World of Love - Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
If I had one wish for Christmas this year
There'd be no more sorrow, there'd be no pain or tears,
If it was up to me, darling, I would build you a world of love
If you could rebuild the world, would there be no more sorrow? I think there is far too much pain in the world, but wouldn’t it be a little dull if there were no pain or tears whatsoever?
One of my favourite blogs of 2021 recently put out a post on Why Describing Utopia Goes Badly. The author’s theory is that utopias sound dull, homogeneous and alien. Dull because there isn’t as much room for overcoming challenges and conflict. Homogeneous because many utopias apply a specific lifestyle to everyone in society. Alien because:
We tend to value a lot of things about our current lives - not all of which we can easily name or describe. The world we live in is rich and complex in a way that it's hard for a fictional world to be. So if we imagine ourselves in a fictional world, it's often going to feel like something is missing.
The utopias that have sounded appealing to me involve each person being able to opt into a life that is particularly fulfilling for them, usually at the cost of every person existing in the same world. Examples of this include the stories Chaser 6 and Utopia, LOL?, the lengthy friendly (?) AI My Little Pony fanfic Friendship is Optimal and several others highlighted yesterday in under the same blog’s Utopia links. Despite their appeal, there is something a little insubstantial about these worlds to me. An absence of real stakes. But maybe that’s just the same grousing that causes people to complain about kids these days being too tender. Back in my day, I made meaning out of pain, so I think you need pain to have meaning.
Another favourite blogger of mine, in an essay about the Culture series, writes about the unseriousness of that sorta-utopia:
[Iain M Banks] imagines that the fundamental problem of scarcity has been solved, and so there is no longer any obligation for anyone to work (although, of course, people remain free to do so if they wish). All important decisions are made by a benevolent technocracy of AIs (or the “Minds”). And so what is left for humanity?. .. Consider Weber’s famous diagnosis of modernity, as producing “specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart.” In the Culture, the role of the specialist has been taken over by the AIs, leaving for humanity nothing but the role of “sensualists without heart”.
I do hope we have a more meaningful future than just all of you beautiful people hanging out together, holding hands, forever. Even if our descriptions of utopia end up either dull and homogeneous or personalized and unserious, it seems worth imagining futures that are much better than what we have now.
Hoping your world is full of love,
- Tessa