble and the heaps of corpses asking one another, “how on earth did we allow this to happen?”
The answer to that may lie in the seductive power of utopianism as an intellectual and imaginative, not to mention emotional, orientation. That human beings can imagine, analyze, and desire what doesn’t actually exist: This is the source of the incredible creativity that allows human beings to bring extraordinary things into being. In this, we are Godlike — God-like. And so we imagine ourselves God. Capable, that is, not merely of creating within reality but of creating reality — better reality, reality as it ought to be. Reality as perfected by us.
Once one has been persuaded that perfection is humanly possible, or even easy (natural!) and so close we can taste it, anything short of perfection is vexing, and anyone who stands in the way of progress towards it, whether by disagreeing with the definition of “perfect” or by pointing to the obstacles reality presents, will inevitably be seen as the enemy. And, really, when the end is perfection, what means of achieving it can possibly be too extreme?
Published in Religion & Philosophy
This is how I would perfect humanity. I would force everybody to watch hundreds of holograms of Steven Miller rants on Fox News.
Suicide rates escalate.
And Mo Brooks as POTUS. lol
Then again, they don’t necessarily need a lot of people; they just need zealots who persist and simply won’t back down.
Yes. I guess my thought is that most of the damage is being done, not by dumb young hotheads in the streets, but by college professors and corporate bigshots in media and tech. And who actually wakes up and thinks to himself “I want to make the world a worse place today?”
They don’t want to make it worse, they want to make it better and are arrogant and ignorant enough to think they can. They create the theme, push it but those who end up controlling, usually kill them in case they don’t change their mind. It’s amazing that these folks tend to be more educated, some even know history, sort of, but every generation creates them and they are among the reasons top down always ends in chaos and collapse. Hard to understand.
This is where modern weapons of mass destruction or mayhem come in, for me at least. The number of people one person can maim or kill is crazy. Just one look at the stupid power grid is striking. It doesn’t take much to knock out the entire Northeast in this country. And then there are drones and biological weapons. Our food and water supplies are vulnerable.
The ratio of harm that can be perpetrated one zealot to X number of people is unnerving.
I’ll challenge the premise of this post. I question whether this categorization of “Utopians,” whose policies allegedly (and apparently) are “virtually guaranteed to be unfathomable cruelty and pointless destruction,” seems to be an oversimplification, to me.
It actually seems to be a manifestation of the “reductio ad Hitlerum” or “reductio ad Stalum” argument. The method is straightforward, and often appears to be rhetorically effective. Anyone who disagrees with you is a . . . insert term. Here, it’s “Utopian.” You could also use Communist, or socialist, or Nazi, or fascist. This is coupled with the claim that such a point of view will inevitably lead to the Gulags or Auschwitz.
It seems to me that people hold views that are more on a continuum, and less easy to categorize. The OP posits that some people — the good ones, I gather — are motivated by a desire to improve human life. But people who want to do so more than you are said to be trying “to perfect it.” This makes them Utopians, and therefore bad, because Auschwitz and the Gulags. This doesn’t seem to be an accurate description of reality, to me, though I concede that you’ll be able to find some people toward the far end of the continuum on any issue, from race to economics to the environment to abortion.
I look at the ending proposition in the OP:
Again, you may be able to find a few nut jobs, but this doesn’t seem to describe our politics, in my view. There are a lot of people opposed to racism, and often claiming to see racism where I doubt that it exists. I don’t see anyone proposing the death penalty for racism. For the most part, we don’t even apply criminal sanctions to racist actions. (A racist motive can enhance the punishment of some violent crimes, in some jurisdictions, but it isn’t a crime in and of itself.)
There are people with environmental concerns, but I don’t see any widespread calls to throw industrialists, or farmers, or drivers, into a Gulag. The proposals are for more strict environmental regulation. I generally don’t think that these policies are a good idea, and I think that the concerns of the environmentalists are usually overstated, but once again, virtually no one seems to be advocating the death penalty, or even lesser criminal penalties.
I also see some comments that seem to be overstatements, to me. Here is one:
Why would you assume that it’s always arrogant and ignorant to think that we can make things better? Do we just throw up our hands about issues like, say, illegal immigration? Strengthening the family? Sure, there are challenges and trade-offs. I think that a lot of Leftist policy proposals are bad ideas, and maybe this is true of some conservative ideas too, but I don’t see why people who disagree with you should always be dismissed as “arrogant and ignorant.” In fact, the dismissal comes across as a bit arrogant and ignorant, too. The real world is complicated and messy, I think.
This comment also comes across as an unwarranted overstatement, that the people who favor policies that you don’t like “usually kill them in case they don’t change their mind.” When has this ever happened in our country, in any widespread way? OK, the Civil War, I guess, but that was an armed insurrection. Nor have I seen such widespread killing, since WWII, in any of the other Western countries.
Then there’s the argument about power and control, as here:
I think that you’re factually wrong about this, Doc. We need to use force quite regularly, just to enforce decent rules of behavior. Think of what happened in Seattle in the so-called CHAZ/CHOP autonomous zone, a few years back. We seem to be having a serious breakdown in public order, and increasing crime, in many parts of the country.
If you want to stop people from doing things that you think are bad, you’re going to need to use force occasionally.
Finally, I think that it’s a good thing to want to use “centralized control systems to control human behavior,” in a large number of ways. Even just driving down the street. Keeping homeless people — or anyone else — out of your house or your yard. Keeping illegal immigrants out of our country. Punishing child abusers. And on, and on, and on.
We have disagreements about what constitutes the good. Even when we agree about that, we have disagreements about what steps to take to enforce rules and laws intended to promote the good. Some will favor stronger sanctions, some lesser. Your argument seems to be pointing toward anarchism, as you seem to object to any attempt to “control others” because it requires authorities “to use force occasionally.”
I don’t think that you actually object to this, in all cases. When facing specific attempts to control behavior with which we disagree, there’s a temptation to resort to rhetoric that tends towards anarchism.
Again, as stated at the outset, I generally view these issues as arising along a continuum, and it doesn’t seem either helpful, or possible, to draw a bright line between the acceptable and the unacceptable. I think that we just need to work it out in the political process. Sometimes we’ll get it wrong, and thankfully, there will be another election before long, giving us a chance to make a correction.
Let’s see if I can tackle this.
We have some innate idea of what it means to have perfect relationships with those around us. Love and no conflict, freedom and like mindedness. The Kumbaya vision of humanity holding hands around the world in perfect cooperation.
For the traditional conservative (I’m no longer thinking all conservatives are in sync on this), there’s a belief in an imperfect human nature that is not always animated to do good, to be forgiving, or to not make mistakes. The goal is to order society in such a way that we can approach some concept of Kumbaya without ever being able to get all the way there. Because we don’t think it possible to get there this side of heaven due to human nature and also because we don’t think human nature allows us to always get things right, we subscribe to subsidiarity – bring things as close to the individual as possible, conducting micro experiments of what is best where the successful get adopted as a whole by families, societies, cultures, and nations, forming traditions to pass on to future generations. While still there are human failings, generally things improve without ever being, well, perfect. It is good.
The Utopian, on the other hand, sees humans as perfectable. That we can evolve into perfection. Oddly, the traditional way of doing things does give that impression… americans don’t own slaves, after all. That is the perfect result to the American abolition movement. That was a progressive movement that had a utopian ideal of eradicating slavery and it cost America a lot of blood.
Open borders and free movement of All People is a utopian ideal. But it’s existence in the real world has largely created a new slave class, broken social trust, culture clashing, resource competition, and escalating crime.
Well, can we fix those and make people behave better? Only if everyone agrees. Will everyone agree? No. Human nature doesn’t allow for it. Will some make mistakes? Yes. Will there be misunderstandings about mistakes? Yes.
Sometimes, in pursuit of a utopian ideal, they lock into something they think is preventing it and want it eradicated. Like religion, especially Christianity. Look at all the people they killed! Look at their hate? Get rid of the racists. Create “just” systems. But their efforts always create injustice elsewhere or move the hate somewhere else.
I approve of Lucifer. I met him in Coloradao.
Henry, there you go again.
And now he apparently IS straight. And dogs have stopped barking at him. And he’s MTG’s intern.
Whether it’s going to be happily ever after or busted in an airport toilet on his way to CPAC – who knows? I hope he finds joy and peace, but so far it’s still a John Waters film with Divine expected any moment. imnsho.
Sure, but me liking being gay isn’t me criticising or dissing straight people. Everything we do isn’t about straight people.
I liked the theory where there’s a gene that makes a person “popular and friendly” with the guys – let’s call it the Superhot Gene. When the SG shows up in men well…no kids….when the SG shows up in women it results in lots of kids, more than enough to make up for the male no kids in terms of the gene being passed on to the next generation.
Consider history and the Inquisition.
But it can really be a recipe for unhappiness.
If I had to have sex with a woman that would make me (and probably them) unhappy.
No need, right?
Too often we confuse pleasure and joy.
People like Theo Colburn have not simply suggested but put out strong scientific evidence that pollution can cause homosexuality. Her work on how modern day pesticides, especially those that are toxic mimics of estrogen and/or testosterone, can screw up the sexual development of the reproductive organs in utero.
Wikipedia’s intro to her captures it quite well:
Theo Colborn – Wikipedia
Theodora Emily Colborn(née Decker; March 28, 1927 – Dec 14, 2014) was Founder & President Emerita of The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX), based in Paonia, Colorado, & Professor Emerita of Zoology at the University of Florida, Gainesville. She was an environmental health analyst, and best known for her studies on the health effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals. Toxic exposure to things that are disruptive of our hormones and the way our brains work can be traced at least as far back as the Roman empire. That civilization drank out of goblets imbued with lead. It is likely that he Greeks, who did know how to work in the smelting of metals, also encountered a downside to dealing with various chemical compounds. Is it possible some twist in the genes can occur in a natural way? Possibly. Among people I’ve been friends with who are gay, incest with an older sibling who repeatedly forced themselves on their young sibs might have been the determining factor.
Nature doesn’t care if you’re unhappy. Nature —Darwinian-style—just cares if you leave your genes in the next generation.
So why wouldn’t homosexuality eliminate itself, quickly and efficiently, from the gene pool?
I think there are two reasons. One is that homosexuals (male or female) are not incapable of procreating, just somewhat-less-likely-to-d0-so. I don’t know about you, Zafar, but I know quite a few gay men and lesbians who had kids before realizing…oops!
If a gay or lesbian hunter-gatherer does not have kids (because he or she is not interested in the activity that leads to pregnancy) he or she is likely to invest in his/her nieces and nephews. Maybe not to the extent that a parent would, but every extra magongo nut added to the little squirt’s diet increases his/her chance of living to adulthood and reproducing. Since a gay brother’s nieces and nephews carry his genes, their improved chances of survival grant those genes a better shot at making it into the next generation, even if he doesn’t send them forth…directly. So to speak.
By the way, evolutionary ethologists use the survival value of a supplementary relationship to explain why women go through menopause and then continue to live in spite of being out of the reproductive game. Turns out that (studies confirm this) hunter-gatherer Grannies contribute calories and protection to their grandchildren, and this does indeed make a quantifiable difference in the survival rates of said grandchildren. Meaning that, after a certain point, Granny’s genes are better served when Granny supplements the survival of her daughter’s children than if she had more babies herself. So she goes through menopause…but doesn’t die.
What would be interesting is to study whether cultures become more or less tolerant of homosexuals opting out of heterosexual lifeways in response to cues provided by the environment. That is, are cultures who have (say) just had a war (lots of dead citizens, better have a baby boom) less tolerant of homosexuality (or just “bachelorhood?”) Are cultures that have adopted an anti-human philosophy (“human beings are killing the planet”) more tolerant of less-obviously-fruitful relationships?
Sure. The SG isn’t fussy about how it’s preserved.
I suspect more okay in economically advanced cultures where families are less dependent on child labour. The same societies where women are less economically dependent on men. I think there’s a connection in what makes these possible/accepted.
Fascinating question. I suspect that the biological cost of preventing the misfiring of sexual desire that results in homosexual attraction would exceed the value of avoiding a few instances of it.
This is particularly true in that, in terms of evolution, it was the man’s desire, more than the woman’s, that determined whether or not reproduction would occur, and men have always been relatively expendable. So a few gay men more or less didn’t have much of an impact — someone else would fill their loafers — whereas gay women were going to have to put up with men buying them drinks and hauling them back to the cave whether or not the ladies were interested.
Evolving features, even harmful features, out of the genome may be expensive if the feature in question is closely associated with other features that have strong survival value. Sometimes it’s just worth putting up with the small risk of dysfunction to avoid breaking something important. (Anthropomorphizing here, but it’s a reasonable way to talk about evolution.)
Absolutely. These —the rights of women, the childhoods of children and tolerance of sexual eccentricity—are luxuries we enjoy as a result of living in cultures that have developed the capacity to deal technologically with what formerly had to be dealt with primarily through controls on behavior: soap-and-water, birth control, antibiotics, police officers …
Wow.
Poor guy. Something deeply damaged there, and he would seem to have so much going for him. Ah well.
Sure. Consider that. Without getting into a lot of whatnot about the Inquisition (a generally misunderstood period) I’ll just say that utopianism is a risky human mindset no matter the specific content of the Dream.
Many (most?) religious movements or ideological ones begin as utopian. Then the zealots bang up against reality in all its awfulness, and the sharper edges get knocked off.
Experience, as well as divine inspiration, revealed itself when Chapter One of the Jewish and Christian Bible was a story in which the possibility of perfection in human life is irretrievably and irremediably lost.
Yeah, Wow. Exactly why do you say Milo is damaged?
That would fall under “to protect ourselves” in my view.
Even if you don’t consider law enforcement to be public safety, I still see a significant difference. The left uses violence for political gain. The right does not.
In general.
I just looked a these pages and two were behind a wall, but the Advocate wasn’t and had an interesting parenthetical remark: “… that God gave him a rather, well, oddly specific sign that he has been cured of being homosexual (which, it goes without saying, can’t happen).”
I’m not sure what “can’t happen”, whether God can’t give him a sign that he was cured, or if he can’t be cured of being homosexual. I assume that it’s the latter meaning that was intended.
And this makes me wonder what homosexuality is, and if anyone can honestly say that a person cannot exercise choice as to sexual preference. Or is this just a fringe belief, along the lines of the “deaf community” not wanting the deaf to be made to hear because it would threaten the deaf identity or lifestyle or community.
Does Milo have the personal right to choose how he lives, and what turns him on or off? Or is it once a homosexual, always a homosexual. If it’s “always a homosexual” that sounds like acknowledging a loss of autonomy. And it sounds like this loss of autonomy is accepted within the homosexual community.
So I wonder, is homosexuality a discrete thing? Or is it one borderless area on a spectrum of sexual preference. I understand now that there’s not just hetero- or homo- or bi-sexual, but pan-sexual, trans-sexual, people in the wrong bodies, like lesbians trapped in the body of a man, and especially people who vary from moment to moment in their own sexual identity and preference (and perhaps even their perceived biology).
Is there an unbridgeable divide between the views of homosexuals and, say, trans-sexuals? Is homosexuality fundamentally different from the other forms of sexuality? Or is homosexuality just one facet of a diverse range of sexual orientation.
I mean, seriously, when it’s all said and done, can women be gay men?
Overcrowding and stress in rats tends to create more homosexual activity among the rats born in the environment.
Overcrowding and stress in rats tends to create more homosexual activity among the rats born in the environment.
Henry – where do you get these delightful studies? It sounds like a natural control mechanism for population – which makes sense for us, I guess. Is there any correlation between crowded human societies (eg Tokyo?) and homosexuality?
Do you exercise choice as to your sexual preference? I don’t feel like I can.
About my actions – sure. About my preferences – not really.
From what I’ve learned over my decades, I’d say that there is such a thing as a bisexual person who therefore has some level of choice, and then there are homosexuals (mostly men but also a few women) who are as obviously stuck with their orientation as I am with mine.
One of my best friends from early childhood is lesbian. Since I knew her throughout her life, including adolescence, early boyfriends, etc. I think I gained insight from observing her that helps me to “get” what being a lesbian is.
First, if you’d been forced to guess which of the two of us as little girls would grow up to be gay (if not transgender!) you’d have chosen me. I was the one who wanted to be a boy, and insisted on wearing itty-bitty military fatigues, building forts in the woods, etc. And, now that I think of it, I was the one who was sexually abused, not in that incidental way that virtually all women have been, but over a span of about five years. And yet…straight as an arrow.
Second, as I say, my friend had boyfriends. Quite nice boyfriends, who adored her and treated her well, not like the dinks and dopes I mostly went out with. And she… liked them. But she never went bonkers over a boy, or acted like an idiot about a man. It wasn’t until she fell in love with a woman that she acted…well, like a person in love. Besotted. Smitten. Coo-coo.
To which I said: “Ohhh…I get it.”
Having said that, I can’t report that she’s had an easy or happy love life. The relative paucity of potential mates is, I think, a real issue: Not all, but definitely a majority of my middle aged gay friends are not paired-up, and both loneliness and a lack of sources of support are real problems. And I am beginning to wonder: who is going to look after them in their old age? I mean, the way my siblings and I looked after my mother?