Why Not Everyone on the World Not Trying to Make a Sci-Fi Utopia
I have always been fascinated by sci-fi stories and movies that depict a future where Humanity has achieved amazing things like interstellar travel, advanced technology, and harmony with nature. I wonder why we are not striving for such a vision as a collective species. Why are we still stuck in wars, poverty, pollution, and ignorance? Why are we not investing more in science education, exploration, and innovation? Why are we not collaborating more with each other to solve our common problems and challenges?
Is it because of greed, fear, apathy, or something else? What can we do to change this situation and make our world more like a sci-fi utopia?
To explain it simply, imagine that some people in the world are nice and some people aren’t. Not everyone has the same or even compatible definitions of utopia. People won’t even return their shopping carts to the right place, and you want them to focus their efforts on a post-scarcity utopia? Because it takes money, and the people with money right now find it a much safer investment with higher returns to just squeeze everything they can from the way things are.
If you ask 100 different people their idea of utopia, you’ll get 100 different answers. Because the majority of humans are living paycheck to paycheck or meal to meal, if you want the masses to help you create a utopia, you have to change that situation first.
With what resources I have, we have startups now with exponential business models and distribution channels to reach billions. They’re a technology that we can use to change the world.
Some people’s idea of utopia would be my idea of dystopia. Perhaps because some believe the best is behind us and they’re striving to get back to that. I’m kind of doing this, but my own world-building has taught me that believing in an eventual utopia can be quite dangerous. It’s healthier to believe that a society will never be perfect and that improvements can always be made.
I read Berserk for the first time more than a decade ago, which is a dark fantasy manga that starts with low magic then progresses to high fantasy. I wanted to see what would happen if I did some world-building with all the sci-fi genres using the same idea, and I’m now writing a story that will bridge all the genres together, including utopian stories.
Having such ambitions as a luxury few can afford. Most people are too busy with basic survival to focus on improving the world. People in the world are trying to make a sci-fi utopia for themselves at the cost of everyone else. The people who are able to actually take steps to make this happen are the rich and the powerful, who are doing so very much at the cost of the rest of us. Of course, this really makes a sci-fi dystopia, but not for them.
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Our brains are pattern recognition devices. This means that even the slightest difference becomes exaggerated. From a medieval standard, we already live in a utopia. Our brains cannot accept good enough to be good enough unless it’s better than someone else’s good enough.
People are trying to make society better, and society is arguably getting better. However, different people have different values, and even if they agree on the values, they might disagree on the right way to accomplish them. And society is a complex system, so it is really hard to predict how some changes will eventually affect things.
What do you want to have for dinner? What do other people want for dinner? We can’t even agree on what to eat, and you want people to work towards some vague idea of what a utopia is?
One, we don’t agree about which sci-fi utopia is desirable or realistic to achieve. Two, there are short-term issues going on that are more directly relevant for us, including short-term life and death concerns on small scales.
I recently learned that discontentment is part of human nature. This is a trait we evolved with, and it helped us survive. Even if you were residing in an actual utopia, you will not really be happy. It will quickly become the new normal, and you will start to seek change.
For example, if your government ran everything smoothly and perfectly took care of all your needs, you will either claim that all of your freedom has been taken away or you will mourn the loss of meaningful work in your life.
Technology, economy, and culture move slower than the fantasies we showcase in movies and games. It takes about 300 years to get to that point you are probably thinking about. That would interfere with the sci-fi dystopia I am creating because our world doesn’t see itself as everyone, it sees itself as me versus everyone else. You can’t get the cooperation needed to build such a world.
You are asking for a sci-fi utopia, but remember, more than a third of the population thinks we should be returning to some kind of imagined utopia that happened in 1957, give or take. Because the people in the world keep fighting against the people on the world, and it’s a big mess, and stuff is just ruined, and nothing makes sense at all.
We do need to reach post-scarcity first. Until then, utopia is impossible. As long as resources are scarce, people will be fighting over them. Reality is often more complex than utopias. There are diseases, human flaws, hardships in life, greed, evil people, ignorance, manipulation. Sadly, societal values have decreased and are manipulated in order to increase corporate profits.
Simple people in power use their wealth and power to influence, lobby, or outright rig the system, e.g., elections, in their favor. And use said wealth and power to fuel culture wars so that the people fight each other instead of joining and fighting together. Also, there currently is no popular movement that has an alternative, better idea to replace capitalism. There are certainly good concepts, but no general movement came out of this.
And lastly, progressives spend way too much time arguing about who is morally right instead of organizing and getting together.
Some would say we already live in a scientific utopia, it’s just not very well spread around. A natural utopia would be nice too, imagine having the technology to turn sunlight into food. But does it make a few people crazy money? No, that’s your answer.
We’ve reached the point that only projects that make obscene wealth for already wealthy people ever get greenlit. Late stage, baby. Sci-fi utopias do not prioritize corporate profits. Unacceptable.
But people are trying to do just that. The modern world is a sci-fi utopia for anyone that lived 500 years ago. In another 500 years, it could also be much better or much worse, depending on who’s measuring.
Because greed, selfishness, and ignorance are the major forces in our cultures. Greed, there really isn’t much to parse. And there’s still good money to be made destroying the environment. Because it’s hard to have forward thinking when you barely have the basic necessities for living, which is the case for the majority of countries in the world.
On the other hand, in the first world, we have the opposite problem. We have so many resources at our disposal that we become lost in them. Plus, I think human nature is inherently flawed, and there are always going to be greedy people who would rather boost themselves immensely than boost everyone around them slightly, if that makes sense.
That’s the goal of most religions, and it doesn’t go well.
