Well, in the real world, there are many things about American society I disapprove of, but I don’t cut myself off from it and create my own society. Instead, I compromise. Which means my children are raised in a society I don’t fully approve of.
I think something similar is true of most people.
It strikes me as a reasonable thing. Very few people, if any, are likely to do better creating their own society than operating within their existing one. I may disapprove of some X being endorsed by my society, but that doesn’t mean I think (my new society) is better than (existing society + X).
It strikes me as a reasonable thing. Very few people, if any, are likely to do better creating their own society than operating within their existing one.
What it strikes me as is sour grapes. Yeah, sure, like e.g. that libertarian paper says, there’s a nearly insurmountable barrier in creating a new society, but if it was made lower—like with Earth and Space open to colonization under a libertarian system, wouldn’t sufficiently motivated conservatives at least make a good effort?
Also, said society only needs to be “new” at all in the regards that the people founding it care about. All the other things and institutions and stuff they’d just re-appropriate from the parent one, given enough support.
It’s the SAME daily work as ever, except that it’d be moving in a slightly different direction now, with a few both written and unwritten changes to the familiar ruleset.
A pretty wild example, yet not unusual by the standards of such speculative SF.
1) A weird memetic mutation makes softcore erotic images of children into a romantic ideal of sexuality, which becomes vastly popular, say, in “high” art and among the higher classes. All kinds of actual intercourse with children is still forbidden, and that’s exactly the idea; depict something unattainable.
2) About 4% of the population both hate this and are motivated enough to take large-scale, organized action.
3) They move to an existing community in a federated country and make what laws they can there, as a halfway measure. At which point the outnumbered locals are free to either go along or pack up.
4) They practice building their own society, which could perhaps be classified as conservative-libertarian, upon a safe foundation, slowly replacing and optimizing whatever ‘mainstream’ institutions they can.
If they could get their sh*t together long enough and well enough to succeed up to this stage:
5) They build a sea/moon/extraterrestrial colony with both laws controlling the original ethics issue and whatever else a consensus is found upon. Everything that they don’t view as broke, they don’t fix.
Would we believe in a radically altered, broadly libertarian eutopia in, say, the 23th century NOT featuring at least one subculture like this prominently?
Yes, agreed… if they get their shit together long enough and well enough to support actually creating a separate colony with a different social standard, then they can create a different society in a different place. The work involved in getting one’s shit together that well for that long is precisely the work I think you’re underestimating, which is why it doesn’t strike me as implausible that no such society actually gets created.
But what if you’re far-sighted enough to see a real slippery slope in X and care about the disturbingly probable X^3 affecting your grandchildren, yet unwilling to compromise?
1) Act on my society so as to reduce the chances of X^3 happening. 2) Leave my society and go to another one I think is better. 3) Leave my society and create a new one I think is better from scratch. 4) Take action to protect my grandchildren from the ill effects of X^3 when it happens. 5) Not have grandchildren. 6) Decide that my grandchildren are still better off in my current society, even factoring in the costs of X^3, than they would be in any of my available alternatives (including nonexistence), and do nothing.
If I understood your original comment, you were saying that the lack of evidence in this particular fictional world of significant numbers of people having chosen #2 or #3 was interfering with your suspension of disbelief. My experience of people is that #3 is vanishingly unlikely and #2 is exceedingly rare, even for extremely shocking X^3s. So, I don’t have that difficulty.
Well, in the real world, there are many things about American society I disapprove of, but I don’t cut myself off from it and create my own society. Instead, I compromise. Which means my children are raised in a society I don’t fully approve of.
I think something similar is true of most people.
It strikes me as a reasonable thing. Very few people, if any, are likely to do better creating their own society than operating within their existing one. I may disapprove of some X being endorsed by my society, but that doesn’t mean I think (my new society) is better than (existing society + X).
What it strikes me as is sour grapes. Yeah, sure, like e.g. that libertarian paper says, there’s a nearly insurmountable barrier in creating a new society, but if it was made lower—like with Earth and Space open to colonization under a libertarian system, wouldn’t sufficiently motivated conservatives at least make a good effort?
Also, said society only needs to be “new” at all in the regards that the people founding it care about. All the other things and institutions and stuff they’d just re-appropriate from the parent one, given enough support.
I think you underestimate what is involved in preserving “all the other things and institutions and stuff” in a society.
It’s the SAME daily work as ever, except that it’d be moving in a slightly different direction now, with a few both written and unwritten changes to the familiar ruleset.
A pretty wild example, yet not unusual by the standards of such speculative SF. 1) A weird memetic mutation makes softcore erotic images of children into a romantic ideal of sexuality, which becomes vastly popular, say, in “high” art and among the higher classes. All kinds of actual intercourse with children is still forbidden, and that’s exactly the idea; depict something unattainable. 2) About 4% of the population both hate this and are motivated enough to take large-scale, organized action. 3) They move to an existing community in a federated country and make what laws they can there, as a halfway measure. At which point the outnumbered locals are free to either go along or pack up. 4) They practice building their own society, which could perhaps be classified as conservative-libertarian, upon a safe foundation, slowly replacing and optimizing whatever ‘mainstream’ institutions they can.
If they could get their sh*t together long enough and well enough to succeed up to this stage: 5) They build a sea/moon/extraterrestrial colony with both laws controlling the original ethics issue and whatever else a consensus is found upon. Everything that they don’t view as broke, they don’t fix.
Would we believe in a radically altered, broadly libertarian eutopia in, say, the 23th century NOT featuring at least one subculture like this prominently?
Yes, agreed… if they get their shit together long enough and well enough to support actually creating a separate colony with a different social standard, then they can create a different society in a different place. The work involved in getting one’s shit together that well for that long is precisely the work I think you’re underestimating, which is why it doesn’t strike me as implausible that no such society actually gets created.
But what if you’re far-sighted enough to see a real slippery slope in X and care about the disturbingly probable X^3 affecting your grandchildren, yet unwilling to compromise?
I have a few options in that case.
1) Act on my society so as to reduce the chances of X^3 happening.
2) Leave my society and go to another one I think is better.
3) Leave my society and create a new one I think is better from scratch.
4) Take action to protect my grandchildren from the ill effects of X^3 when it happens.
5) Not have grandchildren.
6) Decide that my grandchildren are still better off in my current society, even factoring in the costs of X^3, than they would be in any of my available alternatives (including nonexistence), and do nothing.
If I understood your original comment, you were saying that the lack of evidence in this particular fictional world of significant numbers of people having chosen #2 or #3 was interfering with your suspension of disbelief. My experience of people is that #3 is vanishingly unlikely and #2 is exceedingly rare, even for extremely shocking X^3s. So, I don’t have that difficulty.
There’s also a significant difference in being raised IN a society and being raised BY it.
I suppose that’s true. If that difference is relevant to the current context in some way, I’ve failed to understand the relevance.