Imagine that you lived in the “human quarter” of a vast city full of diverse aliens, all on a planet far from Earth. These aliens are quite strange and hard to understand in many ways, and so cannot simply be trusted, though your city does manage to usually maintain basic overall peace and law. As your human quarter is too small to be self-sufficient, it must trade and interact a lot with the rest of the city. Not just in physical goods, but also in work and social coordination. As a result, many humans participate in many alien-dominated orgs.
Why not think there are multiple such utopias, nested inside each other, or overlapping with each other (e.g. the family is one, perhaps the neighborhood/city/village is another, the nation another, the workplace community another, etc.)--if true you wouldn't want the same walls for all of them.
“The basic intuition of all utopian fiction [is that] the perfect modern state—like the optimal city of antiquity—is sheltered by strong borders.“
The Spartans, whose constitution lasted about 700 years, refused to build city walls on the grounds that walls decreased virtue and vigour in their population: a Spartan should be ready and vigilant enough to meet any threat. Similarly, Roman army camps started with walls that had large gaps, the expectation being that the Romans would counterattack through the gaps; as Rome became decadent the gaps became gates, and the soldiers behind the walls did not counterattack.
Today, Trump’s wall is a sign of decadence; in a more confident and less corrupt era the American military would have entered Mexico to suppress the cartel-based anarchy that threatens American lives and property—no wall required. Instead, they’ve been bogged down in the Middle East and Asia in irrelevant wars they are not allowed to win.
Walls do not make the best borders, but a wall-like border interface is required: the literally walled utopia is a dying utopia.
This is a very physically-bound future worldview! Why should I be stuck in a single geographically defined garden? I can imagine a not so distant future where the finest grained physical garden is one mind, and minds can participate dynamically in multiple virtual gardens.
Walls around minds (or even the bodies that contain them) are much easier to mind than walls around shared physical spaces. Much fewer coordination problems.
Finding trustworthy experts is very difficult but can be highly beneficial. Analyze previous successful expert finding experiences for common successful themes. Then optimize those bright spots. Also analyze failures for where they went wrong.
Modern utopian fiction is of course quite different, there is an explicit lack of walls and aliens is much included. Of the top of my head is The Federation and The Culture that is sometimes deacribed as "utopian" and have no borders. They fear no one and is described as almost aggresively expansionary especially by their enemies and those that don't like them in the stories.
From a post long ago: beware generalizing from fiction. There _are_ insights into common and average human behaviors in such study, but only when backed up with other evidence and modeling.
I'd argue that a lot of utopian fiction is actually an argument that borders fail, and it's not really utopia if the aliens are excluded.
I'm not sure if the fictions are _right_ in either direction (good walls make good utopias, or the necessity of walls is an indicator of risk and instability). And figuring out ways to include aliens (including different human cultures and individuals) in your Utopian visions seems valuable regardless.
So you'd need to specify which scale suits the "paying for results" wall.
Yes, you might have different kinds of walls at different scales.
Why not think there are multiple such utopias, nested inside each other, or overlapping with each other (e.g. the family is one, perhaps the neighborhood/city/village is another, the nation another, the workplace community another, etc.)--if true you wouldn't want the same walls for all of them.
I am using the word "wall" more abstractly, and not limiting it to a simple physical wall.
“The basic intuition of all utopian fiction [is that] the perfect modern state—like the optimal city of antiquity—is sheltered by strong borders.“
The Spartans, whose constitution lasted about 700 years, refused to build city walls on the grounds that walls decreased virtue and vigour in their population: a Spartan should be ready and vigilant enough to meet any threat. Similarly, Roman army camps started with walls that had large gaps, the expectation being that the Romans would counterattack through the gaps; as Rome became decadent the gaps became gates, and the soldiers behind the walls did not counterattack.
Today, Trump’s wall is a sign of decadence; in a more confident and less corrupt era the American military would have entered Mexico to suppress the cartel-based anarchy that threatens American lives and property—no wall required. Instead, they’ve been bogged down in the Middle East and Asia in irrelevant wars they are not allowed to win.
Walls do not make the best borders, but a wall-like border interface is required: the literally walled utopia is a dying utopia.
I didn't say it was geographically defined.
If the group is high-functioning (thriving garden), it can build an effective wall, understand/relate/cripple others ...
This is a very physically-bound future worldview! Why should I be stuck in a single geographically defined garden? I can imagine a not so distant future where the finest grained physical garden is one mind, and minds can participate dynamically in multiple virtual gardens.
Walls around minds (or even the bodies that contain them) are much easier to mind than walls around shared physical spaces. Much fewer coordination problems.
Neil Stephenson's Anathem had a very amusing wall mechanic for the interaction of the Concents with the Seacular world.
Finding trustworthy experts is very difficult but can be highly beneficial. Analyze previous successful expert finding experiences for common successful themes. Then optimize those bright spots. Also analyze failures for where they went wrong.
Even in the ancient stories, aliens are "included", and the "walls" are central to how that happens.
Modern utopian fiction is of course quite different, there is an explicit lack of walls and aliens is much included. Of the top of my head is The Federation and The Culture that is sometimes deacribed as "utopian" and have no borders. They fear no one and is described as almost aggresively expansionary especially by their enemies and those that don't like them in the stories.
From a post long ago: beware generalizing from fiction. There _are_ insights into common and average human behaviors in such study, but only when backed up with other evidence and modeling.
I'd argue that a lot of utopian fiction is actually an argument that borders fail, and it's not really utopia if the aliens are excluded.
I'm not sure if the fictions are _right_ in either direction (good walls make good utopias, or the necessity of walls is an indicator of risk and instability). And figuring out ways to include aliens (including different human cultures and individuals) in your Utopian visions seems valuable regardless.