Quote:
Originally Posted by maximara
At a very practical level Utopias cannot exist for the very simple reason one person's Utopia is another's Dystopia.
Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs
I grant that as an argument for disbelieving in utopias in the real world. But I don't see that it invalidates utopia as a fictional premise. There are very practical reasons that FTL, or immortal beings, or postscarcity societies can't exist in the real world, but people still write fiction about them, and play games set in worlds that have them.
The point of my comments wasn't at all about the unworkability of fictional utopias, but about the literary difficulties in running a campaign set in a utopia, which is quite a different issue and one that even an outright fantasist must face.
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You missed the point I was making and explained in the rest of my post.
Here is another example -
Night Gallery's "Hell's Bells" a hippie goes to Hell and after spending time in a waiting room is let into a room with records as far as the eye can see but they are all of music he finds "square". He then find a farmer who quickly bores him, then a couple appears with their 8,500-strong collection of their Tijuana vacation slides. Exasperated, the hippy demands that the Devil show up and explain this. The Devil appears and explains
the exact same experience can be found in Heaven but for the hippy this is Hell and then leaves the hippy to his very personal Hell.
Heck, to someone of the 20th century United States Plato's Republic has some definite dystopic elements to it:
*Free speech/press? That's dead.
*All education is by the State who decides what is taught.
*Want to move up in the world? Well that DOA as you are locked into the Class assigned to you by the State.
*The State lies to its citizens to "protect" them.
*You have one job for your entire life and cannot change no matter how much you may hate that job.
*private property? That's gone.
*The State determines who your spouse will be and how many kids you are to have.
Wellcome to the "Utopia" of Plato's Republic.
In fact, Huxley's
Brave New World pulls a lot of its elements from
The Republic. On the surface it seems very Utopian but once you go below that surface the dystopic nature of the world becomes clearer and clearer.