My personal Youtopia
Wim Riecken - 01/18/21
It is hard to imagine living a world where everybody is happy and fulfilled all the time.
Although this is often used as the baseline for most utopias, I would not really consider this to
be a true utopia to me for several reasons. Firstly, you can‘t be happy if you aren‘t sad
sometimes. Our brains were made to release happiness hormones as a reward for hard work.
And happiness is only that great because it (often) comes through working hard and because it
is a contrast to sadder emotions. So, if you set humans into a perfect world with unlimited
pleasure and nor worries nor pain, you would get bored and exhausted of positive emotions
after some time. The small worries and challenges in your everyday life, like stubbing your
toe, waiting in line, or having to do chores, would make a utopian life interesting and just
difficult enough for there to be emotions besides happiness, which would enhance the positive
feelings even more.
Secondly, our technological progress (often a big part of utopias) will have to end at some
point, if it were up to me. Up until developments like space travel, the cure for aging and body
enhancement it would increase my well-being (this point could be from 100 to thousands of
years away or never even occur). But to some to degree I would need the world to still
strongly remind me of the early 21st century, for me to see it as a Youtopia. I simply would
not want to live in a world where I would be fed the possibly most delicious food and I would
lay on pillows with unimaginable comfort, without me having to move a muscle. I would
want to have to run after a bus, experience failure and modest diseases and feel sad
sometimes, just to feel alive. I would want to drive to somewhere for hours instead of flying
there in fifteen minutes. It may seem weird not wanting to have this futuristic technology, but
in my current utopia, formed today, I do not think of examples of this technology, but rather
of an improved continuation of my current status quo. Also, you would probably miss a lot of
opportunities and experiences in life if technology reached a certain level, overprotecting and
spoiling you.
What I am trying to say with that, is that as soon as humanity’s worst flaws like racism,
corruption, war and generally hateful or greedy behavior were somehow extinguished from
the earth, a utopia could be already reached for me by being an almost perfected version of
my current situation. It‘s very difficult to find a perfect world that reaches a very high level of
well-being for me and others, by still being flawed. The task of finding the right proportion
between perfectness and flaws is the hardest part to me. But before aiming to reduce
perfection we should maybe rather work to achieve it in the first place.