What is good about suffering? Suffering can only cause pain. And emotional suffering causes only pain. Physical suffering causes only pain. So what is good and fulfilling about suffering? Please do tell.
The Ethics of Seeking Utopia
- Thread starter BobTheNinja
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Katamariguy
Pessimist. Contrarian. Naysayer.
- Location
- Upstate NY
At its heart (this is both from evolutionary and moral perspective) I'd say that suffering is good in the sense that caring about and responding negatively to bad things is preferable to looking past them, and possibly letting them further hurt you/other people. If I didn't feel aggrieved and unhappy about me or other people behaving badly or suffering in social interactions, I wouldn't like the lack of empathy and connection. (Some of this might be the emotional masochist in me talking. It feels great to have a good cry.)
But on another level, yeah. Pain and suffering suck. I just don't think it's possible to abolish them. My feeling is that they're just part of human cognition, necessary part of our emotions. Even in a utopian society with a culture of kind acceptance and empathy, widespread access to effective mental health treatment, I think people are still going to have bad days. Make mistakes, argue with people and hate them for no good reason, have bad moods just because, miss a pet they loved, feel sad because of a depressing history book, have an episode of existential dread. That's how I see the human condition (though maybe it says more about my mental health problems, I'm not having much luck in finding good therapists). At the end of chapter 2 of The Dispossessed, Ursula K LeGuin has a great reflection on the social role of suffering. From the main character is the part I find myself most agreeing with:
Sounds a bit Buddhist, I guess.
But on another level, yeah. Pain and suffering suck. I just don't think it's possible to abolish them. My feeling is that they're just part of human cognition, necessary part of our emotions. Even in a utopian society with a culture of kind acceptance and empathy, widespread access to effective mental health treatment, I think people are still going to have bad days. Make mistakes, argue with people and hate them for no good reason, have bad moods just because, miss a pet they loved, feel sad because of a depressing history book, have an episode of existential dread. That's how I see the human condition (though maybe it says more about my mental health problems, I'm not having much luck in finding good therapists). At the end of chapter 2 of The Dispossessed, Ursula K LeGuin has a great reflection on the social role of suffering. From the main character is the part I find myself most agreeing with:
Sounds a bit Buddhist, I guess.
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- The Intellectual, Moral, and Literal High Ground
I view the type of perfection personified by a utopia to be an impossible concept and the pursuit of such a thing to be far more likely to create suffering than prevent it. It's the kind of thing that all too easily allows the claim that the ends justify the means. And it tends to empower those with charisma or other personal draw over those who actually want to make things better and consolidate power with them.
So while I wouldn't call seeking utopia unethical, I would say that it is more likely to become unethical than seeking continual improvements.
So while I wouldn't call seeking utopia unethical, I would say that it is more likely to become unethical than seeking continual improvements.
Katamariguy
Pessimist. Contrarian. Naysayer.
- Location
- Upstate NY
In practice, everyone behaves as if the ends justify the means, because some degree of injustice occurring is inevitable, pre-baked into how things are.
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- The Intellectual, Moral, and Literal High Ground
There's a difference between accepting incivility and claiming that after Stalin's next purge ends full communism will be achieved or that Pinochet just needs to kill a few more political enemies.
A utopia would solve all our problems. There would be no hunger, no homeless ppls, no women forced to do risky behaviors to survive. There would be true equality under the law. I see a utopia as even possible in today's world. How? Well, if ppls would agree on a way to make our world more perfect, maybe. Anyway, this is a hypothetical discussion, so I shall just say that seeking a utopia to me is far preferable than living in the 'real world.' The 'real world' is a parade of travesties and injustices.
- Location
- Colorado
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... There are quite a few more problems than poverty and inequity. Solving those isn't going to solve the fact that even though I'm financially stable and legally secure, I sometimes want to kill myself. The greatest problems afflicting humanity aren't the ones we inflict on each other, but the ones inherent in life. That's why "working towards Utopia" is often villainous, because it necessitates severe action to solve unsolvable problems.
Vyslanté
The self is a prison
- Location
- European Union
There's nothing "inherent in life" in stuff like racism, discrimination, or bigotry.
- Location
- England
The means are also the ends. tl;dr: Don't be a dick now on the promise of being nice later.
Barring the unlikely and/or the religious, the ultimate end is going to be everybody and everything is dead. Thus, if one is to seek value in existence it necessarily requires finding it along the line, and not just at the end. People seeking to make everything better after some 'transitional period' of 'regrettable sacrifices' should acknowledge that there is no 'happily ever after', even if they can succeed. People die, nations fall, planets freeze or burn. I hope that after humanity no longer exists in its present form it could be said "They had a good run, and were a decent species of sapients" and not "Thank fuck those craptards are gone." Moreover, I hope that people can see the value of reaching the first case, over the second, even if in terms of the 'end' there is no difference.
Mental illnesses would be covered by counselors in a utopia too. A perfect world wouldn't have ppls wanna kill themselves unless they were making an informed decision. I don't feel working towards making the world a more perfect place is villainous. I as well don't believe mental illnesses are unsolvable. There's meds and therapy galore. So I too feel like killing myself a lot yet I believe with a utopia I'd be able to find effective solutions to that problem.
- Location
- Singapore
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- Singular They
Would the presence/existence of counselors be a sign of utopia, or a sign that it is not utopia?
As in would utopia be a scenario where those in need would have the help they require, or would it be a scenario where there would be nobody in need at all?
I'm honestly not familiar with the academic vocabulary surrounding this, so there might be different "levels" of utopia, and there might be different specific terms for each grade.
Vyslanté
The self is a prison
- Location
- European Union
When discussing on SF forums like here, you can assume that "utopia" means "What is, for you, a perfect world"
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- Singapore
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- Singular They
That's still not very helpful. Do you mean a world which I, personally, consider perfect for me? Or a world which I consider perfect for the greatest number of people I can think of? Or a world which I consider to be the best case scenario based on what I consider to be the limits of current human possibility?
"A utopia" could be describe as, "A perfect or idealistic world." I would say the existence of counselors would be a sign of utopia. Ppls would still have regular feelings and occasional mental illness even in a perfect world. I say a utopia is having the help you need.
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- Singapore
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Okay, thanks.
Using that definition, I'd say a lot of villainous seekers of utopia are the sort who would be using the other definition, and look to remove the need for counselors in the first place by removing those with mental illnesses, usually by brutally direct methods. Hence their villainy; this is the standard "reducing the surplus population" dark side of moralistic faux-utopian stories.
There's still the hypothetical edge cases of needing help but not wanting it, usually quite loudly, but that's going quite far into the example, which is quibbling over details right now. It does seem like this sort of utopia requires at least some level of very minor sacrifice from a large number of people in order to sustain itself, since those counselors have to be paid or maintained somehow. We already have the example of Omelas for the cases where the sacrifice and suffering gets concentrated down into a few individuals, so would it be better for a utopia to diffuse that suffering instead to the largest number of people possible, so it ends up being effectively reduced to next-to-nothing?
Some parts of the sacrifice cannot be so easily divided, however; unless we come up with particularly strong AI (eg the Culture), counselling is usually done by other humans (or sapients), who will have to handle the mental illnesses of others. That's not something easily crowd-diffused in a utopia.
I see. Yes, that does sound villainous. Reducing undesirables or whatevs is hideous travesties.
No, I don't feel diffusing the suffering would help. Maybe computers could be counselors? It's a utopia and may have peace long enough to advance its technology considerably. Anyway digression aside: I believe that if we diffuse suffering to the largest number of ppls possible like then we'd be harming... the largest number of ppls like possible.
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- Singapore
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- Singular They
"Suffering" may be too strong a word. I'm using it as a sort of illustrative point, in a sort of rigid Context Doesn't Matter thoroughly hypothetical way: the sort that sees losing a thousand dollars to be as serious as losing one cent.
So let's say the counselor is willing to help out this mentally ill person for a thousand dollars per hour. Asking one person to pay a thousand dollars for that hour is probably worthy of being called a "sacrifice" and "suffering". But if a hundred thousand people, in this utopian society, immediately crowdfunded one cent each, that's the thousand dollars settled. Is that just as bad as taking one thousand dollars from one person? What if it was a million people crowdfunding a cent each, for ten hours' worth of counselling?
At this point, we're not really seeing it as a sacrifice. In fact, that's the very simplified version of how we pay taxes. So I'm wondering if there is a point at which we can say at this level, the sacrifice is light enough for each individual person to be counted as negligible, and for the collective whole to be counted as utopia. Or if the entire thing is categorically unacceptable.
(Can't really tell the hypothetical counsellor to do it pro bono, since that pushes the sacrifice to the counsellor. Or, in the case of an AI, to the maintenance of the AI.)
Vyslanté
The self is a prison
- Location
- European Union
Yes.
(I mean, whatever you want? Talking about utopias is more a way to learn more about the people than anything else)
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- Singapore
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Mm, kind of? I was going off of the OP, which talks about the common themes seen in speculative fictions from the villains (as in the people we're supposed to recognize as morally wrong, on balance), which doesn't really have anything to do with my own personal opinions of utopia.
I mean, I could talk about what I find to be utopian, but that doesn't mean anything in the context of this thread, because I'm not a published SF writer, and I haven't written any villains with dreams of utopia either. I could talk about the villains I've read about, but they've largely been brought up already (or are quite spoilery), so I was hoping to explore some further definitions of the particular specific gradations of utopia as seen in these fictional works.
Villains concerned with utopia: Ozai. He starts out as the son of a very strict daddy. He abuses Zuko and Azula. He abuses Ursa his wife. And then he learns Fire and Lightningbending and tries to take over the world as the Phoenix King.
Not a sympathetic char, holds like grudges against Iroh and stuffs and his version of utopia was smashing and burning anyone who disagreed. Bad Ending.
And no one crowdfunds me so I am not gonna even comment. Yes, that would reduce the burden considerably. Yet you can't count on crowdfunds for like transgender surgery. At least not me.
Not a sympathetic char, holds like grudges against Iroh and stuffs and his version of utopia was smashing and burning anyone who disagreed. Bad Ending.
And no one crowdfunds me so I am not gonna even comment. Yes, that would reduce the burden considerably. Yet you can't count on crowdfunds for like transgender surgery. At least not me.
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- Singapore
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- Singular They
Upon further thought (and trying to think of relatively non-spoiler examples), FFXIV does have two examples of the different types of villainous seekers of utopia to which the heroes can understandably oppose. Both are from the Heavensward expansion, released 2015, so hopefully are considered past the spoiler statute limitations.
They are still kind of spoilery in that context, though, but that can't really be helped, since it's about villains and their motivations.
The first example is Archbishop Thordan VII. He intends to use a Macguffin to turn himself into a Primal, which is basically a demigodlike recreation of something or someone else made manifest through immense amounts of faith and aether (ie life/magic energy, which is the same thing in this setting). Specifically, the Primal of King Thordan I, the first king of Ishgard. Along with that, he also intends to turn his personal guard of twelve knights, the Heavens' Ward, into Primals of King Thordan's own twelve knights, becoming the Knights Of The Round (yes, that Knights Of The Round).
Primals have two major properties in FFXIV (apart from the standard "I'm a demigod with superpowered magic and stuff, I don't have to explain how my magic works"): they drain the area around them of aether while they're active, and they have the ability to Temper any sapient beings around them, if they so choose. Tempering basically turns the person into the Primal's thrall, and can range from being a mindless worshipper into an insidious deep cover double agent, again depending on the Primal's choice and temperament.
So Archbishop Thordan VII intends to mantle Primal King Thordan I like some kind of demigod powersuit, in order to enact his vision of utopia: he wants to Temper first the nation of Ishgard, then the entire world, in order to put an end to war and strife and suffering, all to unite everyone under the rule of one immortal god-king whom he claims to be benevolent. Strictly speaking, this would be true: having free will taken away by Tempering would indeed remove most causes of strife, and Thordan does intend to alleviate suffering as best as he knows how. With the power of the Heavens' Ward, he can probably make a pretty good go out of it.
But in this case, the heroes (ie the player characters and our allies) oppose him, because we do not agree with Thordan's vision of utopia. The form of utopia itself is unacceptable.
The second example is Quickthinx Allthoughts, who is the Goblin leader of the Goblin Illuminati (I didn't pick the name; in Japanese they're the "Order of the Blue Hand", but English localized them as "Illuminati" for some reason). He wishes to create a particular utopia for Goblins, who are a nomadic race who carry most of their belongings in their backpacks, based upon reason and logic and technology. So, with this in mind, he summons (well, hijacks a summoning) an entirely different Primal, called Alexander. (Yes, that Final Fantasy Alexander.)
Alexander is a huge, steam-clockwork mechanical construct implied to be the size of a small city, although MMO size wonkiness means it's actually about a quarter of that in absolute terms from the outside. Quickthinx plans for the Illuminati, and eventually all Goblin-kind, to live in Alexander forever, free from all interference and wants, since Alexander can provide everything for them, and any mistakes or problems can be easily corrected because Alexander can travel through time. Quickthinx just wants to shut himself and the Illuminati away from the rest of the world, and live on in their perfect utopia of Reason and Logic.
Except again we come back to the properties of Primals, this time to their absorption of aether. Upon being summoned, Alexander moved an arm, and this sucked up enough aether from the surroundings to turn the immediate vicinity into a barren waste. Just a small area, but the implication is that if Quickthinx wants Alexander to move about the world, the utopia inside Alexander will be sustained at the cost of the world outside.
So we oppose him, because in this case the cost of utopia is unacceptable, even if the form is at least understandable.
TL;DR I've started thinking about examples of villainous utopian goals, and I've identified at least two types: one where we disagree about the utopia itself, and one where whatever we think about the utopia, we disagree with the cost of achieving it. These are obviously not mutually exclusive.
There are probably more varieties.
They are still kind of spoilery in that context, though, but that can't really be helped, since it's about villains and their motivations.
The first example is Archbishop Thordan VII. He intends to use a Macguffin to turn himself into a Primal, which is basically a demigodlike recreation of something or someone else made manifest through immense amounts of faith and aether (ie life/magic energy, which is the same thing in this setting). Specifically, the Primal of King Thordan I, the first king of Ishgard. Along with that, he also intends to turn his personal guard of twelve knights, the Heavens' Ward, into Primals of King Thordan's own twelve knights, becoming the Knights Of The Round (yes, that Knights Of The Round).
Primals have two major properties in FFXIV (apart from the standard "I'm a demigod with superpowered magic and stuff, I don't have to explain how my magic works"): they drain the area around them of aether while they're active, and they have the ability to Temper any sapient beings around them, if they so choose. Tempering basically turns the person into the Primal's thrall, and can range from being a mindless worshipper into an insidious deep cover double agent, again depending on the Primal's choice and temperament.
So Archbishop Thordan VII intends to mantle Primal King Thordan I like some kind of demigod powersuit, in order to enact his vision of utopia: he wants to Temper first the nation of Ishgard, then the entire world, in order to put an end to war and strife and suffering, all to unite everyone under the rule of one immortal god-king whom he claims to be benevolent. Strictly speaking, this would be true: having free will taken away by Tempering would indeed remove most causes of strife, and Thordan does intend to alleviate suffering as best as he knows how. With the power of the Heavens' Ward, he can probably make a pretty good go out of it.
But in this case, the heroes (ie the player characters and our allies) oppose him, because we do not agree with Thordan's vision of utopia. The form of utopia itself is unacceptable.
The second example is Quickthinx Allthoughts, who is the Goblin leader of the Goblin Illuminati (I didn't pick the name; in Japanese they're the "Order of the Blue Hand", but English localized them as "Illuminati" for some reason). He wishes to create a particular utopia for Goblins, who are a nomadic race who carry most of their belongings in their backpacks, based upon reason and logic and technology. So, with this in mind, he summons (well, hijacks a summoning) an entirely different Primal, called Alexander. (Yes, that Final Fantasy Alexander.)
Alexander is a huge, steam-clockwork mechanical construct implied to be the size of a small city, although MMO size wonkiness means it's actually about a quarter of that in absolute terms from the outside. Quickthinx plans for the Illuminati, and eventually all Goblin-kind, to live in Alexander forever, free from all interference and wants, since Alexander can provide everything for them, and any mistakes or problems can be easily corrected because Alexander can travel through time. Quickthinx just wants to shut himself and the Illuminati away from the rest of the world, and live on in their perfect utopia of Reason and Logic.
Except again we come back to the properties of Primals, this time to their absorption of aether. Upon being summoned, Alexander moved an arm, and this sucked up enough aether from the surroundings to turn the immediate vicinity into a barren waste. Just a small area, but the implication is that if Quickthinx wants Alexander to move about the world, the utopia inside Alexander will be sustained at the cost of the world outside.
So we oppose him, because in this case the cost of utopia is unacceptable, even if the form is at least understandable.
TL;DR I've started thinking about examples of villainous utopian goals, and I've identified at least two types: one where we disagree about the utopia itself, and one where whatever we think about the utopia, we disagree with the cost of achieving it. These are obviously not mutually exclusive.
There are probably more varieties.
Vyslanté
The self is a prison
- Location
- European Union
OP is clearly asking for our opinion on the worthiness (or lack of thereof) of looking for utopias, not specifically and only "what do you think about the plans proposed by the villains looking for their utopia in fiction"
