Open Thread, September 15, 2016 - Utopia! Let's Make it Happen
What is utopia? I suppose it's different for everybody. Some might think it's being near the ocean, having a little garden, enough money to live and painting supplies.
Others might choose the night life where everyone ponies and twists, having a nice little house or apartment, enough money to get by comfortably and a working auto or bicycle.
I don't think anyone would say "give me lots of stress, worrying about money, about how to get the car fixed, how I'm going to feed the kids next week if that check doesn't get here". But we have way too many people who do live like that, so many that you'd think problem-fixers (which is what government people are supposed to be) would notice it and make it their top priority instead of spending crazy amounts of money invading countries so corporations can make higher profits.
When I think of utopia I start with the question "what do I want?" and then try to work backwards to how to get there. It's murky though. I need help! Maybe together we can figure this out.
I'm not a fan of incrementalism. I don't want to get there in 1,000 steps, each step taking seven years. It seems awfully easy, if we could agree on what we want, to just go and do it. It sounds to me like only a problem of distribution...and controlling greed.
But what is it we want? Let's kick this around.
Here's a little music to go along with it. I've heard it said that the music played in Heaven will be Mozart, but not everyone believes in Heaven. Some who believe in an afterlife prefer Fairyland. I know I do. This piece is a guess of what fairy music is like.
But just in case. here's Mozart. His father, Murray Wilson Mozart, pushed him into the music biz at a very early age.
Or maybe it's something else...
it's probably all of them and more.
I see utopia as both a place where we live and as a state of mind. Where do we want to live? How to we want to be?
Comments
David Brock advertising he's paying for dirt on Trump
Corrupt the Record: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/296049-clinton-al...
Wish I had time to write this up...
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
Good morning
If Utopia is a state of mind, everything is great everywhere all of the time. Purple flowers by the water, nice.
This is the Mackinac Bridge over the Straights of Mackinac. It connects the lower and upper peninsulas of Michigan. On the right is Lake Huron, on the left is Lake Michigan. It is next to this bridge than Enbridge has an ancient underwater pipeline pushing huge amounts of crude. There is grave concern for a break and spill given its age and the how turbulent the lakes can be. The lakes are utopia, the pipeline is not.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Good day all!
I was standing right there last summer while on a vacation. We never went over the bridge which many have described as scary. But I could not believe just how beautiful and clear the water of Lake Huron was.
Last night, I learned that one of my closest friends from high school succumbed to cancer. She had fought it for years and it finally won. As of us who knew her are deeply saddened.
As for utopia. I believe it is a state of mind. For me, that means Peace, both within myself and in the world. We are a far way from utopia, sadly.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
My heartfelt condolences GG.
Next time you come to MI, you'll have to have to come visit me at our beach house. We are 50 miles SE of the bridge right on the lake. Now that I am retired, I'll be available.
It is a scary bridge, but the scenery is fantastic. They shut it down totally or limit the types of vehicles that can cross when it is windy. Cars have been blown right off that bridge and into the lake when the winds howl, and it happens at least once every couple of years. If you come labor day weekend, they have a bridge walk. Roughly 4-5K walk over the bridge to the other side. That would be up your alley.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
blown off the bridge??
good lord! I have bridge phobia, especially high bridges. When we lived in San Francisco it was always a white knuckle experience for me going across the Golden Gate Bridge. So no thank you on this one! Blown off the bridge! Yikes.
You only have to worry in bad weather.
I am afraid of heights. I went to the the Empire State Building observation deck. I had never been there before. When the elevator door opened and I started to walk out, my stomach dropped. I immediately backed up to the wall and hugged it. Never let go of that wall until I got ack on the elevator.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
You only have to worry in bad weather.
I am afraid of heights. I went to the the Empire State Building observation deck. I had never been there before. When the elevator door opened and I started to walk out, my stomach dropped. I immediately backed up to the wall and hugged it. Never let go of that wall until I got ack on the elevator.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
sorry about your friend
life is so odd in that it exists at all, and so precious.
I'm so sorry
and offer my condolence's to your loss and grief. Your sadness at her death is something I relate to as all death of life is sad tragic and yet inevitable. No one gets out of here alive and who knows where we all go. Hard to deal with when death strikes those you love and know.
Great Topic
I want to live in a country (world) where everyone has a home, enough healthy food, and clothes, and health care, is is enabled to do the sort of work they prefer and has leisure to spend relaxing, doing thing they enjoy.
Especially I want to live in a society where cooperation with others is more valued than competition or conflict.
it's a pretty good place
I hope to see you there...
Granma
That's pretty much my picture of it, too. Sometimes I focus on how it could be, and it seems so real, I could reach out and touch it. It feels peaceful yet dynamic, full of vitality. And a feeling of freedom; freedom to breathe and to be. I can feel what that kind of world would be like.
I've been having periods of depression lately, and I have to think part of it (not all of it, but part of it) is having such a sense of how things could be, while at the same time living in a world that is so very different from that. It's almost like having one foot in one world and the other foot in another, very different world.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
peace and harmony
when you could almost taste the sweetness of life
Ahh, Utopia.
Time for the eponymous tune by my favorite bassist/Stick player, Tony Levin, from his underappreciated solo album "Resonator"... A proper anthem!
oh, man, if they play "the marriage of Figaro" in heaven
i don't want to go there anymore. The King of the Fairies sounds a bit more cheerful.
I inagine utopia to be a place where my mind stops thinking. When people think, it always hurts I googled for some music for a mind that is quiet and found this:
[video:https://youtu.be/tOocaBAVtVE]
Wishing all some moments of quietness today.
PS. I love the piggy in the living room and the purple flowers near the water. Nice. Thanks.
https://www.euronews.com/live
master plan
happiness
Ah, pastoral splendor, a cottage with kitchen garden, a small
workshop, perfect climate and an absence of want, and boogie music, sweet, sweet boogie music
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
anyway...it seems to me that there must be an easy solution
this world is all $%^*ed up (my apologies to serious people from another blog who are shocked by my use of top row characters...please take me seriously!).
Really, my question is what sort of end result do we want? Is it the world we have with a few minor changes? Is it some big overhaul?
I believe small groups work best, that as the population increases the complexity becomes overwhelming. I look at the social democracies of Europe with health care and education, I think of the concept of collectives in the Soviet Union and Israel or the Amish communities.
I want the world to be a quilt of small places (could even be a few blocks within a city) where people know each other and care about each other. There would have to be cooperation and interaction with other places. Then it gets complicated again. But I think it's possible.
And I think Americans, as a group, want something like this, yet we keep not getting it. Why not? Why this deep slumber? How can we wake up?
Those are questions I ask myself and I'm not smart enough to come up with a real answer other than the "French solution"...which has its own problems, like what to do with all those tetes that would be rolling around.
Utopia is hard to define
on a societal level. I think a utopian society would provide for the whole, the common good thing. It sure would not be Capitalistic or the brand of socialism that's totalitarian/authoritarian. Power, greed and domination over nature and people would not be the guiding principles of my utopia. Aggression, competitiveness would not be thought of as strengths and necessary for people to survive. The four freedoms of FDR come to mind. Hard to conceive of in a world where War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strength.
My utopia would not be about battles between conflicting political or religious ideologies.
I don't think utopia is possible when power is centralized like our world and country is. Subjugating people and the earth for profit and bloody global power lust is the plan for each new century and each new hoard of killing, pillaging greedy bastards. Smaller units, bio-regions and democratic peace communities sounds good. Cascadia comes to mind in my dream form of utopia. A peaceable kingdom called Cascadia that is imaginary.
A little house near the ocean with a garden and enough money to live on and art supplies sounds like a utopian heaven to me.
Then there is Shangrila is that the same as utopia?
This post reminded me of Ry Cooder - one of my faves
"Well, there's a bright side somewhere,
There's a bright side somewhere
And I ain't gonna rest until I find it.
There's a bright side somewhere.
And there's more love somewhere
And there's more peace somewhere
I ain't gonna rest until I find it.
Threw's a bright side somewhere.
People got a good job, somewhere
Gotta a lot of good friends somewhere
Gotta little family, somewhere
Over on the bright side, somewhere."
Traditional e-written by Ry Cooder from the album "My Name is Buddy, 2007"
This could have been the anthem for my childhood. I always hoped my life would get better as the years went by. Finally at age 17, I was independent of a cruel mother who didn't even deserve the name "mother." I had a little job (thanks to my High School teacher), shared a nice apartment with 2 girl-friends from school, had my younger brother come over to visit with me.
"People got a good job, somewhere
Gotta a lot of good friends somewhere
Gotta little family, somewhere
Over on the bright side, somewhere."
To thine own self be true.
Ry Cooder is a genius
thanks for posting this. Let's not rest til we find it.
Hummm
Love the music here! Utopia is one thing. What I want is another. What I want is exactly what I have: lots of physically demanding work every day, outside in a beautiful place full of farms and lakes and Texas skies without being in Texas, surrounded by wonderful neighbors, living with the greatest dogs ever, family just down the road, fighting Mother Nature and trying to make a living by outmaneuvering Monsanto and climate change. Utopia? A place where there is no want, no anger, all people working together for the common good, with lots of laughs and lots of good music, and ok some great wine at the end of the day.