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Utopians are misunderstood.
I mean, the word “utopian” is generally not understood to mean the same thing as the word Utopian when I use it. I use a specialized definition from a sci-fi novel. But also, the Utopians in that novel are misunderstood by the societies around them, and they always have been.
In the Terra Ignota series, Utopians are the smallest of seven voluntary societies, or Hives. In this post-scarcity society, most people work twenty hours a week max. Yet Utopians commit to working as much as possible nonetheless, for their great goal: Mars.
And the stars, of course. The long-term project to terraform and habitate Mars is the first step in an even longer-term plan to spread throughout the galaxy. Four hundred years in the future, normal people still see this as an insane goal. This is OK. Utopians are misunderstood.
When you see the 0.01% chance of a billion year future, and you coordinate with other Utopians throughout time and space to accomplish that, yeah. You look weird. We feel this way about niche religions and their crusades. Other people will feel this way about Utopia. No matter.
Science fiction keeps breaking into reality. If we can harness that, become an active sci-fi culture, we can manifest our own fictions into the world. We can invent U-beasts, we can travel to space, and we can defeat death in every guise.
But normies will not all sign up for this. Most people want to party, get laid, raise children, make art. Or they want status or comfort or understanding. And that’s okay. They don’t have to convert. This is the genius of Utopia: we find each other and combine our power.
In the books, Utopians are small in number but control a good fraction of humanity’s total wealth. They do this by owning and licensing IP: stories, inventions, programs. Utopians create wealth. And then they point that wealth toward other Utopians, in the present or the future.
I’m okay with some weird nerds with grand visions having a lot of wealth to accomplish their visions. Are you? People have abandoned me for this opinion, shunned me. From all political sides. It’s bizarre, except that it’s not. Utopians are misunderstood.
Who will stand for this opinion? It’s not going to be any more popular in this era of reactionary humanism than in a post-scarcity future. Where are the Utopians? There are a couple of billionaires who might count, but I’d rather not say their names. Who is the Rasputin to them?
We’re in early days. But people get rich from ideas now, and we are the ones with the ideas. We have to get wealth and influence, so that the Utopians of the future can speak through us. Normie brain status games will kill this planet. And future Utopians are really not into that.
We need to be able to coordinate in a tight-knit fashion. Money swarms are starting to be an option — where is UtopiaDAO?
But we can also create information swarms. In the books, Utopians wear AR visors and they share an overlay called the Infinite To Do List. This is just a way of collectively tracking the ways the world could be better, and accomplishing them when you can. Would you view it?
Basically, the Utopia posited is: what if science fiction nerds were a nation? If you move there, you might never be trusted in your homeland again. Would you go?
