The Utopia Brokers (first written February 4, 2018)
I wrote recently about my variant of a green socialist utopia.
But I ended that post on a skeptical note: not only is my utopia unattainable, but other people will disagree with me about which kinds of utopia to pursue, or even whether to pursue any utopian dream at all.
And the zen anarchist in me says that utopia isn’t even a useful concept. You have to deal with the world as it is, and nudge it this way and that, you can’t deal with the world as it is if you are constantly comparing it to an imagined ideal inside your head.
- - -
I was looking at the results of the recent German election, and I was envious of their multi-party democracy, with members of their parliament coming from the Greens, the Democratic Socialists, and the Social Democrats. Oh what a difficult choice I would face in choosing between those three groups! Envy!
None of them won a majority, and even combined they didn’t win a majority. I envy being able to vote for one of those parties, but none will be able to implement their platforms.
- - -
Each of these parties is what I would call a Utopia Broker. Every political party is. Every national politician is. They put together a platform and a slogan and talk about unifying the country, making it great (again), moving forward together toward peace and prosperity and equal rights, good jobs with good wages, or whatever.
Drawing up a platform and giving speeches … is very different from governing. Especially if governing requires forming a coalition or compromising with the opposition.
- - -
Parties and politicians sell a utopian vision to their voters, but then must go forth into the web of reality and … act a little zen whether they want to or not … in terms of making decisions within each moment and nudging reality this way and that way.
There’s a faith among partisans that all you need to do is grab enough seats of power and then you can finally change the world for the better. But passing laws is a messy business, and laws don’t enforce themselves. And it turns out the legislators and members of the executive branch are just humans, corrupted and flawed, learning on the job, making some decisions in their own best interests, or to increase and perpetuate their own power. They bicker, they form factions and factions-within-factions.
Parties and politicians have to engage in an arbitrage between reality and utopia, somehow packaging the past, present, or future as a more wonderful thing than it really was/is/will be, and selling you that past, present, or future as though you don’t already have it, in exchange for your vote and/or money and/or ongoing support.
The anarchists will tell you it is all a lie. The statisticians will tell you that the chance your vote changes the outcome is practically zero. And whichever group is in power now, they probably won’t be in power 5 or 10 years from now, no matter what they do. Not if you live in a functioning democracy where the opposition parties have fair access to resources, media, and voters.
- - -
It takes me back to the day after GWB’s State of the Union address back in, oh, 2002 or 2003, I don’t remember exactly which one. I didn’t watch the speech, I couldn’t stand GWB. But as I was leaving my gym the next day, I heard a fella talking passionately on his cell phone about how he’d been waiting his entire life to hear a speech like that.
OK. But it was just a speech, and by the time GWB’s term ended he was pretty darn unpopular for dragging us into a useless Global War on Terror and royally fucking up the economy.
But that speech matched somebody’s utopia. Later on, Obama’s speeches appealed to a different cross-section of people, with his own brand of utopia. Hope! Change!
- - -
I do think politicians can make a difference, but their powers are not so vast as we imagine; they face difficult constraints, and if they respect the democratic process they don’t last forever. It is not uncommon for a politician’s own supporters to lose interest or become disappointed once that politician is in power. Which is why in the US we typically see the midterm elections break hard from whichever party is in the White House.
Maybe the best lesson I can take from looking at the German election results is that somehow governments need to function even though human political beliefs are fractal and durable majorities don’t truly exist. In the US, our Electoral College creates an artificial majority even for certain candidates who came in second in the popular vote. But if we truly opened up our process to multiple parties with proportional representation, there would probably never be a majority-wins outcome again.
Because whatever my utopian vision, most of you will pick something else. Whatever your utopian vision, most of us will pick something else. And then the people we pick will have to deal with reality, somehow, and compromise with each other. Meanwhile, selling us a reality made up to look like a Playboy magazine centerfold.
“This is the most important election of your lifetime,” they tell us every four years. No, it isn’t.
-----
Come on!
Does she walk? Does she talk?
Does she come complete?
My homeroom homeroom angel
Always pulled me from my seat
She was pure like snowflakes
No one could ever stain
The memory of my angel
Could never cause me pain
Years go by I'm lookin' through a girly magazine
And there's my homeroom angel on the pages in-between
My blood runs cold
My memory has just been sold
My angel is the centerfold
Angel is the centerfold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGja9UTuta4
But I ended that post on a skeptical note: not only is my utopia unattainable, but other people will disagree with me about which kinds of utopia to pursue, or even whether to pursue any utopian dream at all.
And the zen anarchist in me says that utopia isn’t even a useful concept. You have to deal with the world as it is, and nudge it this way and that, you can’t deal with the world as it is if you are constantly comparing it to an imagined ideal inside your head.
- - -
I was looking at the results of the recent German election, and I was envious of their multi-party democracy, with members of their parliament coming from the Greens, the Democratic Socialists, and the Social Democrats. Oh what a difficult choice I would face in choosing between those three groups! Envy!
None of them won a majority, and even combined they didn’t win a majority. I envy being able to vote for one of those parties, but none will be able to implement their platforms.
- - -
Each of these parties is what I would call a Utopia Broker. Every political party is. Every national politician is. They put together a platform and a slogan and talk about unifying the country, making it great (again), moving forward together toward peace and prosperity and equal rights, good jobs with good wages, or whatever.
Drawing up a platform and giving speeches … is very different from governing. Especially if governing requires forming a coalition or compromising with the opposition.
- - -
Parties and politicians sell a utopian vision to their voters, but then must go forth into the web of reality and … act a little zen whether they want to or not … in terms of making decisions within each moment and nudging reality this way and that way.
There’s a faith among partisans that all you need to do is grab enough seats of power and then you can finally change the world for the better. But passing laws is a messy business, and laws don’t enforce themselves. And it turns out the legislators and members of the executive branch are just humans, corrupted and flawed, learning on the job, making some decisions in their own best interests, or to increase and perpetuate their own power. They bicker, they form factions and factions-within-factions.
Parties and politicians have to engage in an arbitrage between reality and utopia, somehow packaging the past, present, or future as a more wonderful thing than it really was/is/will be, and selling you that past, present, or future as though you don’t already have it, in exchange for your vote and/or money and/or ongoing support.
The anarchists will tell you it is all a lie. The statisticians will tell you that the chance your vote changes the outcome is practically zero. And whichever group is in power now, they probably won’t be in power 5 or 10 years from now, no matter what they do. Not if you live in a functioning democracy where the opposition parties have fair access to resources, media, and voters.
- - -
It takes me back to the day after GWB’s State of the Union address back in, oh, 2002 or 2003, I don’t remember exactly which one. I didn’t watch the speech, I couldn’t stand GWB. But as I was leaving my gym the next day, I heard a fella talking passionately on his cell phone about how he’d been waiting his entire life to hear a speech like that.
OK. But it was just a speech, and by the time GWB’s term ended he was pretty darn unpopular for dragging us into a useless Global War on Terror and royally fucking up the economy.
But that speech matched somebody’s utopia. Later on, Obama’s speeches appealed to a different cross-section of people, with his own brand of utopia. Hope! Change!
- - -
I do think politicians can make a difference, but their powers are not so vast as we imagine; they face difficult constraints, and if they respect the democratic process they don’t last forever. It is not uncommon for a politician’s own supporters to lose interest or become disappointed once that politician is in power. Which is why in the US we typically see the midterm elections break hard from whichever party is in the White House.
Maybe the best lesson I can take from looking at the German election results is that somehow governments need to function even though human political beliefs are fractal and durable majorities don’t truly exist. In the US, our Electoral College creates an artificial majority even for certain candidates who came in second in the popular vote. But if we truly opened up our process to multiple parties with proportional representation, there would probably never be a majority-wins outcome again.
Because whatever my utopian vision, most of you will pick something else. Whatever your utopian vision, most of us will pick something else. And then the people we pick will have to deal with reality, somehow, and compromise with each other. Meanwhile, selling us a reality made up to look like a Playboy magazine centerfold.
“This is the most important election of your lifetime,” they tell us every four years. No, it isn’t.
-----
Come on!
Does she walk? Does she talk?
Does she come complete?
My homeroom homeroom angel
Always pulled me from my seat
She was pure like snowflakes
No one could ever stain
The memory of my angel
Could never cause me pain
Years go by I'm lookin' through a girly magazine
And there's my homeroom angel on the pages in-between
My blood runs cold
My memory has just been sold
My angel is the centerfold
Angel is the centerfold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGja9UTuta4