https://vegasharmon.com/tags/utopia/ Recent content in Utopia on Vegas Harmon Hugo en Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/extropian-dreams-paperclip-nightmares/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/extropian-dreams-paperclip-nightmares/ In the early days of Silicon Valley, it was actually quite common (at least among far-thinking futurist types who populated the Bay Area) to believe that the coming Singularity would be the single greatest event in the history of the universe, the culmination of the techno-capitalist project that has already done so much good for humanity. In the 1980s and 1990s, the “extropian” community in the Bay Area (a futurist collective committed to fighting entropy and death, which organized around local meetups, an academic institute and a popular mailing list) eagerly awaited the Singularity, believing that a glorious transhuman future — free from all death, suffering, and scarcity — awaited them on the other side. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-future-s-cities-etched-in-silicon/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-future-s-cities-etched-in-silicon/ We did build the great cities of the future: they are just very, very small. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/from-keeper-to-gardener/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/from-keeper-to-gardener/ Upholding God’s design and keeping the boundaries of nature and culture under supervision were thus the ideals of pre-modern utopian endeavors. With modernity came the urge to control and manipulate nature, resulting in the gardener’s approach as a concept of utopianism. (…) In gardening utopias, man took control over his garden, giving it ‘constant attention and effort,’ forcing ‘his preconceived design on the plot’ (Bauman, Liquid Times 99) by selection, cultivation, and exclusion of unwanted elements. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/happiness-as-a-private-affair/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/happiness-as-a-private-affair/ All of these are not part of individualized, consumption-oriented society of liquid modernity; rather ‘happiness means now a different today rather than a more felicitous tomorrow[, it] […] has become a private affair, and a matter for here and now’ (Society 240). https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/is-your-walled-garden-part-of-the-cosmos/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/is-your-walled-garden-part-of-the-cosmos/ Warg talks about trying to avoid “a future of meaningless gleaming techno-​progress burning the cosmos”. Do you really think your walled garden will be able to ride this out? Hint: is it part of the cosmos? Yeah, you’re kind of screwed. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/multipolar-traps-and-the-science-god/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/multipolar-traps-and-the-science-god/ The modern research community knows they aren’t producing the best science they could be. There’s lots of publication bias, statistics are done in a confusing and misleading way out of sheer inertia, and replications often happen very late or not at all. And sometimes someone will say something like “I can’t believe people are too dumb to fix Science. All we would have to do is require early registration of studies to avoid publication bias, turn this new and powerful statistical technique into the new standard, and accord higher status to scientists who do replication experiments. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/needs-are-socially-constructed/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/needs-are-socially-constructed/ Because of the socially constructed nature of both need and satisfaction, Levitas further argues, there cannot be an evaluation of utopia based on universal principles of what constitutes a ‘good society’ and what a ‘bad society’: ‘If needs are socially constructed, the project of trying to read off the good society from a definition of human nature and human needs is doomed to failure’ (184). https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-hunter-s-utopia/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-hunter-s-utopia/ The hunter’s utopia is thus most importantly characterized not as a fixed goal to strive for, but as a process of living in constant movement. ‘Hunters search for fun, excitement, validation, consumer goods and identity’ (‘Liquid’ 76), Jacobsen argues, all the while sampling and surfing their way through an endless array of opportunities. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-insignificance-of-politics/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-insignificance-of-politics/ Bauman shares Levitas’s analysis that the possibility of utopian change is located in politics and that political agency has been dissolved: ‘The most conspicuous feature of contemporary politics,’ Bauman writes, ‘is its insignificance’ (In Search 4). The dual translation between the public and the private that politics is supposed to facilitate has been turned inside out, as Bauman argues, and ‘politics has been effectively disarmed’ (Society 169). Flaws in policy cannot be grasped as unethical anymore, because they do not connect to the individual directly, whereas unethical private actions become political outrages (as witnessed in the Clinton– Lewinsky affair), when the individual life choices do not appeal to the public. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-telos-of-man-and-capturing-gnon/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-telos-of-man-and-capturing-gnon/ And then there’s us. Man has his own telos, when he is allowed the security to act and the clarity to reason out the consequences of his actions. When unafflicted by coordination problems and unthreatened by superior forces, able to act as a gardener rather than just another subject of the law of the jungle, he tends to build and guide a wonderful world for himself. He tends to favor good things and avoid bad, to create secure civilizations with polished sidewalks, beautiful art, happy families, and glorious adventures. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-u-via-banishes-the-question-of-meaning/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-u-via-banishes-the-question-of-meaning/ But Bauman is wary of the utopian perspective that the hunt offers, as he concludes his musings by saying that ‘the utopia, or “u-via”, of hunters, the utopia of life revolving around the pursuit of constantly elusive fashion, does not give sense to life, whether authentic or fake. It merely helps to banish the question of life’s meaning from our minds’ (Culture 30). https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/this-is-the-dream-time/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/this-is-the-dream-time/ So I agree with Robin Hanson: This is the dream time. This is a rare confluence of circumstances where the we are unusually safe from multipolar traps, and as such weird things like art and science and philosophy and love can flourish. As technological advance increases, the rare confluence will come to an end. New opportunities to throw values under the bus for increased competitiveness will arise. New ways of copying agents to increase the population will soak up our excess resources and resurrect Malthus’ unquiet spirit. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/utopia-as-speed/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/utopia-as-speed/ Most importantly, utopia in liquid modernity is ‘linked to mobility, not to a place’: ‘The liquid modern equivalents of the Utopias of yore are neither about time nor about space – but about speed and acceleration’ (Society 241). Bauman concludes that ‘the posture of the gardener is nowadays giving way to that of the hunter’ (Liquid Times 100). https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/utopia-as-the-education-of-desire/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/utopia-as-the-education-of-desire/ ‘The function of utopia,’ Levitas concludes, ‘thus reverts from that of a goal and catalyst of change to one of criticism, and the education of desire, without any necessary move forward into action’ (196).