Gnosticism is the religion that believes Utopia, heaven on Earth, is attainable. And worth any cost.
The philosopher Voegelin asserted that political ideologies as Communism and National Socialism are modern instantiations of this religion.
Gnosticism opposes completely the god of the old testament in every way. In this light, the Old Testament can be seen as an admonishment against gnosticism.
The Tower of Babel is a story of a leader who wanted to build a technological utopia and ultimately, not even that was enough. Humans seem to require a meaning in life (see Viktor Frankl).
We'd have to start by changing the name- Sir Thomas' unpublished novel was satire named "no place." It boggles that even to this day, More's ridiculous fictional country is taken as a serious proposal.
I have a theory called Epistemic Responsibility, or Earned Knowledge. You don’t get to believe things without doing the epistemic work to justify those beliefs. That applies to experts too.
The real problem with “trust the social science” is not public deference. It is that too many so-called experts have not done the work themselves. Their research fails the most basic tests of scientific rigor, like repeatability, and collapses under replication. If they have not earned their own conclusions, they do not deserve to be treated as credible authorities in the field.
No we cannot because one person’s utopia is another’s hellscape, regardless of “faith” in social sciences. However, I’d like to think that if we could agree on 2 or 3 fundamentals such as the importance of eliminating corruption and promoting competence in our institutions, we could get to better conversations, “consensus”, and outcomes.
One desire of a utopian society is to eliminate chaos and conflict. The scope of human history has never been without these. That’s just how we are. A’s idea of utopia is different from B’s which is different from C’s. To think otherwise is naive, willfully ignorant and a little bit hubristic. Perfection is too subjective to paint a wide swath across a whole population.
The point of public civil discourse is to live respectfully with chaos and conflict which is part of human nature.
I don't want utopia I want post scarcity. Lets just aim for that. It will take a couple hundred years, possibly less with the aid of AGI when we let that genie out of its bottle, we should be able to get there using the old version of liberalism and Christian type values if we can avoid destroying everything in the next 30 years and entering a new darkage
Something I have found in Reading History (3 words) Something Always Happens.
A society/civilization gets close to what it wants, Something happens. The Rhine River freezes over, A volcano has a MASSIVE eruption, The Idiot Arch Duke gets killed, etc etc etc. Something Always Happens. So Listen Good Luck!
We cannot. The left must abandon this pipe dream in favor of good governance, classical liberal values, and sober analysis of reality.
Evidence-driven
Gnosticism is the religion that believes Utopia, heaven on Earth, is attainable. And worth any cost.
The philosopher Voegelin asserted that political ideologies as Communism and National Socialism are modern instantiations of this religion.
Gnosticism opposes completely the god of the old testament in every way. In this light, the Old Testament can be seen as an admonishment against gnosticism.
The Tower of Babel is a story of a leader who wanted to build a technological utopia and ultimately, not even that was enough. Humans seem to require a meaning in life (see Viktor Frankl).
"The philosopher Voegelin asserted that political ideologies as Communism and National Socialism are modern instantiations of this religion.
Gnosticism opposes completely the god of the old testament in every way."
Which goes A Long Way in explaining way they have been Soooo successful at producing anything like Heaven On Earth.
Utopia requires absolute compliance. Utopia is essentially totalitarian.
We'd have to start by changing the name- Sir Thomas' unpublished novel was satire named "no place." It boggles that even to this day, More's ridiculous fictional country is taken as a serious proposal.
I have a theory called Epistemic Responsibility, or Earned Knowledge. You don’t get to believe things without doing the epistemic work to justify those beliefs. That applies to experts too.
The real problem with “trust the social science” is not public deference. It is that too many so-called experts have not done the work themselves. Their research fails the most basic tests of scientific rigor, like repeatability, and collapses under replication. If they have not earned their own conclusions, they do not deserve to be treated as credible authorities in the field.
Our rulers are engineering a dystopia
No we cannot because one person’s utopia is another’s hellscape, regardless of “faith” in social sciences. However, I’d like to think that if we could agree on 2 or 3 fundamentals such as the importance of eliminating corruption and promoting competence in our institutions, we could get to better conversations, “consensus”, and outcomes.
One desire of a utopian society is to eliminate chaos and conflict. The scope of human history has never been without these. That’s just how we are. A’s idea of utopia is different from B’s which is different from C’s. To think otherwise is naive, willfully ignorant and a little bit hubristic. Perfection is too subjective to paint a wide swath across a whole population.
The point of public civil discourse is to live respectfully with chaos and conflict which is part of human nature.
I don't want utopia I want post scarcity. Lets just aim for that. It will take a couple hundred years, possibly less with the aid of AGI when we let that genie out of its bottle, we should be able to get there using the old version of liberalism and Christian type values if we can avoid destroying everything in the next 30 years and entering a new darkage
Something I have found in Reading History (3 words) Something Always Happens.
A society/civilization gets close to what it wants, Something happens. The Rhine River freezes over, A volcano has a MASSIVE eruption, The Idiot Arch Duke gets killed, etc etc etc. Something Always Happens. So Listen Good Luck!
Dont worry I have two years of propane and am getting back to my 5k pb. 😅
Burt Gummer Impersonation? :-)
"You know Grady, some people think I'm overprepared, paranoid, maybe even a little crazy. But they never met any Pre-Cambrian lifeforms did they?"
Tremors 2
Tremors 2: Aftershocks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOkuRlycQg
😁😁😁🤣