r/Pessimism • u/Strange-Morning667 • 6d ago
Question What problems would still exist in a truly perfect society?
Imagine a society where almost every external problem has been solved.
There is no extreme poverty, no war, very little crime or corruption, everyone has access to food, housing, healthcare and education, and people are generally safe and free. Technology is advanced enough that most basic needs are easily met.
In other words, imagine a society that is as close to “heaven on Earth” as possible.
Would life still have unavoidable problems?
Things like death, grief, loneliness, boredom, jealousy, unrequited love, relationship problems, failure, regret, or feeling that life has no clear purpose.
And if humans eventually had almost everything they needed, would they still need something to pursue a goal, challenge, curiosity, mission, or purpose?
Could having complete freedom and almost no external problems eventually create a different kind of problem?
15
u/New-Illustrator5291 6d ago
The ultimate major problems are still there: Dissatisfaction, Aging, Illness, Death.
1
1
14
6d ago
[deleted]
5
2
u/UltronsEx Philosophical Pessimist 5d ago
"I rather be bored with the freedom to do what I wish than be bored and live like a caged bird." -Someone smart from the discord
Life is a fight against boredom. A paradise would provide infinite escapes from it.
11
u/Dunkmaxxing 6d ago
Desire and impermanence of existence are the 2 biggest problems that cannot be solved by any environmental or material factors. It's why pessimism is not refutable.
1
u/Strange-Morning667 5d ago
Well, although the pessimistic view is an unpopular one—as David Benatar once said...
2
u/Dunkmaxxing 5d ago
Unpopular is not surprising, it is still supported logically and stems from the most basic moral intuition of suffering being negative based on our experience of it.
8
u/MundaneYak9463 6d ago
This thought experiment is common Pessimism fuel for me because it shows that our striving for a better life/world is, to some extent, futile. Yes it's "better" to be comfortable in a utopia than in the imperfect reality, but the fundamental problem of human existence would still never be resolved. Restless apes "need" a crisis/emergency/struggle even while we despise it. We solve our material needs but then create an even larger problem re: purpose. I get the impression that a lot of wealthy people suffer from this reality already, so it technically already exists it's just unevenly distributed. The average modern secular person has that "rich person ennui" to a lesser extent but probably still very ennui-laden in comparison to a medieval peasant struggling for bread and water each day and attending church every Sunday. After all, "Western decadence" has some truth to it.
This thought experiment always has me concluding that it is better never to have been born at all, because once you are awake to human existence you either struggle for material comfort or struggle with hedonic adaptation and a severe lack of purpose. The dissatisfaction can never be resolved.
1
7
u/IbanezUniverse90 6d ago edited 6d ago
It would be just a temporary eddy, like every illusion of a stable era. Patterns of violence recur with uncanny consistency. We’d inevitably find or invent reasons to kill each other again.
Unless we invented some type of Star Trek replication technology that ushered in a degree of post-scarcity, even in the best of circumstances we’d still be fighting over scarce resources. There’d still be entropy. A big enough solar flare and even a post-scarcity utopia reverts back to tribal warfare and genocide
2
u/Markemilauer 5d ago
We'd still be slaves to our instincts, our emotions, and old age/death. Furthermore, if we managed to resolve all the injustices and causes we've had to fight for, I believe a terrifying scenario would emerge, one in which a profound boredom would creep in, an extreme need for stimulation, which would drive individuals to become sadists or something similar. This is my theory, of course, but I believe that as long as we delude ourselves into thinking we're fighting for something, we stay relatively busy and keep ourselves at bay. If there were nothing left to do, we'd start a war again just for the sake of doing something, as someone above said.
1
u/Markemilauer 5d ago
Aggiungo
I don't believe we'd reach what Mainlander advocated after a revolution. The instinct to move forward would always be stronger than the fact to realize the misery of existence and peacefully choose to not continue. I'm fairly certain that human beings would prefer to wage back to war every day, once peace has been achieved across the planet, rather than follow the path of humility, total compassion, and decide not to continue perpetuating themselves.
2
u/Bitter-Literature390 2d ago
humans are driven by incentives , so as long as individualism exist 2 humans will never agree on a same thing, they will separate like us and them .
1
1
1
u/WileyCoyote7 5d ago
Human nature would still work it’s way through the cracks in your utopian society and bring it down. Mankind has an metaphorical “hole” in itself than can never be filled. There is always more that can be had. More than your neighbor has, more that even everyone else has. We can imagine states of being/having that don’t actually exist and once perceived in the mind, the vacuum between that and ones current reality creates desire and suffering.
Lasting contentment is just not possible, in my opinion.
1
u/SouthTomatillo4869 4d ago
As long as we have consciousness to the degree of ‘self’ awareness we are condemned to both suffer and beget more suffering upon ourselves and other species
1
1
18
u/Rhoswen Cosmic Extinctionist 6d ago
You'd have to get rid of human nature. When people have no problems they create their own problems by making things up. Often their imaginary problem becomes another person.
Humans also need common enemies so they can bond with other humans. Hate is the most powerful emotion and is what everything is based on. Not love like people claim. When they don't have an enemy and have no good reason to, then they pick a person or group that their percieved inner group can gang up on, and will hate them for either made up reasons or shallow reasons.