is utopia ever attainable? is it even realistic? could good exist without evil?

Question

i just find the idea of absolutely vanquishing evil disturbing. isn't it evil that makes good good? isn't the existence of one essential for the existence of the other?

Answer 1

utopia is never attainable. one maybe utopia for the other, yet it seems hell to some. you're right, there is always evil. as long as humans have the ability to think. there will always be evil. the thing here is, there should be equilibrium between them..^_^

Answer 2

The idea that you need to have evil to have good is completely ridiculous. It's like saying that you can't possibly enjoy sex unless you have had acid splashed in your face.

Consider: There are people who do not engage in 'evil' (by whatever standard of that word you choose to use). If you can't know that good is bad without experiencing evil, how could they possibly know enough to distinguish the two?

In the real world, it is possible to learn from the example of others. This is why we tell stories to each other from the youngest of ages - to instill an idea of good and evil and to try and educate and avoid the bad without direct personal experience.

Think about other overtly dangerous things, too. Few people throw themselves off cliffs and expect to float gently in the air. Our daily experience with gravity teaches even children that gravity will always pull on you. What if it weren't possible to lie, or to steal, or do any of the other things that might be called 'evil' and get away with it? Do you really think anyone but the insane would even try to do so if they were certain of nothing but punishment?

So yes, there is no reason to believe that a society MUST have criminals in order for everyone else to understand that laws should probably be followed, or any of the other nonsense that dualists are so fond of. We may not currently have the tools to cause a kind of enforced state of lawfulness, but given the way things are going I think it is all but certain that they will be produced someday. Nor are they even necessarilly needed - if we have one wise individual who avoids evil, it is certainly possible to have many, and perhaps even a whole society of such people.

It is only a matter of time.

Answer 3

look at the shape of the yin-yang - it's universally derived - the interplay between good and evil is universal it works in the same way - neither good nor evil can be destoyed they are opposite directions on the same twisting spiral, - one cannot exist without the other but at a point one can totally encompass the other surrounding it making it wholly within it, hiding it from view but not forever the other always returns. utopia therefore is attainable but there will quite litterally be hell to pay.

the question is which direction are we travelling right now, towards or away form 'the one'?

is a lifetime enough time to find out?

is all of time one turn ? if not, how long is one turn?

Answer 4

I'm going to condense a currently ongoing situation in my life into a metaphor here.
There is evil and there is Love, and where there is Love there is a future of blissful happiness, Love will conquer the evil and make the Love stronger so that Utopia will shine far brighter than the evil would ever consider.

Answer 5

You are correct. Evil only exists because all things have some level of imperfection. In many religions God is the only "perfect" entity, and His creations are imperfect.

As such, things like gravity, which are useful for keeping us on Earth and making it rain can also produce "evil" effects. Namely a brick falling from a church under construction and killing someone. Or take the example of fire, which can be used to sterelize, cook, and make things. It's very useful, but, can also cause house fires, forest fires, and ultimately, death.

A utopian society does not consider this distinction, and therefor, is a naive exercise in intellectual masturbation. While a society could get closer to a utopia, there could never be one devoid of evil.

Answer 6

First of all, Utopia is a perfect society, one with with flawless political, social and legal system. It doesn't imply lack of evil.Look at it this way: if you don't experience evil, how can you ever know what good is? Relativity is of great importance in this world, and that's exactly why utopian societies have never lasted more than one generation, and you are absolutely right - evil has to be present for this world to be complete



Billy Butthead, You are thinking of Purgatory

Answer 7

define Utopia.

Lets do a comparison. The life of a medieval serf included:
-Living in a one room thatch-roof house with straw for flooring
-Taking a bath maybe once a year
-work from sunrise to sunset on a farm
-having almost a dozen children, but being thankful if three or four make it to adulthood
-having to go to your barber or priest when there was something medically wrong with you
-living in a town or city where people dumped their excrement in the streets
-starving to death if the harvest was too poor
-worrying about raiding parties or bandits or marauders

How would this medieval serf feel if all of a sudden he was placed in, say, middle class America, where we have
-multi-room houses with individual bedrooms for everyone in the house
-insulation and air conditioning.
-Having several baths in the house, being able to take at least one bath a day
-working a mere 40 hours a week, and collecting overtime if he works more, and being guaranteed by his employer to have safe and secured working conditions
-raising only 3 or 4 children, never having to experience the grief that comes from the death of a child
-Having access to medical care that can easily cure ailments which, 100 years ago, would have been fatal
-Never having to see or smell your excrement after it is flushed down the toilet, and never having to even think about other people's excrement
-If the man lost his job, he collects unemployment benefits until he is able to find a new one.
-going his entire life without having to experience war or violence of the sort
-Having a car that can take you miles in any direction, a refrigerator which lets you store food for long term periods, a television to keep him occupied, and numerous other devices that improve his life

So to a medieval peasant, being a middle class man in 2007 would seem like an unimaginable Utopia to him. But we in 2007 feel like we are the most miserable dupes who ever walked the planet.

An experiment was done when scientists took about 2 dozen people and had them life in conditions comparable to those 100 years ago. Not a single one was able to last, they all became depressed and couldn't take it anymore.

Starting to see why Utopia is unattainable? Human beings have only their own experiences to fall back on. And only their own experience to tell them what is comfort and what is not. So even if humans one day have lives that are unimaginably comfortable compared to ours, they too will have their shares of anxiety, despair, and depressions.

Answer 8

Good and evil are human constructs. If there is no humans alive, then there is no good or evil. And, there will be some people that will suggest that having no humans alive would be a utopia.

Answer 9

You said it. We could not know what good is, if we didn't have bad. Seeing as humans will always make mistakes and have faults, a utopia will never exist. It's not realistic. And any person who believes otherwise, is completely detached from reality.

Answer 10

Utopia is a state of eternal bliss,no worries ,no evil and even no good,
When you die you will enter a state of eternal bliss,an incident that runs it's course and never happens again,