
On the Rise and Fall of an American Utopia - samclemens
http://blog.longreads.com/2016/02/25/when-the-messiah-came-to-america-she-was-a-woman/
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Animats
From the article: _" Today, thinking grandly about the future is regarded as a
sin in and of itself. Calling a proposal “utopian” is among the more routine
slurs on Capitol Hill."_

Yes. There's a political mindset that the "free market" determines the future.
This is a relatively new concept. From 1851 to 1970, there were frequent World
Fairs, heavily supported by industry, showing utopian visions of the future.
Expo '70 in Osaka was the last of the great fairs. World fairs continue; Expo
2015 in Milan, with a food theme, closed last October, if anybody cares. But
they do not reflect national or corporate plans for a better future.

We have more productive resources than ever in the developed world, but no
collective vision of what to do with them.

~~~
gozur88
It has nothing to do with the free market. The reason people don't trust
utopians is they tend to leave big piles of bodies in their wake.

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RobertoG
That's a little unfair to utopians.

I think that what happens is that people only listen to calls for utopia when
they are discontent. This discontent is used by ambitious characters to take
power, frequently in the name of utopia.

Free market proponents are frequently utopians themselves.

~~~
jwhitlark
While you make a valid point, one of the major problems with utopian visions
is they offer an infinite good, so they give cover to commit anything up to
infinite evil. I think offering paradise throws our moral calculations out of
whack, which is one reason they do seem to lead to large numbers of
casualties.

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javajosh
Good read. It certainly resonated with some of my own existential angst about
modern society, and I was vaguely aware of this period in history, but I
really like Jenning's take that there's so much to learn from these, like
social experiments done in miniature. Another part of me believes that these
experiments are probably worth doing again, this time using technology
(particularly computers) to help organize things. Indeed, my own naive
personal utopia would involve living in a nice place with individual
apartments and a communal kitchen, day-care, and daily meditation/yoga. It
would be cool if we all worked together too, perhaps as a software company.

Note that this is an excerpt from a recently published book, "Paradise Now:
The store of American Utopianism!
[http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?keyword=Paradise+Now%3A+Th...](http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?keyword=Paradise+Now%3A+The+Story+of+American+Utopianism+&mtype=B&hs.x=0&hs.y=0&hs=Submit)

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loginwashere
Why would you need communal kitchen?

~~~
RobertoG
I suppose he miss explaining histories around a fire after a day of hunting in
the wildness.

There are something alienating in the way we live in big cities. We miss the
palaeolithic.

~~~
mhurron
> We miss the palaeolithic.

Speak for yourself. All I see is forced interaction with people that are
around you for reasons that have nothing to do with your choice to spend time
with them.

~~~
adrusi
Except in the paleolithic these people would be your extended family, the
friends you grew up with, etc. And because of the cultural homogeneity of such
societies, you would get along better with them than people get along with
their families today.

In the modern context, these would be people you selected.

