Seeking Utopia

1. We should make our world as good as it can be made.

The world has been made better before, many times, by those who chose to make it so. It can be made better still. We are only at the end of that work if we choose to be, and we should choose to keep going. We’ve come this far because our predecessors wanted things to be better, and we should aspire to exceed them.

This commitment alone should be enough to build the rest, and all the rest is in pursuit of it.

We concern ourselves with everything that we can reach or change, and that can in turn reach us. There is nothing we can affect that cannot also affect us. Ultimately there is only one world, and each of us is a part of it, and every part of that world concerns all of us.

This forms a compact, or a reciprocal obligation, simply by ordinary cause and effect. In the end, we will get a world no better and no worse than the one we choose to build ourselves. If we choose poorly, the world we live in is the only punishment we will receive, and if we choose well it is our reward.

We choose the word “utopia” deliberately. It has often been a dangerous word, the promise of a paradise so perfect that it justifies any atrocity. Avoiding the word itself, however, has accomplished little. Many people, while chasing utopia under other names, have deprived themselves of both clarity of purpose and the knowledge of the past. We mean to take advantage of both, and so we state our goal plainly: We want to create and live in a utopia. We accept no limit to this pursuit other than the truly impossible. If we are never done creating utopia, the world we made would still be the best one we could have.

2. What we know must guide what we do, and what we do not know must constrain what we do.

This is simple, but many errors come from failing here. To make the world better, we must first understand what would be better and how to get there. This is a major part of all the work ahead, and if it is done poorly, the rest will be done poorly.

We are deliberately light in elaborating on “better” here because precisely what we are seeking is part of what we must refine. This code is meant only to be that which is already permanent and certain. Unshakeable certainty is generally a sign of error. One person’s certainty seldom deserves full weight, and no one’s perspective deserves none. We should expect to be wrong often, and truly certain rarely. You can only look for the best outcome given the information you have.

3. The cost of action must be measured carefully, and the cost of inaction must be measured just as carefully.

Every choice has costs, including the choice not to act. Inaction is a decision with consequences of its own, and those consequences must be weighed with the same rigor as any other. The deeper question is how much of our effort should go to understanding and how much to acting. There is no formula for this, but the bias should be toward understanding. Effort spent navigating is rarely wasted, while effort spent moving in the wrong direction compounds.

Each of these can be mismeasured. Action can be treated as inherently risky when it is not, or as inherently safe when it is not. Inaction can be mistaken for stability when it is decay. Deliberation has a cost, and at some point to refuse to decide is to decide to do nothing. You can only weigh the costs you can see with the certainty you have, and then you must choose.

4. The future must be built from and in the present.

What we make of the present, we make of the future, and our future is made in the present.

The future is more uncertain than the present, and it is more uncertain the further into it we look. Any action we take now for benefit in the future must be discounted by this uncertainty.

We know with certainty one important thing about the future. It is an extension of the present, and is created within and from the present. What we build now can persist indefinitely, and what we discard now can be gone forever. If we make our world crueller, our future will tend to breed cruelty. If our world tends to better everyone’s lot, we can carry that character into the future. There are no clean breaks and no fresh starts; there is only one world with one future. Those here now are those who can build our better world, and as far as possible, who we are building it for.

5. Better has to mean better for everyone.

“Our world” has to include everyone in it. This is the most basic pledge to cooperate with one another. Such a compact is the bedrock ethos for any collective that has ever functioned well. We simply broaden its scope to match our reach. No one should sign onto a world that excludes some from its benefits, because it can also choose to exclude them.

To make things better for everyone is the natural basis for cooperation. It is not necessarily the most efficient way to run the world, and that is a price worth paying. The intention must be for everyone to do well, and to do well by them. Anyone who narrows who benefits is telling you who they are willing to sacrifice, and that they are ultimately willing to sacrifice you. No one should follow or ally with anyone who announces they’re a traitor before they begin.

6. Conflicts must be resolved fairly.

People’s interests conflict, sometimes fundamentally, and resources, no matter how vast, are always finite. Better for everyone means resolving those conflicts fairly and well. We must be willing and able to make difficult choices with the good of each individual in mind. Like “better”, “fairly” has no concise definition that we can write down here. Achieving fairness requires judgement and effort in every case where it is in question. If we assume growth will always outrun scarcity, or that virtue by its nature banishes conflict, we give up on solving these problems, and will not.

7. How people live must be their own choice.

People must be guaranteed more freedom than they have ever had, both from prohibition and to act as they wish. If anyone is limited in any way without good cause, the world isn’t better for everyone. Autonomy and the desire for autonomy are fundamental rights. Any institution or individual trying to limit another’s actions must have good cause, and the standard of proof must be very high. Oppression by those with more power should be considered a more serious concern than interference from those with less. Where justification for constraint is weak or absent, the constraint must not stand.

8. Authority is justified only by how much it makes the world better.

Making the world better requires choices that shape many lives at once, and the capacity to make them and carry them through is authority. The measure of any authority is the difference between the world it produces and the world that would exist without it. Authority that makes the world better than it would otherwise be is legitimate. Authority that does not is not. Great authority is only justified by great benefit. No other justification is sufficient, and no other standard is relevant.

This justification is bound, as each of these principles is, by the principles that precede it. Where the concern is especially great, it is also bound by those after it. Although we generally leave defining what “better” means to later practice, we must be clear here. Authority must ensure, so far as possible, that the benefit which justifies it is universal, fair, and respectful of autonomy. Authority that violates these principles is not making the world better, no matter what it claims. An authority that produces great total benefit while breaking these constraints has broken the code.

9. Utopia must have a code.

Written codes, from broad principles down to minute instructions, are how visions and ideas can be made solid, enduring, and legible. Written codes crystallize what has been learned and what should be done, carrying it into the future with a minimum of ambiguity. Such codes are the basis for any form of organization that persists. Anything without an explicit code cannot be expected to survive, or hold to any principles it may initially claim. What is not bound by any explicit code tends with time to permit anything and forbid nothing, and there is no way of detecting when it starts to drift.

This piece is intended as the beginning, or the core, of a code. Something must be permanent and foundational. We intend these principles to serve as that foundation. This code should operate well as an ethos for small groups or large ones, and for short stretches of time or long ones. On top of such a stable foundation, more specific instruments will be needed to extend, interpret, and carry out this code. Deeper layers of the code should be slow-moving and difficult to change so that they can more forcefully constrain what is built on them. Shallower layers can be fast-moving, frequently added to or taken from as needed.

Anyone who reads this foundation in good faith should be able to recover the intent behind it, and no good-faith attempt to follow this code should arrive at a world it would be rational to reject.

10. Authority must be vested only in institutions that uphold the code.

Codes live in the hands of those who carry them out. For this code to matter, it must guide action, and it must be extended to guide action well. Those who dedicate themselves to this work are how the code is made real. Authority belongs only to institutions that do this work, and to no others.

This demands good faith. An institution that follows the letter of the code while betraying its spirit is not upholding it. No text, however precise, can survive a reader determined to misread it. To see the code succeed, we need institutions genuinely aligned with what the code is trying to do.

Institutions tend to be self-perpetuating. We must work to build them correctly now, with the right code and enough flexibility to navigate what lies ahead.

11. Those upholding the code must be held to the code.

The code must apply first and most to those entrusted with it. Their behavior is what our institutions are built from, and so the material the code itself is built from. An institution whose agents are exempt from the standards they enforce has already broken the code, whatever else it may accomplish. That which claims to be bound by this code and isn’t should not be trusted.

Accountability must be an ongoing practice. Where reliable accountability has been achieved, it has been through redundancy, adversarial structure, and ultimately those in control choosing to keep their institutions alive and true. This is an engineering problem, and it belongs in the institutional layer, not in the code itself. Someday our institutions may achieve such integrity that this problem can be considered solved.

12. Utopia has enemies. Those who work to prevent it will have to lose.

Utopia cannot have two skies; our world does not have two futures.

There are those who hope to reach the future as conquerors, or who think that the cruelties of the present cannot or should not be fixed. They are the enemies of the utopian project, and only the more dangerous for sometimes seeming to be utopians. Their visions of the future must die if the pursuit of utopia is to live. If we are completely committed to utopia, our commitment against these enemies must be equally complete. This is required to reach our goal, and is not a license beyond it. We are delivering a better world for everyone. That world’s enemies are included in it, and they are enemies only as long as they can and do oppose the project itself.

Those who would genuinely embrace a utopia but who disagree about its details or how to reach it are not enemies. Everyone who sincerely wants a better world will end up under the same sky in time. No one should be expected to predict the future exactly, and no alliance should require people to follow exactly the same vision. Our pursuit of utopia cannot be mired in dogma, and good faith disagreement cannot be heresy. Enemies are only those who stand in opposition to a better world in principle, whose “better” requires someone else’s lot be worse, or who are simply lying about wanting a better world.

Most will neither pursue utopia nor oppose it, and they cannot be required to. Utopia must be built for everyone. Not taking part or being unable to is not opposition, and must never be treated as if it is. For many, all that can be asked of them is that they live well. The well-being of those who simply live in the world we build is the best measure of whether we are building a good one.

Everything done in the name of utopia must be bound by this code, and in conflict most of all. That which is permitted in conflict is what our institutions will be built out of. This code defines what victory is, and to compromise is to lose, whatever else is gained. The world we build is the only argument we make, and it must be one that everyone would see, and know was good.

Let us meet on the path to utopia.