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Old 12-06-2012, 12:18 AM
 
12 posts, read 56,903 times
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This thread started out as a post to another thread I initiated a few weeks ago called "Seeking my utopia: No smoke, No drink, No lies, No rules... No place?" While composing that post, it became rather unwieldy and expanded to include not only refinements of the original request, but also a critical addition, all of which caused me to re-inaugurate the thing under a new name instead...

Thanks for the many thoughtful, generous – really, in some cases truly telepathically astute replies to my initial missive (see the original thread). I can't say I didn't chuckle outloud for a couple of em. Certainly yes, Scandinavian parts of Europe and North America, and -- those jewels of insight, the Afro-Islamo spots... Also, thank you Australia, New Hampshire, oh wait... channeling Alanis and Howeird Dean there!... Some fun (and verging on useful) replies and I hope my current input moves things along further, allowing more specificity. (I'll eventually do a separate thread on the "new dimension" in any event.)

As it seems to me, truly helping someone find that special place -- and not just utopia in the general sense -- requires at least some knowledge about/feeling for the person. So I’ll leave some pointed and suggestive reactions/remarks and then a reworking of the mission.

Some of you picked up on my meticulous intellectual conscience and others of you reminded me of the way folks reacted to prompts like these (of any kind, really) when I lived in eastern/central/oh hell, Europe: count on someone extracting the most sinister, mutually unflattering and incriminating interpretations from things. This is actually very germane: Utopia will require close proximity to that stuff -- just not up to my ears in it, as I was in SOME parts of Europe (Poland, I’m lookin at you!).

It's an important (I mean relevant) fact that I'm proud, not disappointed, to find people simply equating alcohol avoidance with alcoholism. Have you never been mellow (unaided)? Have you never been wholesome? I mean post-puberty? It's not that I can't drink it, won't drink it, or don't like alcohol-based beverages -- it's that I'm much more likely to fall off my high horse if I DO, and we can't have that can I?!

The ‘relevance’ I just mentioned is now a good spot to introduce the main additional ‘revelation’ to the thread: namely that I seek a place personally ‘disturbing’ in a particular way. This might fall under the heading: “Headgame or Mentality Conditions.”

I am seeking a place where the yearning for “my utopia” flies particularly fruitfully, if not sweetly, in people’s faces – kinda as it did here for some posters. I mean that my emotional investment (“care” if you like) in achieving my idiosyncratic utopian goals (whatever their specifics -- although clearly they can also play a role) is perceived to be stronger than others’, indeed also stronger than any of our other more ‘mundane’ goals as well. You could gloss this as “ambitious” if you want, but it has the singular element that the aggregate affect of the desiderata, and the evident zeal to 'find them,' is to register as ‘threatening’ in some very general way, whereby people get ‘defensive.’

As you see, there’s nothing either explicitly political or religious per se in this, these are merely my personal preferences. Now, this is not something I just made up, but rather something I’ve already experienced as variable among cultures, but consistent within cultures. I’d prefer to withhold elaboration about these cultures for the time being, but I’ve already alluded to the European subcontinent in this regard above, and I will again further below.

So, for my utopia to work I need to be around people who “disturb” me in a very specific way – most to the point: whose disturbance in reaction to me disturbs me. I find it very stimulating (to the point of elated intellectual fecundity) to be around a set of traits that we might cluster as "the perception of “presumption” or “conceit”" -- both them of me, and me of them, but it's a pattern beyond me as well. Consider it a kind of philosophy of mind… I mean that the people REACT to things (my things particularly, but as can be shown, generally too) with this theme as a salient -- THE salient -- determining dimension. In other words, everything/most things can be demonstrated to be colored by/reduced to this dominant perception.

Some of you will know the Nordic term "Janteloven" or "Jantelagen" aka "tall poppy syndrome"... Some of you may also see the relation of this term to that oft cited critique of American libs/lefties whereby for all their purported compassion, they show little tolerance for profound disagreement... And as just one more ‘hint’ on this matter: I’ll venture to say that, for example, Brazil would score low on this, as would Russia and Germany. The Nordic and former Communist block countries much higher.

We could include the term “grandiosity” as it fertilely has the double sense of both actual scope of ambition as well as pretension of ambition. Some countries have a grandiose history/culture and some much less so, just like I can hardly come across as anything other than grandiose – which latter fact is undoubtedly one key reason for what I’m up to. I guess one way to say it is that I’m interested in how people can interpret (react to) a claim/display of ambition as by itself a (pretentious or otherwise threatening/disturbing) claim to distinction. So I need to be around people who do perceive things that way a lot.

I don't want to say much more now about all this here, except that my long research shows that this trait is not randomly distributed, though of course it's ubiquitous in its own way... Hence it’s worthwhile to try to run it by you. I don’t mean to be cryptic about it, but my entire project must include this ‘10th dimension’ if utopia is ultimately to work out, so please forgive so haphazard an explication of such a personal matter.

Back to the easy stuff: likewise as drinking, "no smoking" needn't entail anti-smoking laws -- okay I coulda phrased it better in the OP. There are places (aren't there??) where people SYSTEMATICALLY, ie, by cultural predilection, choose not to smoke, not due to social coercion but simply by enlightened free choice! Wow! Yeah! SUCH an idealistic imagination!... My research shows California, Utah, Colorado, Canada and Sweden in the Western world as large places with lowest incidence, setting aside local variations. (I've ruled out Africa as too 'undeveloped,' serendipitously healthy habits notwithstanding.)

Those old enough already know that among the most (lucky!) striking American socio-cultural facts of the last 50 years is the radical shift in the collective habit of cigarette smoking. Yes, I know it's changing everywhere, but not fast enough for me. And so I'm eagerly awaiting the addition of "% smokers" to that dandy new CD splash page census tool. Meanwhile Wiki’s a decent resource and jibes well with my experience at both state and international levels. Here again, for another brief window on my madness, I will, in this utopia, be testing the hypothesis that this, too, is driven by an underlying inexorably evolving ‘narcissism’ strain…

So let's review: I seek to OPTIMIZE -- trade-offs switched "ON" and in full effect -- NOT "fit these pathologically rigid criteria"... You know, like that simplex algorithm for linear programming we all learned in B-school?

I list below, then, a sloppier/simpler/general revision of the first post and annotate with exemplifying locales...

I’m seeking a place where:

People have good health habits... ie, have the vanity or good sense or indoctrination – and of course the material capital, to actually take care of their bodies as a priority -- the rationale is not the point: old-school peasant style like those old Dannon commercials can do the job as easily as PoMo-self-obsession -- it's the same yogurt I'm after... Probably there will be some gyms around, but definitely in utopia there’s no stigma in orienting your life around your own health. (Read: there’s no stigma orienting your life around making yourself specifically 'better’ than others.)

People don't smoke... Yes in Calabasas, California you can't even smoke on the street, but that's offset by the general air pollution and the otherwise low-scoring metropolis in which it’s embedded. Many Euro places seem a nifty fit, but the smoking is really prohibitive. Sweden overall is good but I couldn’t walk two blocks in Stockholm without getting a smoke-slap or three – while meanwhile here in my current soCal abode (low desert) I can go weeks with nary a molecule!

As you can perhaps imagine from my idiosyncrasies so far, I have always felt comfy with the krauts, but you coulda choked on the smoke in Tegel on my one day in Berlin, tho Hamburg and Frankfurt were better overall. This is where the specifics matter most: I already have some good leads (which have concurred largely with the few realistic (!) suggestions so far), but need to pinpoint things rather more precisely. Maybe I take it to the specific country level after this round?

This smoking matter is worth belaboring as it is a very high priority and would rate "A+" in the weighting if I had included “+” in the scheme. In fact it's the greatest single impediment to my moving away from California, in spots of which, smoking rates are among the lowest in the world on such a large scale and population density. And yes cars pollute less here per capita than Europe (diesel UGH), but there’s so DARN MANY “capita” in California who drive that THAT particular (car) advantage is pretty well wiped out.

People don't drink... Was weighted "B" but can be nixed on principle at this point, as some of your shoehorning efforts reasonably divined, though it can be brought back later as a "tie-breaker"...

People are sexually very open... Maybe a better thread title would've been: No smoking, No drinking, No lies, No PRUDES!... No place?"... I’m not anti-monogamy, nay, I prefer it, but getting there in my utopia requires opportunity for open and diverse sexual expression, with minimal social/cultural/personal stigma on it (ie, generally less than prevailing US stereotypes, for example). For orientation, I imagine Brazil at one end of the spectrum and Asian countries at the other, granting that urban places will generally be ‘freer’ in this respect regardless of time zone. Again Africa has to disqualify on unmodern material grounds.

People are honest and/or honor-bound... Yes, I feel the Islam but also Finland -- there's such deep value in the polarity and affinity between these two -- Finns and Muslims: simple honesty vs complicated honor etc. Corruption Perceptions Index is good here as a resource, but I hoped we might put a much finer point on it, especially vis-a-vis my aforementioned “presumption” thematic... Otherwise, it’s clear that the Nordic nations and perhaps New Zealand will top this dimension… The whole ‘corruption’ dynamic is really something ultimately to connect back up with the ‘presumption’ matter, but no place for that here now I guess.

Air is clean... Here again devil's in the details: Ambiently speaking Florida is better than California for the most part, for example, and yes judging by ambient air, Stockholm -- almost anywhere in Norden -- is, generally speaking, better than almost anywhere in USA, but as intimated earlier: I can’t walk around in Stockholm proper with impunity… Swedish exurbia then?

Modern architecture... I am not a fan of the historic/preserved old stuff in Europe, though naturally I can appreciate it. I just don't prefer to live in and around it. I prefer OPEN spaces and MODERN/Post-WW2 mid-century/postmodern approaches to urban planning...

So we arrive at yet another bottom line: Holding aside the cross-correlations, if we have to reduce the matter to a few aspects:

1. Low smoking, low alcohol/drugs in general.
2. Low corruption/high honesty
3. Clean air/modern infrastructure
4. Low religiosity/high sexuality
And the NEW point:
5. Disturbingly inclined to see things through the lens of grandiosity/arrogance/conceit/presumption.

Thanks again in advance for the time and consideration. After so long, I just had to give up editing and refining the thing, so please ask if anything seems more unworkably unclear than, finding this utopia seems unworkable.
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