tandempower

After watching the movie, The Giver, recently; it occurred to me that there is a fear-driven cultural resistance to utopian initiatives, maybe at least partly due to movies like this one. Often we hear criticisms of LCF where we are accused of pushing some kind of totalitarian utopia on others; and similarly, those who continue to validate automotive culture despite its many problems and unsustainability seem to take some comfort in the fact that reality is not utopian, because if it were it would be dystopian (ironically).

Interestingly, another movie, Tomorrowland, deals with this issue of utopias being dystopian, as does the Matrix. Actually, in Tomorrowland, the problem is actually presented as being that dystopian media has killed off the possibility of positive popular utopianism, but the theme is related.

In any case, The Giver portrays the future as one in which people live in bikeable/walkable communities. To what extent does such a movie cause people to question the goodness inherent in walking/biking for transportation and LCF generally? Maybe car-free living is otherwise so positive that people need some way of demonizing it in order to feel good about themselves and the driving-dependent realities they identify with.

What do you think? Do movies like this echo or resonate with a broader culture of resistance against LCF because it is utopian? Certainly, certain posters have suggested as much with their negative and hostile attitude toward LCF, especially where people would dare to suggest that broader popularity of LCF would be world-enhancing in a positive way. But do you think this negativity toward utopia is more widespread and forms a serious obstacle toward the popularization of LCF for the sake of achieving a better world (within a free non-authoritarian/non-totalitarian world)?


The Giver trailer
https://youtu.be/eTspwR5dEEk

Tomorrowland Dystopia Speech
https://youtu.be/hSMQC2q8NAc

JBHoren

I don't go to movies... haven't been to one since late-2004... rarely watch them on TV (for that matter, I don't watch much TV). Utopias? I prefer Utopia Parkway.

B. Carfree

The Giver looks a lot like This Perfect Day, by Ira Levin of Rosemary's Baby fame. It made a nice dystopian trifecta with 1984 and Brave New World, but none of those had bikes in them. Maybe we're getting somewhere here.

prj71

No thanks to LCF. Especially when it's 20 below zero with 30 mph winds.

Walter S

Serves to separate the men from the boys. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

prj71

Maybe you like frostbite and hypothermia?

I'll take my V8 4x4 truck with a warm heater vs. riding a bike in crappy cold weather.

corrado33

Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.

Cars and mass transportation will always be needed. Sometimes people like to travel 100s of miles at a time.

Walter S

Obviously low appetite for adventure.

Walter S

You can't go but one mile at a time.

wolfchild

You have absolutely no idea what you're saying because you've never done it yourself...I did ride in extreme cold for many years for both transportation and recreation so at least I can speak about it...You and some of your LCF comrades who live in warm climates wouldn't last for 10 minutes out in the real cold...Your theory of what separates men from boys is just a theory......"what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" should be an LCF slogan or motto on this forum because it seems that so many of you just love to practice self-flagellation and think that other people are impressed by your self inflicted hardships.

Walter S

Ha. I'm kidding.

corrado33

Agreed. I wouldn't want my mother biking out in -30 weather.

Walter S

She's good for -10 any day of the week though

loky1179

We already live in that utopia.

Note just a few features of this utopia from the attached photos.

• Space age materials that make -20° F feel like an 85° F summer day
• Googles that make that 30 mph wind feel like a tropical breeze
• Cell phone camera to take a selfie when you get home
• Bike light that has a bulb that NEVER burns out
• Street lights to provide ambiance
• Soft white material that makes any crash feel like you are landing on a pillow.

And, as I understand it, up here in Lake Woebegon we're all above average already.

I'll have to check out those movies. Haven't seen any of them yet.

tandempower

Thanks for tying the discussion back in to the thread topic . . . and for the positive reflections on technologies we too often take for granted, including snow!

KD5NRH

Sure you can; just dial it up to warp 10.

I-Like-To-Bike

I watched a movie that addressed a Hollywood vision of Utopia last night - Wee Willie Winkie, an adaption of a Rudyard Kipling story starring Shirley Temple and directed by John Ford.
Shirley's character got the warring Indian tribes and British army to shake hands and sit down to talk out their differences rather than continue fighting just by being her innocent cute self, and didn't even have to tap dance to convince them to do the right thing.

Movie featured train, elephant, camel, and elephant transportation, not many shade trees though.
And they were all car free.

prj71

I love adventure. Just not that kind.

For the record...I commute to work with my bike in the summer and I fat bike in the winter down to about 5 degrees. Below that temperature and no thanks.

Not everyone lives in a climate where it's warm all the time.

JBHoren

I lived in Alaska, twice -- the second time, 2009-2012 -- and had the rare pleasure to bike in winter several times during the second go-round. I have to say that doing so -- whether sporadically, or on a regular basis -- is an absolutely stunning statement for reality, over "utopia".

• The machinery required (expensive!)
• The maintenance required (regular, if not daily!)
• The commitment required (continual!)

Each of these -- individually, as well as collectively -- shows an incredible fortitude. Although the winds in Fairbanks are usually light (if at all), the chill factor created by bicycle riding at -30*F to -40*F temperatures (or colder) defies description. Add to that the weight of supermarket and/or other purchases, as well as the need for multiple trips, along with the commutes to/from work, and you've only begun to scratch the surface of a reality that "Reality TV" could not even begin to imagine, let alone, depict.

"Utopia" is for fantasy -- movies, television, song, and literature -- reality is all about those who do it, day-in and day-out, through all kinds of weather, by choice or by circumstance. As the Nike slogan reads, "Just 'Do It'".

(and a big hat-tip to wolfchild)

wolfchild

I don't think most people have a fear of LCF... What a lot of people fear is some of the wacky ideas which are being advocated by certain individuals on this forum.

Walter S

As though such wacky ideas might ever become reality.

I-Like-To-Bike

Both of you are correct; the unease with the wacky totally unrealistic "ideas" advocated and/or endorsed by a few zealots on this list is that these wacky unrealistic ideas, proposals and assumptions made up of whole cloth are espoused by the zealots and proselytizers as representing the thought processes that bicyclists, people do not own motor vehicles, and morally upright people either have or should have.

tandempower

I think and write to convey ideas, not represent anyone or anything. This thread is about utopianism and the fear of it propagated by certain types of media and ideology. You could call it "utopiaphobia" maybe, if that wasn't such an awkward word. I think it's fair to say that when you live without car, even if you don't explicitly say that you do it in the hope of positively affecting the world and future beyond yourself, you will encounter people who accuse you of trying to change the world for the better, as if that's a bad thing. Then, when you see movies like The Giver portraying utopian society as deceitful, abusive, oppressive, etc. and walkable/bikeable communities are part of what's being demonized, it begs the question whether demonizing LCF isn't part of the goal in making such a movie.

I think the reason such dystopian utopias hold popular appeal is that they make people feel better about themselves for accepting an imperfect world. E.g. if people drive and feel that there's a negative impact caused by driving, it makes them feel better to think that the (utopian) alternative is worse. Then they can pat themselves on the back and say at least they aren't given a daily injection to repress their natural emotions, as in The Giver. Suddenly, driving a car and everything else that's 'normal' seems ok because it's not as bad as an evil utopian world where mind control and murder are used to achieve the utopian goals.

badger1

What you refer to as a "fear-driven cultural resistance to utopian initiatives" is in fact simply a widespread (fortunately) suspicion of any individual or group purporting to be in possession of "the truth". That this suspicion, whether instinctive or the result of even a minimal, educated understanding of human history, is entirely warranted is beyond question.

Those with "utopian" visions who have somehow managed to gain the power to implement their "initiatives" have, without exception, inflicted deprivation and misery on their fellow human beings to a lesser or greater extent -- without exception. There is no evidence and no good reason, not one, to suppose that the implementation of any such vision, however mundane the field, will have any different result.

The dismissal of such visions here -- in the field defined by the rhetorical context of this sub-forum -- is simply good sense speaking out loud.

Dahon.Steve

The car-free life was the state of America for most of it's existence. The choice of transport for most of this nation's history involved animal labor. There was nothing wrong with this at all and if you read newspapers of the day, the populous had almost no desire or want for high speed locomotion. Living without a car was not utopian but a natural way of life.

However, since the 1920's we were promised a utopian world thanks to the automobile and mass consumption. However, world wide auto-mobility has come at a huge price contributing to the human suffering of millions. Fortunately, the younger generation is starting to see this motorcar utopia for what it is and it's the internet of all things that is liberating the mind.

Those of us who are able to live, work and play without a car do not need motorized utopia.