Thread:Forum:Literature/George Orwell on utopia/reply (6)

The low-brow high-brow remark wasn't directed at you, it's a criticism I've seen on other sites.

Yeah, I think it's really people who don't have much experience with with the sciences that assume empiricism to be the end-all and be-all of human knowledge.

"I'm gonna agree and disagree on the the "teenagers' actions have no real-world consequences" bit. Sure, some are overprotected and ignored. But then we have places like Chicago where the gang violence has a lot of real world consequences. I think the biggest conclusion there is that teens don't completely understand when their actions do and do not have major consequences, which is... yeah."

That's true, I did oversimplify. In addition to the danger of things like gang warfare, there are also young people who do have to worry about starvation. In these cases, society not only fails to remove their worries, but can stand in the way of their own attempts to solve these problems themselves. We don't make it easy for a pre-majority person to leave an abusive home.

"I'd say that "avoiding a too-rational world" is more of a fear than a desire. People never object to abstracts like "rationality" or "utopia", they object to change or the lack thereof. And most of this comes from fear of losing one's place in society. Fear is definitely not rational. Fear is the mind-killer."

No one would ever say that in those words, but I think that people do have a way of getting restless when life feels too safe and predictable.

"Governance has to spring from effective conflict resolution. Maybe utopias are just really really good at that? I think some form of conflict in inevitable assuming we're humans -- or any life-forms honestly. A utopia is a government that can effectively balance the many and the few; one that can think in both the short-term and the long-term. And that... is really freaking hard. "

Yeah, and this goes back to what Orwell was saying about the Houyhnhnms. In order to achieve this level of consensus, you pretty much have to wipe out all independent thought.