Category Archives: New Utopia

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If ever there was a city regarded as a culinary epicenter, it's New York City, a metropolis known worldwide for its steakhouses, its pizza, its celebrity chefs, and its award-winning restaurants. But topping that list of famous foods is the humble bagel, a breakfast tradition that's spawned hordes of bakeries and cafes across the city, and insights impassioned debates about which bagel shop makes the best.

Sure, bagels are not exactly a rarity. They can be found in chain restaurants, with fast-food breakfast sandwiches, and even iat your local Walmart. But real-deal, New York-style bagels? You gotta visit a real-deal bagel shop in NYC to scratch that itch.

Considering the surplus of bagel places throughout the sprawling city, though, it can be hard to narrow down the bagel bucket list. That's why we asked chefs who know the city well to recommend the best bagels in town.

One of the bagel shops that gets widespread praise is Absolute Bagels, a frills-free joint that ranks as the favorite for James Tracey, chef of Monterey Brasserie in New York City, as well as a go-to for Mark Welker. The latter is currently the executive chef and culinary director of Paradisaea in San Diego, but previously spent years in New York, working as the pastry chef at Eleven Madison Park and The NoMad.

For him, Absolute Bagels is nostalgia done right. "One of my first apartments was in Morningside Heights on 113th and Amsterdam. This was my go-to spot, and the bagels just happened to be amazing." He raves about the shop's "more traditional NYC sandwich offerings" and the everything bagels in particular, and since the owners are Thai, he loves that you can also get a Thai iced tea.

RELATED: 8 Best Slices of Pizza in NYC, According to Chefs

Another bagel brand that doubles up on praise is Black Seed Bagels, a local burgeoning mini chain that skews contemporary with its craft and its flavors. For Chris Arellanes, corporate executive chef of KYU NYC, it's Black Seed all the way. "My go-to is a toasted everything bagel with lox spread," he says. "The best part about this place is you can never tell which side is the top of the bagel because both sides are evenly doused in whatever seasoning you choose. The lox adds a salty, smokey flavor to the cream cheese, and when generously spread on that toasted, crusty everything bagel, it's truly a religious experience."

Michael Gallina agrees. The current co-owner and chef of Take Root Hospitality in St. Louis, he honed his love for Black Seed Bagels while working in New York as the chef de cuisine of Blue Hill at Stone Barns. "There's nothing better than going to Black Seed Bagels in Soho when I'm in town in the spring time for their ramp cream cheese on an everything bagel," he says. "I love the chewiness and flavor of their wood-fired technique." 6254a4d1642c605c54bf1cab17d50f1e

Open since 1976, Ess-a-Bagel has long been a pioneer on that bagel front, and it remains one of the foremost destinations in the city for a good ol' fashioned bagel done right. Chefs like Freddy Vargas, from the new Virgin Hotels NYC and its restaurant Everdene, is a big fan. "If you're in NYC, you have to start your morning with Ess-a-Bagel," explains the chef. "My go-to is an everything bagel with cream cheese and bacon. This one is the perfect combination of crunchy and softa true New York bagel."

Another advocate of the everything bagel at Ess-a-Bagel is Jack Logue, chef atThe Lambs Club in NYC, which he customizes with lox, cream cheese, and avocado.

RELATED: 10 Best Steakhouses in New York City

With a handful of locations scattered around town, and a strong reputation for smoked fish, hand-rolled bagels, and perfectly stacked sandwiches, Zucker's Bagels commands quite the following. Just ask Jason Krantz, chef of Smyth Tavern, located right next door to their TriBeca location. "Our neighbor,Zuckers Bagels, is serving some of the best hand-rolled bagels in New York City," he proclaims. In fact, he loves the Zucker's bacon, egg, and cheese bagel so much that he started a collaboration: "We combined their bacon, egg, and cheese bagel with our Smyth Tavern signature sauce to make the ultimatebreakfast treat."

In Queens, Utopia Bagels is the type of business that lives up to its heavenly name. The shop is the number one favorite for Welker, who applauds the company for baking bagels continuously all day and ensuring each and every order is hot and fresh. "They have a nice hard crunch on the outside and are super soft andchewy on the inside," Welker says. "Their sandwiches are also stellar and non-traditional as well." His recommendation: the chicken cordon bleu sandwich.

RELATED: 7 Best Cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, According to Chefs

One of the most famed delis and bagel destinations in New York City is one that exceeds the hype. Another favorite for Welker, Russ & Daughters Cafe is an institution with a well-earned reputation for bagel supremacy. Even though he may prefer bagels at Utopia, he notes that Russ & Daughters serves his favorite bagel sandwich: the Super Heebster with whitefish and salmon salad, wasabi flying fish roe, and horseradishdill cream cheese.

You know a bagel is good when you serve them at your sons' bris. That's exactly what Leah Cohen, head chef of Pig & Khao and Piggyback NYC, did for her sons' bris ceremonies, serving bagels from her favorite place in town, Tompkins Square Bagels. "My go-to order is an everything bagel with scallion cream cheese," she says. "If I'm feeling extra hungry, I'll get the everything bagel with smoked salmon, tomato, onion, capers, and scallion cream cheese. They are truly my favorite bagels."

RELATED: The #1 Sandwich to Order at Every Major Fast-Food Chain, According to Chefs

For some of the best bagels in New York City, you may need to cross the river to Jersey City. That's according to Ari Bokovza, chef of New York's Dagon, who prefers Wonder Bagels for its "classic, doughy, gut bomb" bagels. But if he's looking for more inventive taste, he's another fan of Black Seed Bagels, too.

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National leader Christoper Luxon confirmed today his party would not introduce a bed tax to fund infrastructure in Queenstown Lakes, despite the mayor and local councillors questioning his reasoning.

In a statement to Crux today, Mr Luxon says National does not support a regionally-targeted tourist tax whilst New Zealand is in a cost-of-living crisis and attracting fewer visitors.

Tourist numbers are still not where they were pre-Covid so lumping an extra tax on international and domestic visitors, when travelling is already expensive, does not make sense, Mr Luxon says.

Instead of asking holidayers to help fund tourism infrastructure, Mr Luxon says his party will establish a National Infrastructure Agency.

It will deliver the infrastructure New Zealand and sectors like tourism need to grow, he says.

Mr Luxon first declared his lack of support for a bed tax while in Queenstown last Thursday, announcing new tourism-growth plans for New Zealand.

Mayor Glyn Lewers says he would very much push back on the cost-of-living argument, as the alternative to funding tourism-related infrastructure in the district is to target ratepayers.

He says increasing rates would have more impact during a cost-of-living crisis, calling Mr Luxons stance a pretty shallow argument.

This year, Mr Lewers and council chief executive Mike Theelen have been attempting to reignite tourism levy conversations that started in 2019 and were shelved during the pandemic. An initial proposal pitched in 2019 had support from 81 percent of ratepayers.

Suggested was a five percent charge added to the cost of accommodation in the district, and Mr Lewers says a targeted rate like that would be around the same price for visitors as getting a cup of coffee in Queenstown.

Mayor Glyn Lewers pushed back on the cost of living argument as the alternative was to ask the district's ratepayers to foot the bill for tourism infrastructure.

He says no matter who gets into government next month, there will be hard choices as to how to fund infrastructure in Queenstown Lakes.

Cruxs previous coverage of Nationals new tourism-growth package and local responses to it have generated a local and central government stoush on social media.

Local National MP Joseph Mooney is advocating for his party and its fresh plans for tourism, which include a new Great Walk in Canterbury, e-bike chargers on the NZ Cycle Trail, longer-term Department of Conservation concessions, and "eliminating" consents for existing infrastructure upgrades and new infrastructure, and streamlining building consents to cut compliance costs.

He also vouched for the idea of the National Infrastructure Agency, saying it would work with local councils such as that of the Queenstown Lakes that have low ratepayer bases and high visitor numbers to ensure they can access the finance they need for local projects.

But Queenstown Lakes councillor Niki Gladding says the infrastructure agency and its funding mechanisms sound vague, while deputy mayor Quentin Smith likens the infrastructure plans to an episode of Utopia.

While your statement might sound good there is no detail and zero understanding of the financial and carbon costs of your policiesjust a comforting-sounding statement that basically says youll work it out later, was how Ms Gladding put her counter-argument.

Ms Gladding says plans to grow tourism in the district in spite of the sentiment expressed by local players in the destination management plan, in addition to National's policy of letting foreign buyers back into the residential housing market at the $2-million level are tone deaf proposals and exacerbate Queenstown Lakes' key issues.

Labour took a we know best, one size fits all approach and, at this point, National is doing the same.

Mr Smith says while some of the new proposals are nice, on a whole they don't "really deal with the core of our problems.

The online comments follow an interview with Crux, where the deputy mayor responded to Mr Luxon's tourism announcement saying the opposition to a bed tax did not make sense in relation to a cost-of-living argument.

Main image: National leader Christopher Luxon and party tourism spokesperson and Southland MP Joseph Mooney last week revealed their plans to build back tourism if elected to government next month.

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44 North, 70 West becomes the center of the documentary community for the next few days. Ben Fowlie, executive and creative director, Points North Institute.

In case youre not up on your longitude and latitude, that makes Maines Midcoast towns of Camden and Rockland the most important locations in the movie world this week. The annual return of the Camden International Film Festival, taking place Thursday through Sunday, has always been a major stop on the nonfiction film festival circuit. But now, as Fowlie makes the airtight case, in its 19th season, its ready to take on the world. Or at least bring the entire movie world here to Maine.

Our festival reputation has grown, Fowlie said. Industry people are calling us a key stop on the fall festival tour, and were using that as leverage to place a spotlight on the incredible talent throughout the nonfiction filmmaking community, outside the United States and in. At the same time, we want to ensure that filmmakers and audiences have a place to ask, What is nonfiction film, and where is it going?

Camden International Film Festival is truly one of a kind when it comes to celebrating the limitless possibilities of a genre too often thought of as simple documentation. Said Fowlie, We at Points North are focused on advancing the artistry of nonfiction film. Pointing to one of CIFFs two opening-night films, director Martn Benchimols Argentinian film, El Castillo, Fowlie extols the way the documentary melds form and content into a whole new cinematic shape.

Its about a woman whod been the housekeeper for a wealthy family who inherits their mansion in Argentina, with the stipulation that she can never part with it. And how, as the giant house deteriorates, it becomes like an anchor. But its really about the beautiful relationship between a mother and daughter, and about how Argentinas history and modernization exist side by side. Youll go see it and scratch your head, thinking how much of this really happened and didnt. But that will be secondary to how much you love these women and how you cant believe you got to spend 80 minutes with them. Its gorgeously shot and truly cinema at its best.

Camden International Film Festival is like that. Audiences walk into one of the festivals three exceptional venues (the Camden Opera House, the Strand Theatre, and Points Norths pop-up waterfront theater, Journeys End) and come out seeing the world and the art of documentary in a completely different way. Excited to share this years impressive and dizzyingly eclectic slate of nearly 70 features and shorts with CIFFs always receptive crowds, Fowlie promises, Fundamentally, we present documentaries. But were always trying to be one step ahead in order to bring audiences and the industry along. In presenting this work, we want to engage, but its also about moving the thought process forward and broadening the understanding of the form together.

Looking over CIFFs ever-impressive 2023 lineup is all about getting pulled into one singularly fascinating world after another. Madeleine Gavins Beyond Utopia, another opening-night feature, follows the harrowing journey of one extended family who makes the perilous decision to escape from infamously authoritarian North Korea, a more straightforward nonfiction tale that Fowlie promises is as gripping and moving as any fictional Hollywood thriller. The winner of Sundance Film Festivals Audience Award, the film will be marking only its third U.S. screening at CIFF, with Fowlie noting that, among the festivals many visiting filmmakers and subjects this year, the post-show guests here will make for a once-in-a-lifetime audience experience. Not to give anything away, but this will be one of the most emotional experiences people will ever have had at the cinema.

As always, I set Fowlie the task of plucking out a few personal favorites from CIFFs carefully curated roster of films. Its a tough job, especially since, as Fowlie explained, The number and quality of submissions just gets larger and better every year. It really makes our job harder. Still, Fowlie is game, first pointing to the sure crowd-pleaser In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon, from Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney. At a mighty three-and-a-half hours, the film chronicles the now 81-year-old music legends life and career as he works to complete his latest studio album, Seven Psalms. Said Fowlie of this U.S premiere, Its just super-special, and were thrilled that our audiences will be some of the first in the country to see it.

Delving deeper into the stylistic adventurousness CIFF seeks to foster is Vlad Petries Between Revolutions, a cross-cultural conversation between two women who may, or may not, have ever existed. Said Fowlie, Its really about the power of the archive. Two fictional characters, one in Tehran and one in Bucharest, both in periods of national turmoil, begin a letter-writing relationship. The filmmaker is scripting a narrative from archives that exist in a certain place and time. What emerges is a poetic desire for hope, fear and joy while being in the midst of a struggle, and this is just one film this year that shows how archives can become time capsules for forgotten, erased, or stolen histories.

Iconic nonfiction filmmaker Errol Morris new film, The Pigeon Tunnel, sees the director matching wits with legendary spy novelist (and former spy) John le Carr. As Fowlie notes, Its Errol at his finest. At times, you dont know who is interviewing who, what is real and what is not. Its just a beautiful dance between these two deeply intellectually curious people.

The ongoing war in Ukraine perhaps inevitably forms a running theme in this years festival, with Karim Amers Defiant and Vitaly Manskiys Eastern Front (both in U.S. premieres) providing two very different but equally intense depictions of a country under siege. Defiant is about the politics behind building support for Ukraines fight against the Russian invasion and Russias disinformation campaign. Eastern Front is on the ground and in the trenches, jumping between the helmet cam of co-director Yevhen Titarenko, a civilian volunteer medic and long, beautiful shots of the volunteers and their families swimming, eating and talking about what they imagine for Ukraine after the war.

And these are just a taste of what promises to be another stunner of a Camden International Film Festival. (Ill throw in a plug for Mainer Ian Cheneys ruminative and delightfully eccentric The Arc of Oblivion, which I wrote about in July.) As Fowlie puts it of Points Norths ongoing mission (which has seen the organization hand out over $400,000 in funding to filmmakers this year alone), We give unrestricted grants to filmmakers at various stages in their careers so they can continue to take those creative risks that are a priority of ours going forward. And now weve got over 50 filmmakers coming to Maine for the biggest documentary gathering in the United States this year. Having so much talent concentrated in a small community like ours that just doesnt happen anywhere else.

The Camden International Film Festival takes place from Thursday to Sunday. In addition, the online virtual CIFF will be available from Sept. 18-25, if youre not up for a lovely trip up the coast to see some amazing movies, for some reason. For tickets, directions and information on this years stellar crop of nonfiction films, check out pointsnorthinstitute.org/ciff.

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Visions of utopia are ubiquitous throughout Western history. They've inspired great works of art and literature, motivated countless believers to obey God's commandments and driven some of the bloodiest conflicts in the collective biography of our species.

Utopian visions are also a central feature of the hype around artificial general intelligence, or AGI. In an article titled "Why AI Will Save the World," the tech billionaire Marc Andreessen writes that advanced AI systems will enable us to "take on new challenges that have been impossible to tackle without AI, from curing all diseases to achieving interstellar travel." The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, similarly declares that with AGI "we can colonize space. We can get fusion to work and solar [energy] to mass scale. We can cure all diseases." Utopianism is everywhere in Silicon Valley.

The problem is that utopia has a menacing underbelly. First, its pursuit can cause profound harms to those who happen to be standing in the way. This is why utopian fantasies have fueled some of the worst atrocities in history: If the means are justified by the ends, and the ends are quite literally a utopian world of infinite or astronomical amounts of value, then what exactly is off the table when it comes to realizing those ends?

We can already see this sort of thinking in the race to AGI: Companies like OpenAI have engaged in massive intellectual property theft, resulting in a slew of lawsuits, and systems like ChatGPT are built on the brutal exploitation of people in the Global South, some of whom were paid $1.32 per hour to sift through some of the most horrendous material on the web. These harms are surely worth the benefits, given that, in Altman's words, "we are only a few breakthroughs away from abundance at a scale that is difficult to imagine."

Second, the realization of utopia could also have catastrophic consequences, as most utopian visions are inherently exclusionary. There is always someone who is purposely left out in any imagined utopia some undesirable group whose presence in paradise would disqualify it from counting as such. If the Christian heaven were to include atheists, for instance, it wouldn't be heaven. Hence, one should always ask who a particular utopian vision is for. Everyone, or just a select few? If so, which people are allowed in and which are banished to perdition, if not sentenced to be annihilated?

One should always ask who a particular utopian vision is for. Everyone, or just a select few? If so, which people are allowed in and which are banished to perdition?

Although religious belief is rapidly waning in the West, utopianism is not. That makes it important to understand the nature and potential dangers of utopian thinking. To get a better handle on these issues, I contacted my colleague Monika Bielskyte, a brilliant futures consultant who counts Universal Studios, DreamWorks and Nike among her past clients. She also consulted on the blockbuster movie "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," and over the past decade has given talks about the future at major media and tech conferences around the world. Subverting a term from the tech guru Kevin Kelly, she developed the "protopia futures" framework, which proposes a regenerative and inclusive vision for the future as an alternative to the utopia-dystopia binary.

In our phone conversation, we discussed a range of topics, including the origins of utopian thinking and whether the tech elite are "true believers" or are merely using utopianism as a "smokescreen" to distract from their destruction of the planet. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I've become very interested in this claim that utopia is inherently exclusionary. I heard you say on a podcast that marginalized peoples are often better off in imagined dystopias than utopias. Could you elaborate?

It's not even that they're better off in dystopias than utopias they literally don't exist in utopias! Almost without exception, marginalized people are outright erased from all but the most recent utopian visions. Pretty much the only place where marginalized peoples exist in sci-fi and futurist visions have been in dystopias (and their presence is often perceived as a signifier of dystopia), because there's literally no place made for them in utopia, given the eugenic and exclusionary nature of utopianism. For example, the presence of queer people, disabled people and neurodivergent people in some way denies the very nature of utopianism because if disability still exists (let alone is celebrated), is it even utopia? There's a whole set of superficially inspiring futurological visions that outwardly celebrate this erasure.

"The presence of queer people, disabled people and neurodivergent people in some way denies the very nature of utopianism if disability still exists (let alone is celebrated), is it even utopia?"

Then you inevitably have to ask the question: how did we arrive at the point where all of these people of marginalized backgrounds are literally gone? Was there a targeted genocide? A kind of eugenic elimination of those particular identities? So that's why these visions create this really difficult situation where a lot of creative people from these marginalized backgrounds end up having that preference for the dystopian genre, because those were the only sci-fi visions in which they saw themselves as kids or teenagers.

So we start thinking, "Well, is that the only story of the future that we can be telling as marginalized peoples of never-ending oppression and struggle?" Consequently, this creates a narrowing of possibilities of actually imagining a future where people of marginalized identities are not in this continued or even expanded state of oppression, but actually become the leaders, visionaries and healers of the kind of world that, right now, we should be hoping and dreaming of and working toward.

For example, I have this conversation with some peers of mine who are in the field of future-making as writers, directors, etc.: people from the Global South by which I mean the Majority World and its diaspora along with queer folks and the disabled and neurodivergent communities, who still too often feel that it is only within a dystopian framework that we can tell our stories. But the continuous regurgitation of dystopian inevitability reinforces our lack of agency in imagining a radical shift of any social, cultural or political narrative thinking that we can invent all these "magical" technologies and imagine all these extraordinary scientific advances, and yet we still cannot see a pathway towards a future that is beyond racism, homophobia, ableism, xenophobia and so on. We do not have the luxury to fetishize dystopia, because we, or our ancestors, have already lived through it.

So why do we endlessly rehash these exhausted narratives and visions of the doomed future instead of using our time, energy and talent to envision what an actual liberation for oppressed peoples and a regenerative, life-centric society could look like? This is what the real danger of both utopian and dystopian visions is: They can have a toxic effect upon our imaginations, by distracting us away from both present-day oppression and liberatory future possibilities. It's why we started the Protopia Futures collective, to counter dystopian escapism as well as the utterly unrealistic and profoundly misinformed techno-solutionist narratives, and actually work toward what could be those shared "yes" visions of the future.

The particular utopian visions discussed by techno-futurists today transhumanists, longtermists and the like are fairly novel, as they deal with advanced technologies that weren't discussed much or at all before the mid-20th century. Yet these visions didn't come out of nowhere. They have a lineage, a genealogy, that goes back to traditional religion. Could you help us understand the history of utopian thought in the West?

So much of it has roots in Christian ascensionist narratives, a binary vision of paradise and hell (which is the predecessor of today's cosmic heavens and earthly soil utopia-dystopia binary) and its way of "sorting" who gets into each. This narrative is fundamentally settler-centric and human-centric. Only a narrow group of humans have the potential to reach paradise, based on a very homophobic and colonial idea of "morality," and no space at all is reserved for non-human species in "heaven." (This version of heaven, containing only humans, would be a kind of hell for most Indigenous people.) So Christian paradise, as the origin story of western utopianism, already has dystopia and exclusionism embedded within it.

I'm reminded of a term that's started to go mainstream: the "Eremocene," or "Age of Loneliness," which describes a time when we have extinguished so many other species and become increasingly isolated as a human species on this planet a kind of existential isolation and loneliness that results from being separated from the biosphere through this violent genocide of species and the extinction of their sensory worlds, as one of my favorite authors, Ed Yong, writes in his brilliant new book "An Immense World."

Many historical conceptions of utopia have also been exclusionary around these very lines of sexuality and ability anchored in settler-colonial "morality." Nazi Germany's justification for the utopian vision of the "Aryan Lebensraum" expansion provides an obvious example. The genocide began with the targeting of disabled and queer people and led to mass extermination of Jewish and Roma people and other minorities who were also associated with moral and physical "failures" for the purpose of dehumanization and expropriation.

Similarly, the Soviet Union, especially under Joseph Stalin, justified mass ethnic cleansing, imprisonment, torture and genocidal campaigns to justify the achievement of communist "Fatherland" utopia i.e., Holodomor [the Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s]; Stalin's purge of Jewish people; the ethnic cleansing of the Crimean Tatars; the suppression of Indigenous cultural traditions and their forceful replacement by Communist ideology across Russia's colonial realms, including Siberia, the Caucasus and Central Asia; the criminalization of homosexuality; utilizing mental health facilities and mental health justifications to eliminate opponents of the regime; and so on, as well as environmental destruction on an unprecedented scale.

I think the easiest way to measure the genocidal capacity of any given utopia is to look at how it treats marginalized peoples, especially those at the intersection of indigeneity, queerness and disability.

"Our lack of historical literacy of racist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic and anti-Indigenous biases, built on scientific grounds and amplified by technology, predisposes us to ignore how these discriminatory tendencies persist into the tech world today."

The key point is that this toxic legacy is still with us today. Our lack of historical literacy of racist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic and anti-Indigenous biases, built on scientific grounds and amplified by technology, predisposes us to ignore how these discriminatory tendencies persist into the tech world today, and suffuse the scientific community. These narratives are like the water that we swim in, and hence are invisible to many people within these milieus. Even today, I see so many "progressive" people, with often the best intentions, unknowingly echoing eco-fascist talking points in their desirable future visions that disregard the access needs of disabled people, or environmental justice issues between the Global North and Global South.

You've said in some of your talks that designing the future must always be a cooperative endeavor that it doesn't work if one group of people aims to dictate what the future will look like, even if they express concern for the wellbeing of other groups. Could you elaborate on this point?

That's right. If you're hoping to design something that's not harmful to start with let alone something that is useful or actually beneficial you can never design for somebody, you can only design with them. And by "with," that doesn't mean that you just choose one "token" person and then pretend that you're inclusive. You actually have to work with communities that are at that bleeding edge of harm, you need to ensure that key leadership consists of the most impacted groups. Because otherwise we just end up with harmful tokenization that is, predatory inclusion. This was exemplified by last year's push for crypto in the Global South and diaspora communities. When Spike Lee released a commercial about how crypto is the new money, it utilized a lot of really talented, prominent Black, brown and queer creatives to promote a vision that is fundamentally about extracting from their very communities. So even though some of the people involved may have benefited from those ads, their communities were ultimately harmed by the crypto push. That's one of a million examples of predatory inclusion.

A central feature of the techno-utopian visions influential within Silicon Valley today involves a narrative about humanity "transcending" itself. Our biological bodies are often derided as "meat-bags" that must be cast aside, replaced by robotic or computer hardware. Ultimately, the aim would be to replace biology altogether by "uploading" our minds to the cloud. I wonder how much this is influenced by the legacy of Christianity, which saw the body as sinful. After all, there are some cultural traditions for instance, some Indigenous traditions that don't see our bodies this way. Could you elaborate on how some of these traditions envisioned the future?

First of all, Indigenous accounts of what would constitute an aspirational future or present are not uniform there is a considerable diversity of views, of course. But, fundamentally, from the Indigenous perspective, you don't see yourself as apart from either your body or the other bodies you are codependent with. By "other bodies," I mean all other life, including bodies of other humans, but also plants, fungi and so on. All the transcendence and all the joy and pleasure that one experiences is not through being removed from this. It is, in fact, by deepening our interdependence with it.

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This is where there's this fundamental clash in civilizational visions, you could say, between the colonial TESCREALists advocates of the TESCREAL bundle of ideologies and Indigenous perspectives. So, if TESCREALists say that they know better than the Indigenous people about the aspirational future we should aim for, then, again, it's the same "manifest destiny" colonialism all over again. Not just in this desire to go out there and subject all these complex ecosystems to our own will, but even in this very notion that we should aspire toward removing ourselves from our own bodies and from the ecosystems within and around our bodies, and even from Earth itself. Some harmful olden-day futurist notions persist, such as Buckminster Fuller's "Spaceship Earth" metaphor it seems appealing on the surface, but fundamentally misunderstands the fact that neither our home planet nor our very bodies can be engineered down to component parts, let alone zeroes and ones. As Indigenous people have always known, consciousness is not reducible to mathematical calculations, it's embodied, interconnected and inseparable from the matter that is life.

So the way I see it, the techno-utopian visions of a colonized cosmos and transcended Earth are really just about finding ideological ways to justify compounded human and biosphere genocide happening today a way to say that in light of those grand visions, extinction of species or languages is ultimately "not that important." That is absolutely false. It's not that we shouldn't aim to learn more about the cosmos, but that we need to refocus more energy to understanding and regenerating the damage we have wrought upon ourselves and this planet improving soil health and the health of our oceans, rewilding, etc., are more future-worthy endeavors right now. Instead of fantasizing about machine or alien consciousness, we should prioritize understanding non-human animal consciousness, because we are rendering species extinct before we are even able to learn about their perception and sensory experience of the world we share.

Finally, to what extent do you think the tech elite actually buy into their techno-utopian vision of being digital posthumans and colonizing space? Are they true believers? Or might they be exploiting the promise of utopia to "justify" their greed and ruthless quest for power in the present?

"The way I see it, techno-utopian visions of a colonized cosmos and transcended Earth are about finding ways to justify human and biosphere genocide happening today in light of those grand visions, extinction of species is ultimately 'not that important.'"

This is where I sometimes think that you and I might have slightly different views on the matter. It seems to me that some of the tech gazillionaires that sell us these grand civilizational fantasies of intergalactic colonialism are just doing it to obfuscate and justify much more banal goals of personal enrichment and keeping up their scams. Elon Musk's Tesla edifice has been collapsing for a long time because it was sort of "crypto" before crypto, by which I mean that it is built on a pyramid-scheme type of hype, as detailed in Edward Niedermeyer's book "Ludicrous." Musk was being called the wealthiest man on Earth but it was fictional, inflated stock money dependent on false promises he can't keep up with anymore and in order to keep up with the scam in an increasingly competitive market, you need to stake increasingly unrealistic claims and hope you won't get called on it. In general, this is also how most tech bubble/hype cycles work they're predicated on the majority public's lack of future literacy and the media's willing participation in pumping up these sensational headlines with little critical inquiry behind the claims of those set to profit from them.

So my sense is that the talk of humanity becoming "multiplanetary" is just a way to put a sci-fi smokescreen up to the media and general publiccapitalism always needs a new frontier, so space colonialism is this kind of deus ex machina to detract us from the reality that there is no "infinite growth" on a finite planet, and that we need fundamental restructuring of our societies and economies based on principles of equity and justice.

I'm sure there are some "true believers" in the transhumanist, cosmist, longtermist movements. But I think that for somebody like Musk, the much more immediate goal is to develop the means to reach and, through robotic peripherals, mine the asteroid belt, to extract platinum, gold, diamonds and other rare minerals, especially those needed for batteries, microchips and so on. When Musk realized that his self-driving cars, his vision for Tesla, actually would not deliver on the promises, he still had to keep up with these grand visions of humanity's future, because he had gotten used to that level of power, influence and adulation. He has to keep inflating his vision by selling this fantasy, and because of the lack of future literacy, people keep buying into it. That being said, he might just be a delusional apartheid heir who has a dream to bring back the hierarchical structures of apartheid South Africa on a cosmic scale. Either way, whether he's a true believer or just a cosmically greedy man, the fact that he possesses so much influence on global future narratives and economies puts the rest of us in grave danger.

"Many of the richest and most influential men in tech never really grew out of that teenage phase of being fanboys of particular sci-fi authors, movies or series. They cling to these sci-fi fantasies of eternal lives in the cosmic matrix."

In my talks, I often say that ultimately it's those who control the fantasy who control the future. So many of the richest and most influential men in tech never really grew out of that teenage phase of being fanboys of particular sci-fi authors, movies or series. They cling to these sci-fi fantasies of eternal lives in the cosmic matrix and other fictional stuff, even though the bleeding edge of scientific research suggests that minds cannot just be reduced to a digital program, because our consciousness is embodied and interconnected with an ecosystem that it's codependent with.

But if they admit that all they want is, ultimately, to mine the asteroid belt, then all of a sudden they're going to have much more intense scrutiny. Who should have the right to go and mine asteroids? Could a single company in the Global North have this right? What kind of neocolonial relationships could that perpetuate between the Global North and Global South? Similarly, with AI, the more you talk about these visions of artificial general intelligence, the easier it is to divert attention away from the real issues of how these very fallible yet increasingly dangerous AI tools are being designed, used and abused. What bias gets embedded within them, whose data gets expropriated for it, who gets the access and what type of behavior and manipulation does this allow and to whom.

So I tend to think that these people are not as "smart" and "visionary" as they're often perceived, but also not so foolish especially someone like Peter Thiel as to actually believe that the utopian fantasies they're peddling would not spell dystopia for most of the rest of us. It's not that they don't know how to read dystopian narratives critically, or that they fully buy into technology being the magical panacea for problems that are fundamentally social, cultural and political. It's that they actually see how dystopias (sometimes disguised as utopias) can be used as product roadmaps, not just because there's money to be made while the world burns, but because there's money to be made by setting the world on fire.

Dystopia is not a bug, it's a feature. It will take all of us to resist it, and to fight for the kind of future that is actually livable. We must do all we can to resist these lures of eschatological tech theologies and accelerationist fantasies, because they are designed to benefit the few, while harming, if not outright extinguishing, the rest of us.

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from mile P. Torres on humanity's future

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Dangerous visions: How the quest for utopia could lead to catastrophe - Salon

Travis Scott enjoys a sunny day walking around New York City with his friends on Friday (July 28).

The 32-year-old rapper kept it casual for his day out in a black t-shirt and black pants, which he paired with Nike sneakers.

His outing coincided with the release of his latest album, Utopia, which dropped Friday night. It marks Travis first full-length album since 2018s Astroworld and features collaborations with artists like The Weeknd, James Blake, Bad Bunny, Beyonce, Future, 21 Savage and more.

Utopia made headlines upon its release after fans speculated that Travis may have dissed Timothee Chalamet on his song Meltdown. Timothee, 27, is rumored to be dating Kylie Jenner, 26, who is Travis ex. The pair share two children, 5-year-old Stormi and 17-month-old son Aire.

Stormi actually made her musical debut on one of the tracks from Utopia. Check it out!

Click through the gallery for the latest photos of Travis Scott in New York City

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Travis Scott Spends the Day in NYC Amid the Release of His New ... - Just Jared

As Barbenheimer rocks the box office, and Hollywood actors and writers hit the picket line, TV's summertime slump is in full effect. July 2023 saw the return of comedy favorites like What We Do in the Shadows, This Fool, Minx (which jumped from Max to Starz), and, for its final season, How To With John Wilson. Justified and Project Greenlight are back in new incarnations. But we didn't get much in the way of showstopping debut series. Still, there's a handful of titles worth checking out, from a flawed but fascinating Soderbergh thriller to a pair of beautifully executed docuseries to the best new animated comedy in recent memory.

Fatalism should make life simple. Once you embrace the belief, whether secular or spiritual, that everything happens as part of a grand cosmic plan, you can relax, safe in the knowledge that the universe (or God, or science) has had your discrete destiny gamed out since the dawn of time. But thats not how fateor is it free will?operates in MaxsFull Circle, a cluttered yet compelling thriller directed bySteven Soderbergh. As conceived by creator Ed Solomon, the trajectory of human life isnt a straightforward circle of cause and effect so much as its a tangled web of emotion, self-interest, faith, luck, character flaws, and above all history.

The series applies this worldview to the case of a seemingly incomprehensible kidnapping. In Queens, the brother-in-law of a Guyanese crime boss, Savitri Mahabir (CCH Pounder), is murdered by a rival family. But instead of exacting revenge on the immediate culprits, as her ambitious nephew Aked (Jharrel Jerome) proposes, Savitriwho believes the Mahabirs are cursedtravels to her home country, consults a mystic, and returns to New York convinced she knows how to close the circle of misfortune that has afflicted her family. Weirdly, the remedy entails abducting the hapless teen son, Jared (Ethan Stoddard), of a rich, white Manhattan couple. [Read the full review.]

Step aside, Sweeney Todd! There's a new human-meat entrepreneur in town, and her name is Dolores Roach. Playedgloriously against typeby the wonderful Justina Machado (One Day at a Time), Dolores has just been released from prison after doing time for a drug-dealer boyfriend. Hoping to reunite with him, she returns to their old neighborhood, Washington Heights, only to find the area overrun by young, white gentrifiers and the fancy businesses that so reliably spring up around them. At least good, old Empanada Loca is still hanging onand its proprietor, her acquaintance Luis (Alejandro Hernandez), is happy to host her there. Dolores moves into his gloomy apartment, in the basement of the empanada joint, and sets up a gray-market business to capitalize on a skill she learned behind bars: giving massages. Her hands are magic. So magic, it turns out, that they can fatally snap a client's neck before she's consciously decided to do so. Lucky for Dolores, Luis is twisted enough to help her dispose of the bodies by carving them up to make delicious empanadas.

Dolores Roach was a one-woman show and then a narrative podcast before it was adapted for Amazon, and the series uses a distracting framing device to acknowledge that history. But Machado makes a riveting antihero, believably unhinged but too warm to hate. The supporting actors, including Marc Maron, Cyndi Lauper, and Jean Yoon from Kim's Convenience, are perfectly cast. And what the social commentary on offer here lacks in freshness (the play does date back to 2015), it makes up for in cathartic humor, as Dolores dispatches the new neighbors who look down on her and Luis fries them up and feeds them to cool-hunting foodies.

[Read about Dolores Roach's Sweeney Todd connection.]

I've sampled so many nature documentaries over the past few years that they've all blurred together into an umpteen-hour mass of sweeping aerial panoramas, stunning wildlife closeups, and grand narration from David Attenborough. Don't get me wrong: I'm as awed by the beauty and technical achievement of these post-Planet Earth productions as anyone. But there's more than one way to make a great nature show. Human Footprint takes a chattier approach to exploring the Anthropocene, sending the affable biologist and Princeton professor Shane Campbell-Staton around the globe to document and discuss the often-catastrophic impact of humans on the natural world. Each of six hourlong episodes takes on a different facet of that enormous topic, from the invasive species we've introduced into fragile ecosystems to the phenomenon of the city. While there's plenty of heavy stuff here, Campbell-Staton knows when to inject some levityincluding an entire episode on our relationships with dogs.

More than an investigation, this true-crime series is an eloquent and timely rumination on why it took police in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania so many years to catch a serial killer who, throughout the early 1990s, picked up men at gay bars in Manhattan and crossed state lines to dispose of their dismembered remains. Unlike so much contemporary true-crime schlock, which enthuses over favorite murders and fetishizes Jeffrey Dahmer, its emphasis is on the victims, their still-grieving families, and a larger LGBTQ community that sublimated fear into action. Harnishs question epitomizes the disconnect that persists between police and one of the most vulnerable groups theyre supposed to serve and protect. [Read the full review.]

This exuberantly weird animated comedy comes from the mind of Anna Drezen, the former SNL head writer known for slyly surreal showbiz sendups like Nephew Pageant and Kate McKinnons unforgettable character Debette Goldry. Schitts Creek alum Annie Murphy riffs on her breakthrough fish-out-of-water role as the voice of Petra Petey St. Barts, a vivacious young New Yorker who loses her fianc (hes a literal slab of lumber, by the way), her best friend, her home, and her job as Senior Assistant/Editorial Assistant at a fashion magazine in the same awful day. Thankfully, her rich, distant mother, Christine Baranskis spectacularly named White St. Barts, has just informed Petey that she has a father. And he recently died. Also, as he explains in a VHS tape, shes just inherited the small, Southern town he owns. Its called New Utopia, which sounds like a cult because it is a cult. [Read the full review.]

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The 5 Best New TV Shows of July 2023 - TIME

Travis Scott released his fourth studio album, "Utopia," on Friday.Getty/Simone Joyner

Travis Scott released his fourth studio album, "Utopia," on Friday.

The album sounds like a rehash of Kanye West's 2013 album "Yeezus."

While its features are a high point, the album contains no discernible hit, unlike Scott's others.

After Kanye West, now known as Ye, dropped his soundscape-bending sixth studio album, "Yeezus," in 2013, he told "The Breakfast Club" that he felt he was "10 years ahead" but "trapped" in the present day.

At the time, Ye's assertion may have sounded farcical and arrogant, but fast-forward a decade to the release of Travis Scott's "Utopia," and he's not wrong.

Released on Friday, "Utopia," Scott's fourth studio album, was supposed to be the defining work of his career, an experimental, genre-defying record that he said would embody how people can "create energy that spews out magical things."

Instead, what Scott delivers is a poorly-paced, mostly unimaginative "Yeezus" rehash that feels stuck 10 years in the past.

It's not surprising that "Utopia" has a heavy Ye influence given that he is a longtime musical mentor of Scott's, and has previously been described by the "Sicko Mode" rapper as his "big bro."

Scott is also signed to Ye's GOOD Music record label under its production arm, Very Good Beats, and the pair have worked together on a number of projects over the years, including "Utopia." On this record, Ye serves as a cowriter on three songs: "Thank God," "God's Country," and "Telekinesis."

Whatissurprising, however, is just how deep the influences of Ye, and more specifically "Yeezus," run on "Utopia."

The album's third track, "Modern Jam," shares striking similarities to the opening track from "Yeezus," "On Sight." While generally less aggressive, "Modern Jam" features similar synths and vocal breaks to "On Sight," while Scott's cadence is also nearly identical to Ye's.

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Track 12, "Circus Maximus," featuring The Weeknd, is a near-carbon copy of "Black Skinhead." Again, Scott's flow matches Ye's perfectly over an all-too-familiar drum beat.

"Modern Jam" and "Circus Maximus" are the two songs most obviously influenced by "Yeezus," but other similarities are littered throughout "Utopia."

Scott screams like Ye does on "Yeezus," and relies heavily on the use of grainy, low-resolution synthesizers like Ye did. Justin Vernon, better known as the lead singer of Bon Iver, also features on "Utopia," just as he did on "Yeezus," featuring on both "My Eyes" and "Delresto (Echoes)."

While "Yeezus" was by no means universally acclaimed upon its release, the album drew praise for its drastic departure from Ye's previous efforts and its experimental sound design, which incorporated elements of punk, trap, and electronic music.

Ye was also praised for the album's lyrical content, which addressed everything from how the fashion industry views Black people ("New Slaves"), to the civil rights movement, and his own mental health ("Black Skinhead").

But while "Utopia" bears resemblances to "Yeezus," it misses the mark in terms of both sound and lyricism.

Where "Yeezus" sounded wild and unique, "Utopia" sounds tame and familiar. Where Ye used "Yeezus" to address real-world issues and offer fans a glimpse into his personal life ("Bound 2"), Scott uses "Utopia" to rap about, as he has done on all of his previous projects, partying and his affinity for sleeping with numerous women. It lacks the substance that "Yeezus" had in abundance.

"Yeezus" comparisons aside, on "Utopia," Scott also fails to deliver what he does best making club-ready, room-shaking anthems.

The erratic album, which switches between tempos and moods at every turn, features no discernible smash hit, unlike 2015's "Rodeo" ("Antidote"), 2016's "Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight" ("Goosebumps"), and 2018's "Astroworld" ("Sicko Mode").

There are some highlights, however, which come in the form of features.

Beyonc's angelic tones shine through on "Delresto (Echoes)," complimenting the track's stripped-back sound and Scott's own short verse.

Bad Bunny provides some Puerto Rican pizzazz on "K-pop," while "Looove," featuring Kid Cudi whom Scott has teamed up with before to great results stands out as "Utopia's" best song.

All in all, however, Scott's fourth studio album, for all its promise of offering something new, does anything but.

"I thought we were going to utopia?" an unidentified woman asks Scott at the end of "Sirens." Me too.

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The influence of Kanye West's 'Yeezus' is clear as day on Travis ... - Yahoo Lifestyle UK

Perhaps the most surprising reverberation of Mores utopia, though, was found in the towering figures of Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi. Its a little-known fact that the Indian nationalist corresponded with the aristocratic Russian novelist. Tolstoy, an anarchist and a Christian, held that the state was responsible for most of the bad stuff: taxes, wars and general irresponsibility. Tolstoy counselled passive resistance and non-violence instead.

Communes based on Tolstoys version of Christianity sprang up in the UK. The familiar elements were there: a return to handicrafts and small-scale agriculture, partial rejection of the gewgaws of the modern world, communal dining and shared expenditure.

Two of these communes still exist today in the UK. One is the Brotherhood Church of Stapleton, which, according to a recent New Yorker piece, is home to four humans, a deaf cat, a few hens and an enormous cow. The other is the Whiteway Colony in the Cotswolds, formed in 1898. More village than commune, Whiteway is a collection of 68 houses loosely bound by a monthly meeting.

In 1909 a young Indian philosopher started to correspond with Tolstoy. He called himself the Counts humble follower; the two men discussed Indian home rule, pacifism, passive resistance, freedom from toil and other utopian issues. In 1910, the young man Gandhi launched a cooperative colony in South Africa which he named Tolstoy Farm. It was Gandhis utopian thinking, inspired by Tolstoy, that led to his doctrine of passive resistance and his campaign for Indian home rule.

Dark visions

One of my favourite 20th-Century utopian societies, however, is the anarchist occupation of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. Here, from 1936 to the start of Francos reign in 1939, authority and rank were suspended, people called each other comrade and an anarchist system ruled. It is described without sentiment by George Orwell, who fought for the anarchists, in his account Homage to Catalonia.

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How Utopia shaped the world - BBC Culture

Community or society that is undesirable or frightening

A dystopia (from Ancient Greek - "bad, hard" and "place"; alternatively cacotopia[2] or simply anti-utopia) is a speculated community or society that is undesirable or frightening.[3][4] It is often treated as an antonym of utopia, a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, published in 1516, which created a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence and poverty. The relationship between utopia and dystopia is in actuality not one simple opposition, as many utopian elements and components are found in dystopias as well, and vice versa.[5][6][7]

Dystopias are often characterized by rampant fear or distress,[3] tyrannical governments, environmental disaster,[4] or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society. Distinct themes typical of a Dystopian Society include: complete control over the people in a society through the usage of propaganda, heavy censoring of information or denial of free thought, worshiping an unattainable goal, the complete loss of individuality, and heavy enforcement of conformity.[8] Despite certain overlaps, dystopian fiction is distinct from post-apocalyptic fiction, and an undesirable society is not necessarily dystopian. Dystopian societies appear in many fictional works and artistic representations, particularly in stories set in the future. The best known by far is George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Other famous examples are Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953). Dystopian societies appear in many sub-genres of fiction and are often used to draw attention to society, environment, politics, economics, religion, psychology, ethics, science, or technology. Some authors use the term to refer to existing societies, many of which are, or have been, totalitarian states or societies in an advanced state of collapse. Dystopias, through an exaggerated worst-case scenario, often make a criticism about a current trend, societal norm, or political system.[9]

The entire substantial sub-genre of alternative history works depicting a world in which Nazi Germany won the Second World War can be considered as dystopias. So can other works of Alternative History, in which a historical turning point led to a manifestly repressive world. For example, the 2004 mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, and Ben Winters' Underground Airlines, in which slavery in the United States continues to the present, with "electronic slave auctions" carried out via the Internet and slaves controlled by electronic devices implanted in their spines, or Keith Roberts Pavane in which 20th Century Britain is ruled by a Catholic theocracy and the Inquisition is actively torturing and burning "heretics".[citation needed]

Some scholars, such as Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent, make certain distinctions between typical synonyms of dystopias. For example, Claeys and Sargent define literary dystopias as societies imagined as substantially worse than the society in which the author writes. Some of these are anti-utopias, which criticise attempts to implement various concepts of utopia.[10] In the most comprehensive treatment of the literary and real expressions of the concept, Dystopia: A Natural History, Claeys offers a historical approach to these definitions.[11] Here the tradition is traced from early reactions to the French Revolution. Its commonly anti-collectivist character is stressed, and the addition of other themesthe dangers of science and technology, of social inequality, of corporate dictatorship, of nuclear warare also traced. A psychological approach is also favored here, with the principle of fear being identified with despotic forms of rule, carried forward from the history of political thought, and group psychology introduced as a means of understanding the relationship between utopia and dystopia. Andrew Norton-Schwartzbard noted that "written many centuries before the concept "dystopia" existed, Dante's Inferno in fact includes most of the typical characteristics associated with this genre even if placed in a religious framework rather than in the future of the mundane world, as modern dystopias tend to be".[12] In the same vein, Vicente Angeloti remarked that "George Orwell's emblematic phrase, a boot stamping on a human face forever, would aptly describe the situation of the denizens in Dante's Hell. Conversely, Dante's famous inscription Abandon all hope, ye who enter here would have been equally appropriate if placed at the entrance to Orwell's "Ministry of Love" and its notorious "Room 101".[13]

Dustopia being the original spelling for Dystopia first appeared in Lewis Henry Younge's, Utopia: or Apollos Golden Days in 1747.[14] Additionally, dystopia was used as an antonym for utopia by John Stuart Mill in one of his 1868 Parliamentary Speeches (Hansard Commons) by adding the prefix "dys" (Ancient Greek: - "bad") to "topia", reinterpreting the initial "u" as the prefix "eu" (Ancient Greek: - "good") instead of "ou" (Ancient Greek: "not").[15][16] It was used to denounce the government's Irish land policy: "It is, perhaps, too complimentary to call them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dys-topians, or caco-topians. What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable".[17][18][19][20]

Decades before the first documented use of the word "dystopia" was "cacotopia"/"kakotopia" (using Ancient Greek: s, "bad, wicked") originally proposed in 1818 by Jeremy Bentham, "As a match for utopia (or the imagined seat of the best government) suppose a cacotopia (or the imagined seat of the worst government) discovered and described".[21][22] Though dystopia became the more popular term, cacotopia finds occasional use; Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, said it was a better fit for Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four because "it sounds worse than dystopia".[23]

Dystopias typically reflect contemporary sociopolitical realities and extrapolate worst-case scenarios as warnings for necessary social change or caution.[24] Dystopian fictions invariably reflect the concerns and fears of their creators' contemporaneous culture.[25] Due to this, they can be considered a subject of social studies.[citation needed] In dystopias, citizens may live in a dehumanized state, be under constant surveillance, or have a fear of the outside world.[26] In the film What Happened to Monday the protagonists risk their lives by taking turns onto the outside world because of a one-child policy place in this futuristic dystopian society.[citation needed]

In a 1967 study, Frank Kermode suggests that the failure of religious prophecies led to a shift in how society apprehends this ancient mode. Christopher Schmidt notes that, while the world goes to waste for future generations, people distract themselves from disaster by passively watching it as entertainment.[27]

In the 2010s, there was a surge of popular dystopian young adult literature and blockbuster films.[28][27] Some have commented on this trend, saying that "it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism".[29][30][31][32][33] Cultural theorist and critic Mark Fisher identified the phrase as encompassing the theory of capitalist realism the perceived "widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it" and used the above quote as the title to the opening chapter of his book, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?. In the book, he also refers to dystopian film such as Children of Men (originally a novel by P. D. James) to illustrate what he describes as the "slow cancellation of the future".[33][34] Theo James, an actor in Divergent (originally a novel by Veronica Roth), explains that "young people in particular have such a fascination with this kind of story [...] It's becoming part of the consciousness. You grow up in a world where it's part of the conversation all the time the statistics of our planet warming up. The environment is changing. The weather is different. There are things that are very visceral and very obvious, and they make you question the future and how we will survive. It's so much a part of everyday life that young people inevitably consciously or not are questioning their futures and how the Earth will be. I certainly do. I wonder what kind of world my children's kids will live in."[28]

In When the Sleeper Wakes, H.G.Wells depicted the governing class as hedonistic and shallow.[35] George Orwell contrasted Wells's world to that depicted in Jack London's The Iron Heel, where the dystopian rulers are brutal and dedicated to the point of fanaticism, which Orwell considered more plausible.[36]

The political principles at the root of fictional utopias (or "perfect worlds") are idealistic in principle and result in positive consequences for the inhabitants; the political principles on which fictional dystopias are based, while often based on utopian ideals, result in negative consequences for inhabitants because of at least one fatal flaw.[37][38]

Dystopias are often filled with pessimistic views of the ruling class or a government that is brutal or uncaring, ruling with an "iron fist".[citation needed] Dystopian governments are sometimes ruled by a fascist or communist regime or dictator. These dystopian government establishments often have protagonists or groups that lead a "resistance" to enact change within their society, as is seen in Alan Moore's V for Vendetta.[39]

Dystopian political situations are depicted in novels such as We, Parable of the Sower, Darkness at Noon, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, The Handmaid's Tale, The Hunger Games, Divergent and Fahrenheit 451 and such films as Metropolis, Brazil (1985), Battle Royale, FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions, Soylent Green, Logan's Run, and The Running Man (1987).[citation needed]

The economic structures of dystopian societies in literature and other media have many variations, as the economy often relates directly to the elements that the writer is depicting as the source of the oppression. There are several archetypes that such societies tend to follow. A theme is the dichotomy of planned economies versus free market economies, a conflict which is found in such works as Ayn Rand's Anthem and Henry Kuttner's short story "The Iron Standard". Another example of this is reflected in Norman Jewison's 1975 film Rollerball (1975).[citation needed]

Some dystopias, such as that of Nineteen Eighty-Four, feature black markets with goods that are dangerous and difficult to obtain or the characters may be at the mercy of the state-controlled economy. Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano depicts a dystopia in which the centrally controlled economic system has indeed made material abundance plentiful but deprived the mass of humanity of meaningful labor; virtually all work is menial, unsatisfying and only a small number of the small group that achieves education is admitted to the elite and its work.[40] In Tanith Lee's Don't Bite the Sun, there is no want of any kind only unabashed consumption and hedonism, leading the protagonist to begin looking for a deeper meaning to existence.[41] Even in dystopias where the economic system is not the source of the society's flaws, as in Brave New World, the state often controls the economy; a character, reacting with horror to the suggestion of not being part of the social body, cites as a reason that works for everyone else.[42]

Other works feature extensive privatization and corporatism; both consequences of capitalism, where privately owned and unaccountable large corporations have replaced the government in setting policy and making decisions. They manipulate, infiltrate, control, bribe, are contracted by and function as government. This is seen in the novels Jennifer Government and Oryx and Crake and the movies Alien, Avatar, RoboCop, Visioneers, Idiocracy, Soylent Green, WALL-E and Rollerball. Corporate republics are common in the cyberpunk genre, as in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (as well as the film Blade Runner, influenced by and based upon Dick's novel).[citation needed]

Dystopian fiction frequently draws stark contrasts between the privileges of the ruling class and the dreary existence of the working class.[citation needed] In the 1931 novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, a class system is prenatally determined with Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, with the lower classes having reduced brain-function and special conditioning to make them satisfied with their position in life.[43] Outside of this society there also exist several human settlements that exist in the conventional way but which the class system describe as "savages".[citation needed]

In Ypsilon Minus by Herbert W. Franke, people are divided into numerous alphabetically ranked groups.[citation needed]

In the film Elysium, the majority of Earth's population on the surface lives in poverty with little access to health care and are subject to worker exploitation and police brutality, while the wealthy live above the Earth in luxury with access to technologies that cure all diseases, reverse aging, and regenerate body parts.[citation needed]

Written a century earlier, the future society depicted in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine had started in a similar way to Elysium the workers consigned to living and working in underground tunnels while the wealthy live on a surface made into an enormous beautiful garden. But over a long time period the roles were eventually reversed the rich degenerated and became a decadent "livestock" regularly caught and eaten by the underground cannibal Morlocks.[citation needed]

Some fictional dystopias, such as Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451, have eradicated the family and keep it from re-establishing itself as a social institution. In Brave New World, where children are reproduced artificially, the concepts of "mother" and "father" are considered obscene. In some novels, such as We, the state is hostile to motherhood, as a pregnant woman from One State is in revolt.[44]

Religious groups play the role of the oppressed and oppressors. In Brave New World the establishment of the state included lopping off the tops of all crosses (as symbols of Christianity) to make them "T"s, (as symbols of Henry Ford's Model T).[45] Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale takes place in a future United States under a Christian-based theocratic regime.[46] One of the earliest examples of this theme is Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World, about a futuristic world where Marxists and Freemasons led by the Antichrist have taken over the world and the only remaining source of dissent is a tiny and persecuted Catholic minority.[47]

In the Russian novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, first published in 1921, people are permitted to live out of public view twice a week for one hour and are only referred to by numbers instead of names. The latter feature also appears in the later, unrelated film THX 1138. In some dystopian works, such as Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, society forces individuals to conform to radical egalitarian social norms that discourage or suppress accomplishment or even competence as forms of inequality.[citation needed]

Violence is prevalent in many dystopias, often in the form of war, but also in urban crimes led by (predominately teenage) gangs (e.g. A Clockwork Orange), or rampant crime met by blood sports (e.g. Battle Royale, The Running Man, The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Purge). It is also explained in Suzanne Berne's essay "Ground Zero", where she explains her experience of the aftermath of 11 September 2001.[48]

Fictional dystopias are commonly urban and frequently isolate their characters from all contact with the natural world.[49] Sometimes they require their characters to avoid nature, as when walks are regarded as dangerously anti-social in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, as well as within Bradbury's short story "The Pedestrian".[citation needed] In C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, science coordinated by government is directed toward the control of nature and the elimination of natural human instincts. In Brave New World, the lower class is conditioned to be afraid of nature but also to visit the countryside and consume transport and games to promote economic activity.[50] Lois Lowry's "The Giver" shows a society where technology and the desire to create a utopia has led humanity to enforce climate control on the environment, as well as to eliminate many undomesticated species and to provide psychological and pharmaceutical repellent against human instincts. E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" depicts a highly changed global environment which forces people to live underground due to an atmospheric contamination.[51] As Angel Galdon-Rodriguez points out, this sort of isolation caused by external toxic hazard is later used by Hugh Howey in his series of dystopias of the Silo Series.[52]

Excessive pollution that destroys nature is common in many dystopian films, such as The Matrix, RoboCop, WALL-E, April and the Extraordinary World and Soylent Green, as well as in videogames like Half-Life 2. A few "green" fictional dystopias do exist, such as in Michael Carson's short story "The Punishment of Luxury", and Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker. The latter is set in the aftermath of nuclear war, "a post-nuclear holocaust Kent, where technology has reduced to the level of the Iron Age".[53][citation needed]

Contrary to the technologically utopian claims, which view technology as a beneficial addition to all aspects of humanity, technological dystopia concerns itself with and focuses largely (but not always) on the negative effects caused by new technology.[54]

1. Technologies reflect and encourage the worst aspects of human nature.[54]Jaron Lanier, a digital pioneer, has become a technological dystopian: "I think its a way of interpreting technology in which people forgot taking responsibility."[citation needed]

'Oh, its the computer that did it, not me.' 'Theres no more middle class? Oh, its not me. The computer did it'" (Lanier). This quote explains that people begin to not only blame the technology for the changes in lifestyle but also believe that technology is an omnipotence. It also points to a technological determinist perspective in terms of reification.[55]

2. Technologies harm our interpersonal communication, relationships, and communities.[56]

3. Technologies reinforce hierarchies concentrate knowledge and skills; increase surveillance and erode privacy; widen inequalities of power and wealth; giving up control to machines. Douglas Rushkoff, a technological utopian, states in his article that the professional designers "re-mystified" the computer so it wasn't so readable anymore; users had to depend on the special programs built into the software that was incomprehensible for normal users.[54]

4. New technologies are sometimes regressive (worse than previous technologies).[54]

5. The unforeseen impacts of technology are negative.[54] 'The most common way is that theres some magic artificial intelligence in the sky or in the cloud or something that knows how to translate, and what a wonderful thing that this is available for free. But theres another way to look at it, which is the technically true way: You gather a ton of information from real live translators who have translated phrases Its huge but very much like Facebook, its selling people back to themselves [With translation] youre producing this result that looks magical but in the meantime, the original translators arent paid for their work Youre actually shrinking the economy.'"[56]

6. More efficiency and choices can harm our quality of life (by causing stress, destroying jobs, making us more materialistic).[57]In his article "Prest-o! Change-o!, technological dystopian James Gleick mentions the remote control being the classic example of technology that does not solve the problem "it is meant to solve". Gleick quotes Edward Tenner, a historian of technology, that the ability and ease of switching channels by the remote control serves to increase distraction for the viewer. Then it is only expected that people will become more dissatisfied with the channel they are watching.[57]

7. New technologies can solve problems of old technologies or just create new problems.[54]The remote control example explains this claim as well, for the increase in laziness and dissatisfaction levels was clearly not a problem in times without the remote control. He also takes social psychologist Robert Levine's example of Indonesians "'whose main entertainment consists of watching the same few plays and dances, month after month, year after year, and with Nepalese Sherpas who eat the same meals of potatoes and tea through their entire lives. The Indonesians and Sherpas are perfectly satisfied". Because of the invention of the remote control, it merely created more problems.[57]

8. Technologies destroy nature (harming human health and the environment). The need for business replaced community and the "story online" replaced people as the "soul of the Net". Because information was now able to be bought and sold, there was not as much communication taking place.[54]

"An imaginary place or condition in which everything is as bad as possible; opp. UTOPIA (cf. CACOTOPIA). So dystopian n., one who advocates or describes a dystopia; dystopian a., of or pertaining to a dystopia; dystopianism, dystopian quality or characteristics."

The example of first usage given in the OED (1989 ed.) refers to the 1868 speech by John Stuart Mill quoted above. Other examples given in the OED include:

1952 Negley & Patrick Quest for Utopia xvii. 298 The Mundus Alter et Idem [of Joseph Hall] is...the opposite of eutopia, the ideal society: it is a dystopia, if it is permissible to coin a word. 1962 C.WALSH From Utopia to Nightmare11 The 'dystopia' or 'inverted utopia'. Ibid. 12 Stories...that seemed in their dystopian way to be saying something important. Ibid. ii. 27 A strand of utopianism or dystopianism. 1967 Listener 5 Jan. 22 The modern classics Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four are dystopias. They describe not a world we should like to live in, but one we must be sure to avoid. 1968 New Scientist 11 July 96/3 It is a pleasant change to read some hope for our future is trevor ingram ... I fear that our real future is more likely to be dystopian.

See also Gregory Claeys. "When Does Utopianism Produce Dystopia?" in: Zsolt Czignyik, ed.

Utopian Horizons. Utopia and Ideology - The Interaction of Political and Utopian Thought (Budapest: CEU Press, 2016), pp.4161.

The rest is here:

Dystopia - Wikipedia

As we head toward the 2022 elections, it is a safe bet that few Americans can identify the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, even though its one of the most significant amendments. Ratified on April 8, 1913, it completely changed the balance of power in our federal system.

The amendment provided for the direct popular election of U.S. senators. That sounds non-controversial now, but it meant taking the power away from state legislatures that were originally given the authority to choose the senators representing their state in Section 3 of Article I of the Constitution.

If you took civics in high school or you look up the definition of checks and balances, it is always referred to as the system that provides our three branches of the federal governmentthe legislative, judicial and executivewith separate powers that can be used to check the power of the other branches, ensuring that no one branch becomes too powerful. This is a horizontal balance of power that applies within the federal government.

But what civics teachers and others seem to have forgotten in the more than 100 years that the 17th Amendment has been in place is that the original design of the Constitution in Article I gave state governments an essential, second vertical check on the power of the federal governmentthe authority of state legislatures to pick the senators representing their states.

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As the Heritage Guide to the Constitution explains, the Framers intended to protect the interests of states as states and the mode of election impelled senators to preserve the original federal design and to protect the interests not only of their own states, but, concomitantly, of the states as political and legal entities within the federal system.

Alexander Hamilton emphasized this at the New York ratifying convention in 1788 when he said that senators will constantly look up to the state governments with an eye of dependance and, if they wanted to be reelected by state legislators, they, would have a uniform attachment to the interests of their several states. In other words, they would be wary of imposing unfunded mandates on state governments or taking other actions that extended the power of the federal government into areas traditionally within the authority of the states.

As Mark Levin succinctly explained in The Liberty Amendments, the original method of electing U.S. senators that provided state governments with direct input in the national government was not only an essential check on the new federal governments power, but also a means by which the states could influence congressional lawmaking.

Despite all of this, the amendment was ratified in fewer than 11 months and in overwhelming numbersin the 36 states that ratified it, only 191 opposing votes were cast.

The 17th Amendment was the result of the rise of Progressivism, pushed by intellectuals and social reformers who believed that our constitutional system of government was outdated and needed to be reformed. It was designed to enhance the authority of the central government and expand the size and power of a federal bureaucracy that could orchestrate the changes they believed would lead to a new utopia, while diminishing the power of state governments to contest those changes.

When the 17th Amendment was combined with the 16th Amendment, which gave Congress the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, and which was ratified earlier that same year, the federal government had the ability to drastically increase its spending and power without considering the interests of the states or the effects on the sovereign authority of the states.

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The 17th Amendment critically altered the balance of power between state governments and the federal government, to the detriment of the states. States no longer had a legislative venue, or any venue, to influence directly the course of the federal government, Mr. Levin says.

It is impossible to conceive that the Constitution would have been ratified without this essential feature preserving the balance of power between the states and the federal government. With direct elections, senators have no incentive to protect state governments and state budgets at the expense of the enormous, bloated volume of federal programs and spending that is leading us down the road to financial insolvency.

Could this be changed? Should it be changed back? These are questions that prompt vigorous debate. But the likelihood that American voters would support going back to the original system and losing their ability to directly elect U.S. senators seems very slim. So, while we can recognize the structural damage this amendment has caused, what happened more than a century ago will probably remain unaltered.

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17th Amendment Weakened Balance of Power Between States, Federal Government - Heritage.org