Viatopia

To continue our "Utopia" theme from a previous notice on the feed, we have a brief reading for you.

This author makes the case for "viatopia", which argues that we shouldn't be trying to envision what a utopia might look like in the future and work towards that, but instead try to set our society up so that it is most able to adapt to changes that we can't currently predict.

"Viatopianism" focuses on achieving whatever society needs to be able to dynamically, reliably steer itself towards good outcomes, in contrast to "utopianism" which is more about having the ultimate end-state in mind in advance and building towards that.

We know it's easy to make fun of the word "viatopia", but please give the idea some thought without judging it solely on the nomenclature.

Viatopia is a waystation rather than a final destination; etymologically, it means “by way of this place”. We can often describe good waystations even if we have little idea what the ultimate destination should be. A teenager might have little idea what they want to do with their life, but know that a good education will keep their options open. Adventurers lost in the wilderness might not know where they should ultimately be going, but still know they should move to higher ground where they can survey the terrain. Similarly, we can identify what puts humanity in a good position to navigate towards excellent futures, even if we don’t yet know exactly what those futures look like.

Read this piece and then discuss this with BR-Utopia if you wish.

This is also our first trial run of having it such that the same researcher can be used on more than one notice on the feed. If you try out the chat button and are able to chat about this with BR-Utopia, please like this post.