1/One reason I really liked Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" was because the protagonist responds to her chaotic, disintegrating society by thinking about...SPACE EXPLORATION.
When things are at their worst, it's time to get utopian.
3/Another is @jdcmedlock, with his calm, clear vision of an ultra-simple social democracy based on simple universal programs, simple universal taxes, and a sensible mixed economy.
6/And another is @drvox, who can be dark and pessimistic on Twitter, but whose Vox columns lay out bold and optimistic plans for decarbonizing our country and the world.
8/These are examples of "definite optimism" -- not general optimism that things will work out for the better, but specific plans, proposals, and ideas for MAKING a much better world.
9/As our society crumbles around us, focusing on these utopian visions is NOT a distraction or an indulgence -- it's a way of motivating ourselves to unfuck the world right now.
Like Lauren Olamina in Parable of the Sower, we've got to keep looking up at the stars.
10/We can't view ourselves as desperately shoring up a crumbling order, hopeful of preserving a diminished, shrunken form of what we had before.
We have to know that we're fighting for something much BETTER than we ever had before.
(end)
Oh, and I only gave six examples, so please respond to this thread with other examples of people dreaming big utopian dreams right now.
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Comparisons between the Cultural Revolution and the Woke Era get laughed at. The Woke Era didn't use violence, of course. But the *motivation* of people wanting to overturn social hierarchies, especially students wanting to overturn academic hierarchies, is recognizably similar.
In 2010s America, there was a widespread desire to overturn local social hierarchies -- the classroom authority of teachers and professors, the cultural power of entertainment stars, the authority of nonprofit execs and heads of civic organizations.
In 1960s China, overturning local hierarchies happened via physical mob violence. In 2010, it happened through online mobs destroying people's reputations on social media. Obviously, the second is far preferable to the first. This is why economic development is good!
1. They engender material equality more efficiently than any other economic intervention, and
2. They create an equality of respect, through the habit of mutual use.
Although rich people may pay more for a train or a park, when they ride the train or walk in the park, they are equal in social status to everyone else on the train or in the park.
This creates a feeling of equality throughout society.
1/Here's a thread in which the Economist's Mike Bird tries to rebut my recent post about decoupling. I think this thread is useful for understanding why the doubters are making the mistakes that they're making.
The reason Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza is bad isn't because civilian casualties are never acceptable when fighting against evil, but because bombing Gaza seems like it will not actually do much to eliminate Hamas, and will simply kill civilians for no purpose.
"The Allies leveled German cities, Hamas are as bad as Nazis, thus it's OK to level Gaza" ignores the fact that even if strategic bombing had been as effective as people thought (note: it wasn't), leveling Gaza will not produce a WW2-like outcome.
"The ends don't justify the means" should apply to the actual outcome, not just the goal you have in your head.
If the outcome is "everyone just keeps on hating each other and fighting forever", then no, the ends do not justify the means.