Now then. I have just finished listening to the audiobook of David McCullough's biography of John Adams, and so it struck me right away that you want to discuss building materials and housing first. Adams would object, I think. He would say that building materials are immaterial—or at least, that they are questions that can be answered later. The first question for any builder of a better society is this: how are we to restrain the darker impulses in human nature? Changing human nature, Adams would argue, is impossible. The best we can hope for is a set of social and political structures that will contain greed, selfishness, cruelty, bigotry, etc.
Adams had his own ideas. Among them: 1) a legal system that is truly just, and impartial; 2) a limit on the accumulation of personal wealth; 3) universal education that prepares all citizens to participate fully in society and politics. All good ideas, it seems to me, and all of them imperfectly realized, at best.
So that's where I would start. How can we make the legal system truly just? How can we limit the accumulation of personal wealth? How can we improve public education?
Just some thoughts on limiting personal wealth. My first thought was why would you limit people to a particular amount of wealth? Would that be to make those at the top of the scale from gaining too much power? Would limiting personal wealth make others more able to obtain this top status easier because there’s only a certain amount to go around? Because some people are more ambitious than others is there an actual way to make them stop and because some people are just lazy and won’t work towards independence, let alone wealth, will limiting some people’s wealth really have any effect on those that don’t pursue wealth anyway if that is the reason for limitations?
In some early community of the United States it was decided that all would work towards equality and food would be stored in a community warehouse where it would be distributed equally to all residents of the community. What they found was that when some people found that all would be shared through out the community without regards to what you put in they decided not to work. Might limiting personal wealth have that effect on some?
Maybe this is not the avenue of your own thought process but you definitely made me think.
The Iroquois were set up this way and it works fine when children are raised with internal ethics and personal honor. The issue was the fear based Christian Patriarchal upbringing glorifying singular males who took power and dictated to those (especially their family) who they could subdue. The family upbringing imprints the abusive Social Structure. Unfortunately it's a pillar of Christian Patriarchal Marriage. That's why we have the Religious Right attacking Women, Schools, and Child Labor Laws. They want a hierarchial Great Chain of Being reinstated. That's a King or Dictator. It also relieved underlings of any responsibility which is their aim.
So very glad to see you here - and equally glad that you're bringing things as hopeful as this. Thank you for publicly sitting with these questions and inviting us to do the same. It feels like the start of something grand. :)
Margaret, I was a participant in Practical Utopias and I want to thank you for initiating this project. It has energized me with resources, community, ideas and hope. Instead of despair I now feel excited about the steps, small and large, that I can take every day to save this beautiful planet and make it a more compassionate, joyful place for all beings. A million thank yous. I look forward to the next round! (yes, please!) And, hurrah for your substack.- Teal
Your words give me hope, even the simple knowing that there are doers and thinkers out there willing to consider how to build a better world is encouraging. I'd love to know more. And a step further than that - how can I contribute to building a better world?
New subscriber, longtime reader of your works here. Excuse me as I catch up.
Practical Utopias. This is what stuck me: You noted they are necessary to try because of the notion of hope. If not for hope, why bother trying to do anything. This is important and runs deeply in the youth of our world who both have hope if we allow them the space to exercise it, as it is a practice, yet it is something they are especially struggling with as well. Housing costs, education costs, healthcare concerns, climate crisis that they will live in, and political unrest and discord all around increasingly. These dissolve hope. These draw them to dystopian novels, movies, television and games because it seems most relevant. But asking my sons in their young twenties, they are desperate for hope. Practical Utopia thought experiments are practices in hope and this generation, along with the rest, will have a great impact on creating future realities--even parts and pieces of these practical utopias.
Hope is a precious commodity. It's not dreamy cotton fluff. It's hard work to keep hope as darkness descends ever more. It takes work together to solve problem by problem keeping hope that an answer is ahead. We can't give up on hope or practical utopias.
Well, I wish I had heard about disco.co and your project of creating practical utopia‘s back in September. I would’ve loved to have joined this. Hope you do it again. In the meantime, it’s great to have you here on the sub stack and I’m looking forward to reading what you have to say. Thank you.
These are all very good questions to ponder, especially in the story I’m serializing now. Part of what I think makes both utopias and dystopias so compelling is their proximity to reality. No magic wand. Even the society created in the Handmaid’s Tale forms incrementally. We accept certain things and little by little are swallowed up.
Thank you so much for sharing your insight and for this project. It’s so helpful to contemplate the many facets of the worlds we create. I’m eager to see how this progresses.
My best thinking is to understand human development & maturation better and engage in small groups to heal our fears and bring forth creativity, play and innovation, slowly but surely. We want to create the optimum conditions for growth for the current and next crop of humanity. This means making sense of trauma in the current crop, and do a teeter totter of courage & cleaning up the past. Like the dragon and the treasure, we can feel some fear and trepidation while still acting on the next steps to creating a localization of the world we wish to see out there ;)
Then we can spontaneously erupt in loving acts of investment in the social determinants of optimum human functioning, which supports life on earth, and each other. Easy Schmeezy, one would think, given the warehouses full of information and experts supporting this transformation.
The evidence is in. We are amazing and we are vulnerable.
One has to be a bit of a fire walking ( life is the firewalk) closet mystic with a precious tribe to face the naysayers and the internal hopelessness, then finish the darn book. My own challenge at the moment.
This thing about narratives shining the light on the way forward actually seems to be true – if we can see the way we might actually be able to get there!
Somehow before joining Practical Utopias as a fellow, I had been lurking around in the shadows patching together some semblance of Utopia and waiting for cultural narratives to guide us into the future. Now I am actively hopeful and actively imagining with others where we want to end up so that we can figure out how to get there together, this visioning exercise is real empowerment you have given us. Thank you Margaret for sharing your brain with the world and inspiring us to share our brains with each other!
I'm all for hope. And I'm tired of utopias only being presented as cautionary tales... e.g. "don't try to make things better! You might make them worse! Enjoy your soma and get back to work."
I love this! I am fascinated by the possibilities of what I call the Post-Egoic Society alongside the opportunities that AI and advanced technology may afford for humanity in the future. I am currently doing some work at this very moment for a chapter about Utopia for a book that is in development. I never realized this was a passion for you as well. I'd love to know more!
I can recommend a model for discussion: intentional communities. These hubs of cooperative living have been around all over the US (& world), and lots has been written/filmed about them.
I was fortunate to live in an intentional community in Dexter Oregon… where I learned about living agreements, community councils, self-sustenance, legal and educational aspects of shared endeavors… if anyone is interested, I can recommend resources.
Dear Margaret,
What an inspiration you are! Thank you.
Now then. I have just finished listening to the audiobook of David McCullough's biography of John Adams, and so it struck me right away that you want to discuss building materials and housing first. Adams would object, I think. He would say that building materials are immaterial—or at least, that they are questions that can be answered later. The first question for any builder of a better society is this: how are we to restrain the darker impulses in human nature? Changing human nature, Adams would argue, is impossible. The best we can hope for is a set of social and political structures that will contain greed, selfishness, cruelty, bigotry, etc.
Adams had his own ideas. Among them: 1) a legal system that is truly just, and impartial; 2) a limit on the accumulation of personal wealth; 3) universal education that prepares all citizens to participate fully in society and politics. All good ideas, it seems to me, and all of them imperfectly realized, at best.
So that's where I would start. How can we make the legal system truly just? How can we limit the accumulation of personal wealth? How can we improve public education?
Eric
Just some thoughts on limiting personal wealth. My first thought was why would you limit people to a particular amount of wealth? Would that be to make those at the top of the scale from gaining too much power? Would limiting personal wealth make others more able to obtain this top status easier because there’s only a certain amount to go around? Because some people are more ambitious than others is there an actual way to make them stop and because some people are just lazy and won’t work towards independence, let alone wealth, will limiting some people’s wealth really have any effect on those that don’t pursue wealth anyway if that is the reason for limitations?
In some early community of the United States it was decided that all would work towards equality and food would be stored in a community warehouse where it would be distributed equally to all residents of the community. What they found was that when some people found that all would be shared through out the community without regards to what you put in they decided not to work. Might limiting personal wealth have that effect on some?
Maybe this is not the avenue of your own thought process but you definitely made me think.
The Iroquois were set up this way and it works fine when children are raised with internal ethics and personal honor. The issue was the fear based Christian Patriarchal upbringing glorifying singular males who took power and dictated to those (especially their family) who they could subdue. The family upbringing imprints the abusive Social Structure. Unfortunately it's a pillar of Christian Patriarchal Marriage. That's why we have the Religious Right attacking Women, Schools, and Child Labor Laws. They want a hierarchial Great Chain of Being reinstated. That's a King or Dictator. It also relieved underlings of any responsibility which is their aim.
So very glad to see you here - and equally glad that you're bringing things as hopeful as this. Thank you for publicly sitting with these questions and inviting us to do the same. It feels like the start of something grand. :)
Margaret, I was a participant in Practical Utopias and I want to thank you for initiating this project. It has energized me with resources, community, ideas and hope. Instead of despair I now feel excited about the steps, small and large, that I can take every day to save this beautiful planet and make it a more compassionate, joyful place for all beings. A million thank yous. I look forward to the next round! (yes, please!) And, hurrah for your substack.- Teal
I would love to be part of the next round since I just heard of this
Your words give me hope, even the simple knowing that there are doers and thinkers out there willing to consider how to build a better world is encouraging. I'd love to know more. And a step further than that - how can I contribute to building a better world?
Margaret,
New subscriber, longtime reader of your works here. Excuse me as I catch up.
Practical Utopias. This is what stuck me: You noted they are necessary to try because of the notion of hope. If not for hope, why bother trying to do anything. This is important and runs deeply in the youth of our world who both have hope if we allow them the space to exercise it, as it is a practice, yet it is something they are especially struggling with as well. Housing costs, education costs, healthcare concerns, climate crisis that they will live in, and political unrest and discord all around increasingly. These dissolve hope. These draw them to dystopian novels, movies, television and games because it seems most relevant. But asking my sons in their young twenties, they are desperate for hope. Practical Utopia thought experiments are practices in hope and this generation, along with the rest, will have a great impact on creating future realities--even parts and pieces of these practical utopias.
Hope is a precious commodity. It's not dreamy cotton fluff. It's hard work to keep hope as darkness descends ever more. It takes work together to solve problem by problem keeping hope that an answer is ahead. We can't give up on hope or practical utopias.
Well, I wish I had heard about disco.co and your project of creating practical utopia‘s back in September. I would’ve loved to have joined this. Hope you do it again. In the meantime, it’s great to have you here on the sub stack and I’m looking forward to reading what you have to say. Thank you.
These are all very good questions to ponder, especially in the story I’m serializing now. Part of what I think makes both utopias and dystopias so compelling is their proximity to reality. No magic wand. Even the society created in the Handmaid’s Tale forms incrementally. We accept certain things and little by little are swallowed up.
Thank you so much for sharing your insight and for this project. It’s so helpful to contemplate the many facets of the worlds we create. I’m eager to see how this progresses.
Dear Margaret & Community
Thank you Margaret for this wonderful invitation!
My best thinking is to understand human development & maturation better and engage in small groups to heal our fears and bring forth creativity, play and innovation, slowly but surely. We want to create the optimum conditions for growth for the current and next crop of humanity. This means making sense of trauma in the current crop, and do a teeter totter of courage & cleaning up the past. Like the dragon and the treasure, we can feel some fear and trepidation while still acting on the next steps to creating a localization of the world we wish to see out there ;)
Then we can spontaneously erupt in loving acts of investment in the social determinants of optimum human functioning, which supports life on earth, and each other. Easy Schmeezy, one would think, given the warehouses full of information and experts supporting this transformation.
The evidence is in. We are amazing and we are vulnerable.
One has to be a bit of a fire walking ( life is the firewalk) closet mystic with a precious tribe to face the naysayers and the internal hopelessness, then finish the darn book. My own challenge at the moment.
This thing about narratives shining the light on the way forward actually seems to be true – if we can see the way we might actually be able to get there!
Somehow before joining Practical Utopias as a fellow, I had been lurking around in the shadows patching together some semblance of Utopia and waiting for cultural narratives to guide us into the future. Now I am actively hopeful and actively imagining with others where we want to end up so that we can figure out how to get there together, this visioning exercise is real empowerment you have given us. Thank you Margaret for sharing your brain with the world and inspiring us to share our brains with each other!
I'm all for hope. And I'm tired of utopias only being presented as cautionary tales... e.g. "don't try to make things better! You might make them worse! Enjoy your soma and get back to work."
I’d go with a small dose of Xanax or maybe a little lithium. Don’t want a sleepy workforce.
I am looking forward to learning more. It’s an absolute pleasure to see you here.
I love this! I am fascinated by the possibilities of what I call the Post-Egoic Society alongside the opportunities that AI and advanced technology may afford for humanity in the future. I am currently doing some work at this very moment for a chapter about Utopia for a book that is in development. I never realized this was a passion for you as well. I'd love to know more!
What a wonderful learning experience for the builders of tomorrow
I'm in
What a wonderful alternative to scrolling is this idea!
I can recommend a model for discussion: intentional communities. These hubs of cooperative living have been around all over the US (& world), and lots has been written/filmed about them.
I was fortunate to live in an intentional community in Dexter Oregon… where I learned about living agreements, community councils, self-sustenance, legal and educational aspects of shared endeavors… if anyone is interested, I can recommend resources.