{"id":4023,"date":"2018-01-30T02:02:11","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T09:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/?p=4023"},"modified":"2020-08-12T19:02:13","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T02:02:13","slug":"utopia-for-realists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/utopia-for-realists\/","title":{"rendered":"Utopia for Realists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rutger Bregman (2017)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Bregman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thesis in \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcUtopia for Realists\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is one that I place squarely alongside the likes of Raymond Kurzweil<\/a>, Yuval Harari<\/a>, Steven Pinker and Matt Ridley as relying on essentially the same drastic normative fundament.\u00c2\u00a0 In consequence, these thinkers, though steeped in the trade of widely different disciplines, all essentially conclude that things are basically going pretty great on planet Earth.\u00c2\u00a0 Reams and reams of statistics fill chapter after chapter to belabor the apparently indomitable point: average income is up, many women are now voting, infant mortality is down, smallpox is gone, everyone has cellphones, \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 testimony to progress goes on and on.<\/p>\n

The reign of humanism<\/em><\/p>\n

These thinkers are so fundamentally humanist in outlook that they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even acknowledge their anthropocentrism.\u00c2\u00a0 Harari expends a chapter in \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHomo Deus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 on the plight of domesticated animals.\u00c2\u00a0 But nowhere is appreciation shown for the fact that such creatures \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which exist in concentration-camp conditions with the sole purpose of sustaining humans, the elites atop the planetary food chain \u00e2\u20ac\u201c now make up 97 odd per cent of living animal biomass.\u00c2\u00a0 Not so long ago, our biosphere was dominated by wild creatures whose raison d\u00e2\u20ac\u2122etre<\/em> wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just nourishment for sapiens sapiens.\u00c2\u00a0 Am I the only one who feels that is highly highly relevant here?\u00c2\u00a0 And the shrivelled remainder are suffering, suffering terribly, under the relentless human march that the past few centuries have wrought in ever greater volume and diversity.\u00c2\u00a0 That these considerations hardly ever feature in the calculus of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcprogress\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is more than just unfortunate \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it is symptomatic of the reigning humanist doctrine.<\/p>\n

Short-term gain for long-term pain<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also worth considering that the Industrial Revolution ushered in a window of opportunity to live on borrowed time, that is, the future. \u00c2\u00a0These writers make scant reference to climate change, and the epidemic of plasticization is, as far as I recall, not treated by any of them.\u00c2\u00a0 What if all these gains, if we accede that that is what they are, come at a great cost not just on the non-human world, but also on future humans?<\/p>\n

The Age of Estrangement<\/em><\/p>\n

Could it be that estrangement from Nature is the fuel at the heart of ressentiment<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rutger Bregman (2017) Bregman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thesis in \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcUtopia for Realists\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is one that I place squarely alongside the likes of Raymond Kurzweil, Yuval Harari, Steven Pinker and Matt Ridley as relying on essentially the same drastic normative fundament.\u00c2\u00a0 In consequence, these thinkers, though steeped in the trade of widely different disciplines, all essentially conclude that things … Continue reading Utopia for Realists<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society","category-civilization"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4023"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4132,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4023\/revisions\/4132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}