tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8708273719674528189.post7160112740428363390..comments2024-03-22T00:20:38.510-07:00Comments on Adam Riggio writes: Pure Conceptual Imagination II: Can We Become Perfect? Composing, 13/08/2015Adam Riggiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14606510835439580828noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8708273719674528189.post-29757764407723839912015-08-15T07:57:53.542-07:002015-08-15T07:57:53.542-07:00You hit on an important point that I was planning ...You hit on an important point that I was planning on expanding in a post later this week, so thank you. It's that actually putting positive content in a utopian vision usually turns it into a dystopia. The example of Marinetti, who's a major historical figure in my in-progress book-length project Utopias, makes an important historical example. He's a real utopian thinker who planned to use the power of the state to institute his vision within a generation. Because of the feedback of statism (and its corollary colonialism) in his vision, the result was a more pure fascism than ever actually happened.<br /><br />Utopian thinking works best as an impulse at the individual level. You change your own personality to bring you farther in line with the virtues that you think are best, and then become an example in your community and the wider world of a better approach to life that inspires further individual changes. That's the only effective way cultural change works.<br /><br />My Alice character (in all the forms and stories that I want to use her over the rest of my writing career) represents a limit point. She's an inspiration for human behaviour, with a built-in idea that humanity can't actually achieve her level or kind of virtue.Adam Riggiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14606510835439580828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8708273719674528189.post-64944463053007076712015-08-14T17:35:32.131-07:002015-08-14T17:35:32.131-07:00Do you believe that all that is right can be deter...Do you believe that all that is right can be determined objectively by applying pure reason? A utopian future is indeed desirable, including restorative justice sans revenge, but what is the cost of us being properly functioning automata? Imagine if we were to apply this further. For example, let's say to the type of music one should listen to because a certain genre is associated with too much aggression, or maybe too little aggression. Extend this to other metrics of the human psyche. Imagine if we were told - in the name of a healthy society - what we should listen to, what we should watch on tv, how we should think, down to how we should love. <br /><br />It's always political, and these qualities or flaws, depending on how you look at them, make us human. Brave new world basically made this argument, to me it seemed (one of the most influential books for me). A perfect society where we were told exactly how to live our lives, being programmed at birth via hypnopaedia. I think Psychology can be a highly political subject, yet it is a science at the same time. I'm not going to say it's completely subjective and useless, I don't believe that at all, just that it can be tempting to see it as a holy grail. Psychotherapy is not the same as surgery. As an extreme example, let's not forget that once upon a time homosexuality was listed in the DSM....and that, to tie this convoluted post up, can breed resentment.<br /><br />...yeah, I'm all over the place. I hope some of this at least makes sense.. I'm just an average Joe here. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com