12 Modern Delusions that must be challenged. #6

No 6 : In the modern world we do not need utopias.
Dreaming, the aspiration to a better world and the imagination thereof, is a necessary part of the human condition. There is nothing better than dreaming - this is my area. Dreaming, literally being a visionary - the Bible is littered with them, from Joseph in the Pharoah's prison to Daniel in the lion's den, Jacob with his dream of the ladder up to heaven and angels ascending and descending on it. This is not religion by the way, this is visions, this is revelations, hated by religious authorities because visions, dreams subvert the orthodox and inspire us mortals to great happiness.

My Reply:

Utopian idealism is indeed in my view one of the prime motivators of a great many of the most important works of an individual. In the day to day, we might not ascribe our actions to any kind of "make-the-world-better" ideal, but we can still derive a great sense of purpose from the notion of a potential for the ideal in our actions. I think this ties in with the concept of the fall from grace, and the perfect and harmonious afterlife. Nothing can be made perfect in this non-Platonic world, but in striving to do so we express a desire, even a need to shape what we do in the image of an ideal of what we do (and perhaps we reflexively express this ideal of doing in the concept of heavenly paradise). In other words there is the thing done, and the idea of the thing done which supplies the conceptual mould, if you like.
Where does the idea of the thing done come from?

Some posit the existence of multiple realities [note this is not multiversism] - the reality we live in, that of classical physics and comprehensively measurable macroid entities; the reality of matter, quantum physics and uncertainty of measurement; and the reality of perfect concepts, with no need for measurement. This latter reality is simply that of mathematical entities, that by their descriptions give us the tools to explore them with infinite precision, without need for measurement, modelling or translation. This 'world of ideas' as an actual, self-contained reality is a view for the ardent logical anti-positivist (if such a thing is possible), and is not really necessary for this argument. The point is that the world of ideas exists, even if only as a metaphor, and it is here we must look to begin to understand how closely idealism entwines with cognition and the human condition.

I believe the active aesthetic/discriminatory faculty is a key part of human cognition and memory, which together serve as the developmental basis for the emotional faculty that eventually becomes something of an autonomous control function. This aesthetic faculty is sitting somewhere behind the raw data input from the senses, helping to process our impressions of the world around us so that for each person, the exact working of their aesthetics ends up being a factor in shaping their very reality. A powerful stanchion under my reasoning comes from here - a hypothesis on the working of the human eye and brain.

This is again leading to an under-developed idea of mine, so working step by step toward the ultimate implication could be doomed. Instead, I will go straight to the point with what I have laid out so far. If you take this occasionally expressed yearning for the ideal which permeates the human condition, and allow that it may be related to the aesthetic faculty inherent in the human cognitive processing pathway, it sets up the argument that utopianism is in fact a biological imperative rather than an unscientific expression of romanticism. Philosophically, it has been said that quality is the arbiter of a conscious reality - socially, as here, this translates into the maxim that the ideal must always prefigure the practise.