Reachable Utopia

I recently looked into ParticipatoryEconomics? and even though it looks interesting, it has the following important part missing:

Many a utopia has been envisioned, but few came to pass. The problem is often, that a viable path from the here and now to the proposed utopia is missing. Granted, the proposed path is often called 'revolution', but that is like saying we heat the pot and hope, that after cooling the result will be a crystal (but in fact the previous state may be equally or even more likely).

Also the utopia has to be stable under perturbations (small inner and large outer ones). A utopia that falls into the middle ages after a large earthquake disrupts its smooth flows is not worth much.

An example of a successful (even if partial) ReachableUtopia is the GeneralPublicLicence. It is embedded in the existing system in the form of a contract, but is constructed in such a way as to grow by placing more and more under that contract (that's why it is called GeneralPublicVirus?) the idea is that it grows until it encompasses everything, thereby making the original economy empty (no other contracts remain and all corresponding rules can be disposed of).

In short: it is not enough to show a better system, one also has to make plausible, that that state can be reached and is stable.

-- GunnarZarncke (in the hope, that the reference to the GPL makes this OnTopic enough :-)

This fabulous piece of writing by Alexander Schmemann (from "Between Utopia and Escape") seems appropriate for this topic:

Now, what do I mean by Utopia? First of all, Utopia is a kind of a maximalistic projection towards the future. It is a promise, or an idea, that history as a whole, and human existence as personal destiny, moves towards perfection and fulfillment, towards an eminent — not only eminent, but also an imminent, victory over all kinds of dangers and deficiencies. We can see, for example, the political appeal of Utopia, not even speaking of such utopias as the Marxist utopia. (Now, the power of Marxism over human minds is in itself a paradox, something absolutely amazing! Why is it that this theory, which so far has never proven itself to be right in any detail or wholesale, why does it keep its power? To abandon the Marxist vision of time, of history, is a tremendous kind of "crucifixion" for some people.) But even if we disregard those utopias, like Marxism, which is not the fate of this country, we will find this utopian coefficient even in the political culture of our society today. It is not an accident that every four years during a new presidential election, there must be a vision like The Great Society, or A New Frontier... There is always something that is great, decisive, final, and built in to that vision is the faith that we are confident and capable of doing something radical.

No, the history of the world does not encourage us to think that way. All of the Napoleons failed and all their dreams ended on a great variety of St. Helens . . . And yet today this faith is essential. No politician would come and say, "We know that we are poor, limited, fallible human beings. We are living in darkness, we will try to do our best, but of course not much can be done..." Such a man would not go very far. He must have a kind of utopian charisma. He must lead us to what the French Marxist poet Arangon terms, "Les lendemains qui chantent" — "The tomorrows that sing," "Tomorrow must sing." Why must tomorrow sing? People will die; the cemeteries will grow, and so on. Politics today is fed by, if not necessarily lies, then, at least, utopian messages.

ReachableUtopia is under a serious suspicion of being an oxymoron. If it's reachable maybe it's no longer utopia. And if you reached it, probably you had to suffer all the "compromises" of making any enterprise succeed in the Real World(TM). -- CostinCozianu

And what about the GPL example?

I don't think of it as a utopia, it's just one of the many forms of contracts between providers and suppliers in the software economy. And because of its viral nature, it's not quite as popular in the OpenSource movement as it was in the beginning. I've put my WikiChangeProposal project under Apache license without loosing one second of thought. In the end, people vote with their feet and human nature is thankfully so diverse that in a normal world (with free speech and individual freedom), no utopian project will gather the needed super-majority to be imposed on a societal scale. -- Costin

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Any reachable social system will have to meet the requirements of an EvolutionarilyStableStrategy.

That's true for social systems in general, but to be more than that, and specifically, to be a utopia (like the ParticipatoryEconomy? example, or the communist society as envisioned by Marx), the EvolutionarilyStableStrategy has to shoot for the global maximum while avoiding being stuck in a local maximum. Or this is, if not impossible, at least extraordinarily unlikely using normal means. Hence the need for "revolution", and once tainted with blood all utopia are irremediably corrupted, just like the bears who once fed on human blood will always try to eat humans and have to be shot. That's just the side-effect of human nature.

My statement above implies that any reachable social system (including any imagined utopia) has to be a stable local maximum (part of the requirements of an EvolutionarilyStableStrategy). It has to survive exploitation by opportunistic populations.