{"id":4738,"date":"2015-06-08T12:26:40","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T12:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/?p=4738"},"modified":"2022-10-19T20:34:47","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T20:34:47","slug":"utopias-and-six-generations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/?p=4738","title":{"rendered":"Utopias and six generations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Looking back six generations is a \u2018utopian trick\u2019. And looking back at the last six generations suggests that capitalism might have been a transition.<!--more--><br \/>\n<em>by <a href=\"https:\/\/thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com\/2015\/06\/05\/utopias-and-six-generations\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Andrew Curry<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"ab-player\" style=\"background-color: transparent;\" data-boourl=\"http:\/\/audioboom.com\/boos\/3231732-utopian-tricks-thinking-ahead-100-years-and-back-6-generations\/embed\/v4?eid=AQAAAJNvaFX0TzEA\" data-boowidth=\"100%\" data-maxheight=\"300\" data-iframestyle=\"background-color:transparent; display:block; min-width:300px; max-width:700px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/audioboom.com\/boos\/3231732-utopian-tricks-thinking-ahead-100-years-and-back-6-generations\">listen to \u2018Utopian tricks &#8211; thinking ahead 100 years and back 6 generations\u2019 on audioBoom<\/a><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">(function() { var po = document.createElement(\"script\"); po.type = \"text\/javascript\"; po.async = true; po.src = \"https:\/\/d15mj6e6qmt1na.cloudfront.net\/cdn\/embed.js\"; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(\"script\")[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();<\/script><br \/>\nDanny Dorling has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/?p=4712\">posted the audio of the talk he gave in Bristol<\/a> recently on \u201cUtopian tricks\u201d, and it is worth a listen. It\u2019s subtitled, \u201cthinking ahead 100 years and back six generations,\u201d and therefore links to a couple of my previous posts on here: on <a href=\"https:\/\/thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com\/2007\/11\/29\/thinking-about-long-term-futures\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">six (or seven) generations<\/a>, and on <a href=\"https:\/\/thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com\/2010\/09\/04\/the-1910-time-traveller\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">looking forward<\/a> a hundred years.<br \/>\nHis argument is that utopia is a journey, not a destination. We tend to look forward a hundred years, as Keynes did in his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.econ.yale.edu\/smith\/econ116a\/keynes1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">famous \u201cgrandchildren\u201d essay<\/a>, which looked out from 1931 to 2031 (a date which Keynes\u2019 critics sometimes overlook). It\u2019s a shorthand, as Dorling said, for \u201cafter I am dead\u201d. When we go back, we tend not to go further back than six generations, or two hundred years. Which reminded me of one of Paul Saffo\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adaptiveinsights.com\/uploads\/news\/id227\/HBR%20Six%20Rules%20for%20Effective%20Forecasting.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">rules of forecasting<\/a>: look twice as far backwards as you look forwards.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4739\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4739\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4739\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/image1-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Source: Soho Theatre\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/image1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/image1.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-4739\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Soho Theatre<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>Reimagining the present<\/strong><br \/>\nThese are tricks, but they are tricks about putting enough distance between the present and an imagined future to be able to reimagine the present. Dorling said he\u2019s been writing some pieces for an anarchist magazine about those hundred year futures \u2013 on housing, schools, work and so on. His hundred-year future for housing was that a couple of teachers in Oxford might be able to afford a house in the city that was big enough to bring up a child in, though judging from the questons some of the audience missed his point here.<br \/>\nThere are geographical tricks to be had with time, as well, by looking at the places that are further ahead than we are, for example in Scandinavia.<br \/>\nThe benefit of going back a hundred years is that you can see what can change. The benefit of going forward a hundred years: \u201cWe have to go far enough ahead so it\u2019s very hard for people to say that\u2019s impossible.\u201c<\/p>\n<p><strong>World peak baby<\/strong><br \/>\nHe used the example of immigration, where if you go back a hundred years, or so, to just before the Great War, the only passports were internal passports within Russia. Elsewhere there was free movement of people (it\u2019s worth reading Joseph Conrad\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.online-literature.com\/conrad\/secret_agent\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>The Secret Agent<\/em><\/a> to get a flavour of this).<br \/>\nOf course, as demographics change, we need immigration more, as the UK has demonstrated recently. More broadly, Dorling observed, fertility levels in Europe are at 1.3 babies per couple. This isn\u2019t just an \u2018Old Europe\u2019 phenomena; in places like Iraq and Turkey fertility levels are below those in the UK. In some big Asian cities, it\u2019s now close to one.<br \/>\nAnd this linked to an important demographic point, which I\u2019ll come back to later in the post: \u201cWorld peak baby was in 1990. The world has the highest number of 25 year olds that it will ever have.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Journey, not destination<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4740\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4740\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4740\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/image2-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"Image from Utopia: typography and animation by Santiago Ismach. Via: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=auxpIrDRHo4 \" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/image2-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/image2.jpg 558w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-4740\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image from Utopia: typography and animation by Santiago Ismach.<br \/>Via: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=auxpIrDRHo4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=auxpIrDRHo4<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>So it\u2019s possible to look forward a hundred years and see a world without borders, as countries with low fertility levels \u2013 well below replacement \u2013 invite in new workers to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/uknews\/immigration\/10131876\/The-truth-about-immigration-its-good-for-Britain.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">help their economies<\/a>. And the purpose of such stories about the future \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/quotes\/369797-utopia-is-on-the-horizon-i-move-two-steps-closer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">journey, not destination<\/a> \u2013 is to get people to think and act differently now.<br \/>\nLooking back at six generations through a demographic lens, he argued, \u201cWe\u2019ve never had six generations where the basic beliefs of the meaning of life have been upended in each generation. \u2026 At sometime that complete upheaval of beliefs every generation has to end, because it\u2019s not sustainable.\u201d<br \/>\nAnd this linked to a couple of interesting ideas that emerged more fully during the Q&amp;A.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The end of the population boom<\/strong><br \/>\nThe first is the demographics of those last six generations. They are a time of consistent long run exponential population growth: from 1851-1971 the population increased each year by 2% per year. (In fact, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hardintibbs.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Hardin Tibbs<\/a> later told me, annual population growth worldwide peaked at 3.1% in 1963.) And then in the late 1960s, couples started having fewer children, because of the revolution in the position of women in society. And looking back, it\u2019s striking that Paul Ehrlich\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powerlineblog.com\/archives\/2015\/06\/whatever-happened-to-the-population-bomb.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Population Bomb<\/em><\/a>, now often derided, appeared just around the end of this long period of exponential growth.<br \/>\nDorling quoted Charles Darwin on algae blooms, and suggested that we\u2019ve had a human algae bloom, but that it was now settling down again.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Six generations of transition<\/strong><br \/>\nAnd this was the second idea: that this period of population growth was a transition. The only other time in human history we\u2019ve seen sustained population growth over six generations, he said, was duing the transition from hunter-gatherer to agrarian societies. We are, he said \u201cliving in a time of rupture\u201d. On this reading, capitalism (I might say industrial capitalism) is a transitional phase, fuelled by population growth, between two different forms of social and human organisation, and it is coming to an end. Of course, others, such as Immanuel Wallerstein, have also argued this. If so, we need utopias more than ever.<\/p>\n<p><em>Danny Dorling\u2019s talk was part of the \u201cUtopias, Temporalities and Futures: Critical Considerations for Social Change Symposium\u201d at Bristol University, from the AHRC \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/connected-communities.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Connected Communities<\/a> programme. The image at the top of the post is from the Soho Theatre\u2019s production of Utopia in 2012, and is used with thanks.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Source: Andrew Curry (2015) Utopia and Six generations, June 5th, blog entry; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com\/2015\/06\/05\/utopias-and-six-generations\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com\/2015\/06\/05\/utopias-and-six-generations\/<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Looking back six generations is a \u2018utopian trick\u2019. And looking back at the last six generations suggests that capitalism might have been a transition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9296,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4738"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9495,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738\/revisions\/9495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}