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The Ethics of Seeking Utopia

BobTheNinja

BobTheNinja

Sword of Possibility
Location
Multiverse Sector Texas
This is sort of a complex topic, so I apologize in advance if this starts out sort of rambling.

A reccurring theme I often see in various fictional works is the pursuit of a perfect world, or to free humanity from its flaws and suffering. It depends on the implementation, but I often empathize with this goal. After all, despite the ongoing improvements in our own world, there's still plenty of evil and suffering to go around, even just as a result of our psychological and biological limitations.

Often times characters who pursue this goal are given the role of villains, usually because of the extreme lengths they're willing to go to to make their dream a reality. This makes sense, but I honestly find myself more bothered when the opposing protagonists object to the actual goal of the utopia seeker rather than the means, or when the story otherwise paints the idea itself as foolish or even outright wrong, usually for reasons that I tend to view as shallow or ill-considered.

I myself am conflicted when it comes to the idea of a world without suffering, whether as a result of changing reality or changing humanity. On the one hand, suffering is obviously undesirable, otherwise it wouldn't be valuated as such. Nobody likes experiencing it, and we certainly don't want those we care about to suffer either.

At the same time, so many good qualities about humanity are portrayed through confronting and overcoming suffering and evil. Our species is basically hardwired to be stimulated by conflict and problem solving, otherwise fiction wouldn't be so interesting to us. After all, how can you have Heroes without opposing Villains, or some other great threat or danger?

Because of this, it makes sense that humanity would have to fundamentally change in some way to permanently escape from suffering. In some way, we'd have to become alien to our current psychological paradigm, and many people seem abhor this idea. It would likely entail losing those characteristics that make humanity shine in the dark parts of our existence, or at least, eliminate the need to endure such hardship in order to set things right.

Do you guys think this would be a bad thing? To change so fundamentally that we would never have to suffer anything again? As someome who deals with ongoing mental baggage and other life problems, I'm not sure this would be such a bad tradeoff.
 
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I think that if Humans were the only beings in the world who felt pain, and/or there was a meaningful and fulfilling afterlife for all beings I would say that Utopia is not a worthwhile goal. But the universe is full of beings that have nervous systems, have fear, and cannot truly overcome or confront suffering. We also don't know what the afterlife has in store for us, if there is any, so I'd say, yes, utopia is a goal worth sacrificing for.
 
Part of the issue is what does utopia entail? What if you are trying to build a Utopia and part of that ideal is no people with X trait when X is something harmless like skin or hair color. In that case it is reasonable to oppose utopia.
 
In my view, utopian villain plots tend to come in two broad forms. The first is the villain that wants to change society, or conquer the world, in order to implement some kind of new idea that will make the world a better place. This is is usually opposed because the villain is flawed for one reason or the other, and would likely just be despotic, or because it would oust the democratic agency of people in society. This can be really interesting to explore. In Tales of Xillia the main villain is actually acknowledged to be capable of achieving his goals, as he is just that remarkable. However, it is likely that those who come after him will not be as remarkable, and so the world he creates will likely crumble into something worse than what came before. It creates a good storytelling tension.

The second is the villain that wants to change people at the fundamental level, usually with some kind of Human Instrumentality Project. A lot of these get opposed because of the implied ousting of bodily agency. Even if the villain's vision for change isn't flawed, unilaterally changing the minds and bodies or everyone is hardly acceptable.

In the general case it's going to be fine to oppose someone who is willing to sacrifice lives to achieve their goals, even if those goals are well-intentioned. If some platinum haired psychopath tells you that just by killing two or three million people we can achieve world peace, saving far more lives than those sacrificed, it would certainly not be heroic to let that two or three million die. Moreover, visionso f utopia can be easily flawed, or may have unintended consequences which aren't being accounted for.
 
So far in human history out of the many, many groups that have tried to create a perfect global utopia we have a 0% success rate. Many of those groups thought they had very strong evidence that they would be successful. Without an overwhelming degree of certainty the likes of which has never been seen in human history, supporting a plan that involves making sacrifices to achieve a utopia is probably a bad idea.
 
I'm skeptical of the notion that utopia is possible and theoretical Utopias mean different things to different people depending on their political, religious, and philosophical inclinations.

What I do consider unethical is the belief spoken or unspoken that to achieve utopia one has to willing pile up ditches and pits with the bodies of those who wouldn't go along with the program. That isn't ethical or morally right in the slightest degree.

To achieve some forms of utopia-one has to fundamentally change human nature and behavior, perhaps at the biological or at least psychological level. And this does violate human agency in all respects.
 
@Ford Prefect

I'm thinking more of the second variety, mostly because, as you said, no society is immune to the influence of opportunistic people with more selfish desires.

Admittedly, this is more of a fictional hypothetical than anything else. In real life, there are no such magic bullets, no cosmic keystones or convenient macguffins that can achieve such a fundamental. And if someone wanted to achieve utopia over the dead bodies of millions of innocents, I certainly couldn't abide that.

As such, the details of how to bring about such a transformation of the human experience are extremely important. I think the most ideal example I've seen of this in fiction so far is from Fate/Apocrypha. I'll paste it in spoilers for those who haven't seen the series yet and don't want to know the end plot.

Amakusa Shiro Tokisada, summoned as a Ruler-class Servant, enacted a plan to capture the Holy Grail and use it's power to activate the Third Magic, Heaven's Feel, on a global scale. This act of True Magic materializes the soul and allows it to exist as a higher-dimensional being, independent of a physical body. Essentially, it would convert the entire human race into immortal spirit beings, allegedly with their minds intact, but free of the pains and limitations of their fleshly bodies. With this, all humanity would be saved from evil and suffering once and for all.

Amakusa genuinely believes this to be the best path for humanity's ultimate salvation. What's more is that in this timeline of Fate, the Holy Grail was never corrupted like the one in Fate/Zero, meaning that unlike for Kiritsugu, it would actually have functioned exactly as Amakusa specified. No malicious genie tricks or distortions.

For me, Amakusa's goal is very sympathetic, and he doesn't need to kill any innocents to do it. He does have to fight and/or kill any Servants or Masters who oppose him, but that's the price of victory in the Holy Grail War to begin with, so to me, he's very much an Anti-Villain. That being said, putting aside the ethical problem of forcibly changing the entire human race, my biggest reservation about his plan is whether he can know for a fact that it will turn out the way that he envisions, whether humans will really be able to live happily and free of evil, even in such a state.

And even beyond all that, there's always the question of what such a fundamental transformation would cost us. For example, if it were required, would it be worth giving up our very enjoyment of any conflict, even those confined to games and stories? I admit, when I think about a change that could exact such a price, it gives me pause. I love fiction and fantasies after all, and yet I also desire where nobody hurts. It's a strange contradiction, I think.
 
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The basic problem is that utopia is impossible to achieve, therefore the villain is guaranteed to either fail entirely, or create something that isn't really utopia. Trying to make the world better is fine and achievable; trying to make it perfect is not. "Perfect is the enemy of good enough" applies to social reform too.

You can for example reasonably attempt to make the world fairer, more equal. But trying to force it to be perfectly equal will either fail or get you a dystopia like the satire Harrison Bergeron rather than a utopia.
 
I think "working towards Utopia" itself is a flawed premise, in the sense that it's a top down approach. An individual is taking their vision of Utopia, and enforcing it on others. The flaw here is that they're assuming their vision is what is utopic for everyone else, when two and half thousand years of philosophy and politics show, that no one society or existence is agreeable to everyone. This is why such characters are the villains, because they've become so selfishly caught up with what they believe to be good, they ignore what others want for themselves.

It's why most heroes still work to a Utopia, but from a bottom up approach, seeking to become their best selves, and then enable others to do the same.

*Edit* It's the difference between a Utopia Of Conformity, where all must abide by conditions they may not agree with, to achieve results they may not agree with, and a Utopia Of Individuals, where all seek to strive in their own ways for a better society. Both are likely equally impossible, but the first is destructive in it's attempted creation, while the second is inherently empowering.

tldr: The issue with an individual or group creating a Utopia isn't the cost necessary, but that a Utopia can't be created by anything less than a concerted effort by every individual.
 
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I think that one reason it's common for stories to have villains be the one seeking utopia is because it takes sustained imagination and a scope larger than one lifetime (one hero) to envision how a society moves towards utopic norms and institutions. It's easier to write stories about overreach, than to try to imagine how we might get to utopia, or even just make the world better structurally, which is a story full of conflict itself !
 
I crave a world without suffering. Suffering is unnecessary and without it there'd be no need to 'confront evil' and gain strength that way. An emotion that provides great comfort and spiritual peace may not still be a reliable indicator of anything other than you feel good for doing good. So I say find that utopia, end suffering forever, and yes: If you have to cheat a bit to get there it's definitely worth it. No one suffering ever again? Yes please. :p
 
BobTheNinja said:
To change so fundamentally that we would never have to suffer anything again
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We already have a work where humans overcoming their human flaws and achieving utopia is treated as a good thing. It's called Star Trek.

The difference here is that the conceit of Star Trek is that humanity learned from its mistakes and as one society decided to come together work towards accounting for those mistakes and building the near-utopia from the ground up.

While your average anime utopian villain is looking for a magic button fix or a hard man solution to just shortcut the problem. Id charitably suggest that the issue works with these villains has is easy quick fix solutions and shortcuts one person decide to impose upon everyone else, instead of society as a whole rolling up it's sleeves and doing it the hard way.

Also creating a perfect world is probably impossible, it's only possible to achieve the best possible results with what you have, and there's always going to be mo' problems. Which Star Trek acknowledges when it's not over idealizing the Federation and brainlessly spouting it's ideas in the face of reality.
 
Reveen said:
While your average anime utopian villain is looking for a magic button fix or a hard man solution to just shortcut the problem. Id charitably suggest that the issue works with these villains has is easy quick fix solutions and shortcuts one person decide to impose upon everyone else, instead of society as a whole rolling up it's sleeves and doing it the hard way.
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If a utopia is basically unachievable because we can't have a perfect world then why does it matter whether we make the utopia through magic buttons or hard work? I agree that hard work is preferable to magic buttons. It'd make for a far more interesting story at least. I just dunno: If we can never have a perfect world then working for it would never... work, would it? /me shrugs
 
SneakyKitten said:
I crave a world without suffering. Suffering is unnecessary and without it there'd be no need to 'confront evil' and gain strength that way. An emotion that provides great comfort and spiritual peace may not still be a reliable indicator of anything other than you feel good for doing good. So I say find that utopia, end suffering forever, and yes: If you have to cheat a bit to get there it's definitely worth it. No one suffering ever again? Yes please. :p
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SneakyKitten said:
If a utopia is basically unachievable because we can't have a perfect world then why does it matter whether we make the utopia through magic buttons or hard work? I agree that hard work is preferable to magic buttons. It'd make for a far more interesting story at least. I just dunno: If we can never have a perfect world then working for it would never... work, would it? /me shrugs
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Well then what is ''a perfect world"? Because if it's just a world without suffering, define suffering. If you define suffering as anything unpleasant, than I disagree that eliminating it makes a Utopia. I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just what I said earlier, what one person thinks is perfect, isn't going to be perfect for many other people. I like the "suffering" of climbing a mountain, or playing rugby. They're unpleasent, painful experiences, that I still find enjoyable and enriching. A world without that isn't a Utopia in my opinion.

That, in my mind, is the problem with one person or group creating their utopia. There's no guarantee it won't be everyone else's dystopia.
 
Out here in the real world, utopia is impossible. That's not to say things can't get better . . . for a time. But, in this reality, entropy swallows all, all societies will crumble, everyone will die, and everything regresses to the mean. (However, I do not mean that doing good in the present is not a worthy goal. Indeed, to do good is the supremely worthy goal.)

Fiction in which an eternal utopia of everlasting peace and happiness is possible are operating under a fundamentally bent premise. Even a temporary utopia of peace and happiness is not possible for everyone. That is not to say that fiction with a bent premise is bad and you're a horrible person for liking it. But just as dressing up as a bat and punching criminals in the face is a horrible solution to real world crime, whatever authorial fiat in question is a horrible solution to suffering.

A bit of escapism is fine in its proper place. But the reality is you will always be finite in all things, and thus suffering.

And to change enough in this world to never suffer (a la some psychological rewrite), is to change enough as to die.
 
Tealg said:
Well then what is ''a perfect world"? Because if it's just a world without suffering, define suffering. If you define suffering as anything unpleasant, than I disagree that eliminating it makes a Utopia. I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just what I said earlier, what one person thinks is perfect, isn't going to be perfect for many other people. I like the "suffering" of climbing a mountain, or playing rugby. They're unpleasent, painful experiences, that I still find enjoyable and enriching. A world without that isn't a Utopia in my opinion.

That, in my mind, is the problem with one person or group creating their utopia. There's no guarantee it won't be everyone else's dystopia.
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"A perfect world" is a world where everyone is treated nicely, ppls are polite and don't hurt each other. I do agree that physical activities can be worthwhile suffering. You're right not everything I think is perfect is that way for others. Still suffering is a big bad component of the world I think should not exist for practical purposes. It's not practical to suffer it wastes energy and time.
 
Tealg said:
Well then what is ''a perfect world"? Because if it's just a world without suffering, define suffering. If you define suffering as anything unpleasant, than I disagree that eliminating it makes a Utopia. I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just what I said earlier, what one person thinks is perfect, isn't going to be perfect for many other people. I like the "suffering" of climbing a mountain, or playing rugby. They're unpleasent, painful experiences, that I still find enjoyable and enriching. A world without that isn't a Utopia in my opinion.

That, in my mind, is the problem with one person or group creating their utopia. There's no guarantee it won't be everyone else's dystopia.
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Though wouldn't it be fair to say though that there are certain forms of unpleasantness that the vast, vast majority of people would agree would be undesirable to keep around?
Just as an example, I would think that most everyone would agree that the world would be better off without things like disease, natural disasters, and most forms of emotional suffering.

In the example of Fate Apocrypha that I provided above, assuming that it worked as intended, the salvation of humanity would eliminate all of those things. Though it's likely that it would also eliminate the more desirable forms of unpleasentness that you brought up. Given the nature of it, we may even lose all sense of physical pleasures or even physical interaction, though the exact nature of the transformation isn't expounded upon enough to know for sure.

EDIT: I suppose there's another question that goes with this whole discussion: Can there be a situation in which the benefits and possible good of bringing about a utopic transformation of humanity outweighs the possible conflict with individial desires?
 
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BobTheNinja said:
Can there be a situation in which the benefits and possible good of bringing about a utopic transformation of humanity outweighs the possible conflict with individial desires?
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The question is do these two concepts inherently need to be in conflict? There's plenty of room in speculative fiction for utopian concepts that allow individualism in careful balance with individualism.

Obviously there's the Federation from Star Trekm which is just "Oh were blew up the planet, better go ahead and become people who won't do that shit again."

Oh there's the Culture, which is post-scarcity taken to an extreme where all of human wants and needs are provided by AI supermachine who are themselves full citizens of the society so we don't have to worry about them revolting or anything. And every person is just free to do whatever the hell they want within this environment.

But if you want an example of an instance of humanity just being transformed in an instant into a utopian state. One of the endings of Deus Ex: Invisible War does this. Where an ascended AI/Human hybrid interfaces with all mankind through a nanite storm that allows him to understand the wants, thoughts, and desires of all of mankind, without actually controlling people on an individual level. Creating a sort of subconscious absolute democracy executed by a powerful AI intelligence that... might be insane. The game isn't really clear whether or not they fixed the whole "Helios is formed partially from a batshit crazy AI" thing or not.
 
I define a utopia as a morally desirable world or state of affairs. Some politics are utopian and others are pragmatic in their ideology, yes, but ultimately everyone with genuine convictions is going to have some form of utopian vision, excepting those few who think things are just fine the way they are. Without at least the slightest notion of world that is better or preferable, wanting things to change or better themselves is pointless.

But utopia as a "perfect" world? I say there's no such thing, outside spiritual notions of Heaven or moksha or nirvana. Suffering, sadness, and anguish, and pain I think are just built into human neurochemistry. We should fight against excesses of injustice and oppression, not abstract "suffering" that also includes fulfilling parts of the human experience.

I guess there are transhumanist ideals where death pain and bodily hurt can be done away with completely, but they'll still have to deal with higher emotional problems.
 
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