Utopian communities

ben | 16 Oct 2022, 4:28 p.m.

Modern history is littered with utopian visions of the future. The word "utopian" by itself might conjure up associations of naivety for the modern reader, being contrasted with traditional dystopias like that of 1984. The assumption is that a utopian vision contains nice thoughts, interesting ideas, but isn't a realistic proposition for how the world can be: utopian views aren't worthy of being political views. This would be a rash dismissal. 

Utopian views are very often taken seriously. One of the early utopian works was a work of fiction by Edward Bellamy, entitled Looking Backwards, 2000 to 1887. It takes a character from Bellamy's time (1887) and magics him to the distant future year of 2000. The focus isn't on three dimensional shark projections advertising new movies, however, but on the political shifts that Bellamy foresees: improvement in working conditions, humans that no longer feel the need to be callous or manipulative (and so naturally there are no more lawyers or politicians), and an end to war, faminine, et cetera. You can certainly see how this might be interpreted as a utopian vision. The novel had that extra secret ingredient to turn it into something more - and specifically, something which interests me. It tried to paint a picture of how this utopian vision came about. 

The mechanisms by which utopia could be made were economic reform, and a massive increase in government control. Massive sections of the economy had to be nationalised. The details were not, and could not be, exact, but it was enough to inspire academics across the USA to adopt this vision, to take it as something to which they could aim. Clubs were formed to try to make something happen. 

Looking at this sort of gathering of people around a utopian vision I get a strong sense of deja vu. There's a basic blueprint, a shared sense of identity of groups that have a vision for society, and think they should lead society to realise that vision. They're motivated, think of themselves as having a strong moral compass, and crucially think they're more intelligent than other people. It's necessary to think you're more intelligent (or somehow more practical, or more reasonable) than the general population to really feel confident that you know what the future of your society should be. I've phrased this specification in a way which should be worrying: they think that they're more intelligent than other people. It sounds presumptous, like they're full of themselves. I think it's right to be worried about groups like this, and the larger they get the higher percentage of their group is bound to be overestimating their relative advantage for being political visionaries. I don't want to go all in and say that these groups are dangerous though.

Let's consider some more examples. I would say that Socialism is another utopian group of this form. It attracted intelligent people, and promised that there was a way that society (and the world, in fact) could be like that would be better for all.

I need to carefully disambiguate which communities I'm talking about here. I'm not talking about state funded communisist and socialist groups. The CCP is not what I'm talking about. Nor are just any old university group which has dryly decided that state ownership is a good thing. I'm talking about the groups in the 20th century which would meet with a vision for their country and the world, and do it as part of a tight community that genuinely shared the beliefs, with a sort of both academic and political fervour. I think those are the ones that genuinely share the same blueprint with the utopians of Edward Bellamy. 

To bring it to the modern day, I also think Effective Altruism fits the same blueprint. It's a group rooted in rationalist communities and in academic consequentialism. It has a vision for society and the world that in many cases is even more all-consuming than Socialist groups had (although there were communist groups focused on the historical dialectic and who believed that socialism would become the final dominant worldwide system, that was more a prediction than an active attempt to control the entire future that the longterminists propose). They also believe they're better suited to decide the fate of the world than other people. I'll give the two standard caveats here: some effective altruists are very humble, some are extremely intelligent, and there are even some who are both extremely intelligent and humble. But to some extent the quality of self-doubt is something which necessarily makes one a bad effective altruist, and the inability to recognise that is a form of insincerity. The community defines itself by its certainty of what the good is. 

I feel like this identification of EA as a utopian group should somehow be useful, but I'm not sure what to do with it. It's a large part of why I never want to call myself an effective altruist; it gives off a moral certainty which I think it is epistemically just too much, and seems almost condescending. 

EA being a utopian group is also part of what makes it a good thing though. Having a positive vision, caring about the society you're in and where it's going is just what it means to be a good political citizen. I like that. 

So what's the takeway from this? I've no bloody clue.