Today I came across the Polytopia project from the spacecollective and after a lot of reading I find there’s a lot I have to say on the so-called ideals of the perfect society that the Polytopia project is meant to nourish. Don’t get me wrong though, there’s a lot of good ideas proposed by spacecollective, especially those that recognize species (and AI) biodiversity as an additional and important form of diversity, as well as their leveraging of current and future technologies to more effectively foster and embolden intellectual collaboration.

For the sake of succinctness I’ll only quote and discuss the parts of the Polytopia manifesto that I have questions or problems with: (quotes in bold and critiques in normal weight text directly below)

The simplest parallel to me of this is whole stripping away society and history, is in the Modernist architectural movement of the 70s-90s. Modernism was about breaking away from the chains of the past and starting fresh with a utopian vision where high tech and design would alleviate social ills. Physically, it was about clean lines/minimalism, placeless repeatable structures and styles, and concrete and glass. Basically, much (not all of course) was drab, lifeless and depressing so people ended up rejecting it and trying to negotiate a new style where history, art, and individuality was important (Post-Modernism).

Right now, what we’re seeing is the individualist/arty/iconic values of PoMo combining with the sensibility/practicality/gravitas traits of Modernism and like all things inherently human culture and society form a fluid dynamic compromise that works with, rather than discounts the past.

The idea of a ‘combined interactive intelligence’ sounds good in theory, if not a little creepy, but people don’t always agree or think ‘mutually’, especially intelligent people. What happens when disagreements arise , especially ethically based ones with no clear solution or compromise? Combining intelligence interactively doesn’t seem to be the hard part, certainly this could be done today with current technology - the hard part is how to handle the conflicts and inconsistencies that will always arise when people collaborate.

I’m not sure if I’m interpreting this correctly but the Polytopian idea is that if people are more racially (and specially?) mixed and taught to be more empathic then we won’t have this problem of conflict. Despite best efforts and good intentions, I don’t think discord is something you can breed out. People will always try to get ahead or to advance their own agenda.

In any case, a parliamentary system of mixed race socially engineered people versus the status quo of predominantly old white men may be better in some ways (race relations, recognizing diversity), but worse in others (making unpopular choices that need to be made for long-term success, especially those which may run contrary to hedonistic Polytopian ideals).

(Van Gogh painting)

Reading through the long document, there was something very ‘Brave New World’ of it. A world where  a class of elite intellectuals live a life of pain-free hedonistic pleasure and never expend a thought about the rest of society, that part that still remembers history and grunt work, who make the sandwiches and prize those quaint old-world concepts of monogamy, and/or choosing who you mate with.

It just seems to me that such a system, predicated on perfection through breeding and social engineering is potentially very dangerous, and very fundamentally un-human. Humans are flawed beings, that’s just how we are. Trying to construct an absolutely perfect system with human building blocks is like constructing the eiffel tower with wet spaghetti . For all the plans in the world, it’ll end up a sloppy jiggly perilous mess, cascading down upon itself the moment you loosen the reigns and turn your back.

Suffering is part of being human, so is regret, sadness, selfishness, fear, violence, struggling, confines and gender - from these things many amazing things (art, music, moments to move people ) have been created and remembered. Even if you try, you cant throw that away or expect to foster creativity that is innovative and unpredicted.