A meaning to life: Part 5 - A vision for an Utopia

At the end of part 3 I suggested:

ActualisationAnswer:   the answer to Meanlife is that each human should aim for self-actualisation- they should develop themselves and strive to achieve their potential.

In Part 4 I argued that the best thing we could do is to generalise the ActualisationAnswer - to make it possible for everyone to achieve self actualisation. In this post I'm going to go more deeply into what I think such a world would look like as well as well as articulate my plan for helping achieve this world.

What is an Utopia?

The word Utopia describes a community or society that is ideal or perfect. The term itself is meant to be ironic and means 'no place'. It was originally coined by the author Thomas Moore as the name of his 1516 book. The term is usually said with connotations of being unrealistic or imaginary. When utopias are depicted in literature, they are often shown to be only perfect on the outside, and deeply flawed within.

I'm a bit of an optimist so I would like to take the challenge head on - I'd like to live in a world that is utopian or at least in a world that is much improved from our current. The first step I think is to discuss what it means for a society to be ideal or perfect. I've already argued previously that a society should be there to improve and make better the lives of its citizens. To make it better - I think - should be connected to the ActualisationAnswer - the society should help its citizens achieve their potential.

Now, I've indicated previously that I think actualisation is an important part of being happy, and I think one could quite easily argue that a utopian society is one in which everyone is really or even maximally happy. This of course requires us to assess the concept of happiness more deeply.

For brevity, I'm going to refer to the three kinds of theories of happiness as described by Derek Partfit in his book Reasons and Persons. 

1: Hedonism: happiness is about having more pleasure and less pain.

2: Desire fulfilment: happiness is about having one's desired fulfiled

3: Objective list: there exists a list of things that are good or bad for people, and happiness is about having the good things and not having the bad things.

The third kind is a little bit vague, so let me describe two common types of things that might be on this objective list. The first (call this 3A) is of course the Aristolean concept of Eudaimonia - broadly connected to self actualisation, but focussing heavily on the development of virtue. The second (call this 3B) is a more buddhist notion that focusses on ridding oneself of the three causes of unhappiness - aversion, craving and ignorance. 

I do think that each of these positions have their own problems, but I also think that these positions are somewhat consistent with one another and that a world that properly addresses all such options could be validly described as Utopian.

To give an idea of how this analysis might work, let's discuss a few cases that I would describe as non utopian because they fail.

Perhaps the easiest example is to talk about Nozick's experience machine. Imagine there is this machine that is able to simulate experiences perfectly, and that you could programme it to provide really enriching, pleasurable experiences. While this machine clearly maxes on hedonism and arguably desire fulfilment, it fails on 3A. If we are using the thing we are merely experiencing, but not actually doing something or having something. We aren't actually being virtuous or flourishing - we are just feeling like it. One could also argue that it fails 4A - we're fully buying into craving and we are living an ignorant life (depends if we recognise that the machine experiences are false).

Another example is to consider a world in which I have complete freedom and can do whatever I want. Suppose now that I have the desire to harm or kill others and I actually do so (thus meeting desire fulfilment). Should we consider myself as happy? This of course has the side effect of thrusting a negative freedom on others. Or suppose my desires are a bit more mundane - I might be an incredibly talented mathematician but instead I decide to sit at home and sleep my days away. My desires might be fulfilled but I'm failing on my actualisation. I think this also shows an important distinction when discussing happiness - the distinction between the state of being (e.g. I feel good) compared to the leading of a valuable life (e.g. I am doing good things).

A final example to consider is perhaps to consider the life of an army veteran that has saved many people but is actually the war. He might have achieved the best that he can do, thus reaching eudaimonia. Yet he might also experience PTSD and frustration that the war is ongoing. We could argue that he has failed the 1 (lack of pleasure), 2 (desires not fulfilled) and 3B (ongoing aversion of the mind).

What would a utopia that broadly satisfies these four definitions involve?

This will be tricky as although the four definitions are broadly consistent, it's a lot to discuss for each.

Let's look first at what I've previously discussed - Eudiamonia. I think there are some problems that need to be solved:

1) One needs the money to be able sustain their life as well as make purchases required to pursue their activities of choice.

2) One needs the time to be be able to pursue their dreams, passions and so on.

3) They need to be able to have the motivation and there needs to be no distractions.

4) They need to be able to identify what their dreams and passions are, and such activities need to be available in society.

I think normally one would expect the first problem to be solved by getting a job. Unfortunately, jobs are the single biggest consumers of time (as well as the most miserable activity of the day). So I'd expect in such a society there would need to be a way for jobs to be optional. One way of doing this would be for the government to provide resources unconditionally - either via a form of income or otherwise. That's a tall order because there needs to be a way for the government to make the money / resources - things that normally come from a functional economy where people have jobs.

An obvious solution to this would maybe be the leveraging of AI to generate economic surplus. We would somehow have AI replace people's jobs and use the technology to generate income and resources. I think we're still quite far from such a future and no doubt there will be various issues in leveraging this.

The third problem is interesting. Some people will already have the motivation and we can perhaps hope that given the time and resources, people will be able to follow it without distraction. For others this might be more difficult and the government might need to help them. This could be in the form of enrichment centres, guidance or so on. Possibly we could also just let people do as they wish, even if it involves traditionally 'waste of time' activities.

The fourth problem could be solved through government guidance. Maybe an enrichment advisor? Or maybe just a culture that really promotes pursuing one's dreams. One issue I anticipate is that some dreams and passions require a society we have now, but the changes in society might remove these options. For example some people might dream of a certain job, and this kind of utopia might not have those jobs. I think certain jobs still need to be available and they should be rewarded - we just need it to be in some sense optional. We're really catering for the individual who wants to pursue music but is forced into a corporate job. We assume that given enough money they can follow their music passion, even if they don't have the most glamorous life. 

There's also the problem of competition. Many of these dreams and passions are considered valuable because they are difficult or are the best. I think we need to retain these somehow - we need our achievements to be genuine, only then do we feel like we have achieved actualisation.

The other definitions

1: Hedonism

So with hedonism I've argued previously we need to have a balanced take. Certain pleasure is good and certain pleasure should be considered bad. For example we might argue that pursuing a life of drugs or 'induced pleasure' is problematic in some way (although maybe we want to give people the option of it still). The options for pleasure should be available in this ideal society, but we need to consider which ones.

I think at a basic level by providing money we ensure that people always have enough resources to survive and meet their minimal requirements. I don't think anyone is arguing that people should be starving. I don't necessarily think people should have superfluous money (as I suspect its not economically feasible and also takes away the joy of accomplishment), but they should be able to enjoy certain luxuries. I mentionde that some jobs should still be there - I think people there should be ways for people to 'earn' more luxuries if they want to have even more pleasure.

2: Desire fulfilment

I think the important thing is that people are given the autonomy and freedom to do what they want and at least attempt to fulfil their desires. Naturally some desires will be easier to fulfil than others - this will depend e.g. on how it influences and freedoms of others but also the nature of competition. I think having some kind of challenge is important - desires should be possible to fulfil but not trivially.

3B: Enlightenment

I'm focussing as before on the buddhist notion here. I think people should be given training on how to control their mind (and definitely research is needed here). They should be supported via e.g. mental health services and be able to live a calm and peaceful existence. People should live genuine lives, not artificial ones.

What's next?

I've articulated this world now and also mentioned various issues with it. I think it is likely that such a world is still quite far out, and many changes - cultural and material - are required to achieve it. I expect progress to be gradual, and likely turbulent.

I propose going for a double attack, addressing the cultural as well as the material changes required to get to this world.

First on the cultural - currently society is engrained with certain notions of success, and there is an expectation that you have to 'work for a living'. People are still largely obsessed with external, capitalistic notions of success. I argue that this does not provide genuine happiness and that we require a shift. We want people to take control of their lives and have freedom and autonomy, for them to be encouraged to pursue their dreams and passion. 

Writing this blog is one very small way to change our culture, but I think broader influence is needed. A few keys way stand out to me:

- Academic

- Media

- Personal

Academic influence is via writing and research. This could be in terms of books but it could also be living in the pop-academic space and talking about these issues. 

Media is focussed on the use of social media to achieve change. Blogging counts of course, but also things like youtube, instagram and so on. One should become a popular figure - an influencer - and push forwards these ideas to the world.

The final is personal, and I think this has limited impact. We talk about what we're doing and we try and encourage change in others. Hopefully this change spreads throughout the world.

Now on the material side there are a few key policies I think that are needed. The one's I'll discuss are the following:

- Work reform, including Universal Basic Income

- Job automation, including what happens to the unemployed

- Happiness based policy making 

- AI governance and proper use of technology

First on work reform, we obviously need to change the role of jobs in our society. We need a way for people to be able to fund their passions and experiences.

On Job automation, the vision I've described makes jobs optional because we're hoping to get economic surplus via other means (e.g. AI). I think it's already happening but we need to discuss what the impacts of job automation are, how it affects the unemployed and how we will support them to do other things.

In terms of happiness based policy making, this is a shift in government and society to do things that improve people's wellbeing and lives. Government currently focusses more on economic effort and it will take an internal shift to be able to change the purpose of policy making for the better. This is a more meta area.

AI governance is important because this future world likely relies on technology (largely AI?) to be able to sustain itself and ensure that individual people have the freedom to as they wish. We need to make sure we are careful with what we are doing and make sure that everything is still in line with our interests.

Conclusion

I've articulated what I think a utopia looks like and different dimensions that we need to target it. My goal is to target both sides - I want to be an influencer and change our cultural views on this topic, but I also want to target the material side and actually exact change. I think doing both simultaneously is challenging but should be rewarding as it gives one the perspective on society as well as intellectual credibility to change the world.

That's my vision for now, let's see how it goes!

 

 

How consume cultural content?

In my last post I discussed in detail the three kinds of capital - economic, social and cultural, with a particular focus on the development of cultural capital. In this post I want to discuss some of the origins of this theory of cultural capital, the three different versions of cultural capital and the key of problem of consuming cultural content.

Origins

The term cultural capital is typically credited to the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu was interested in understanding why children with similar cognitive abilities (e.g. IQ) but different social classes ended up having vastly different life outcomes. In particular, how was it that the wealthy were able to 'socially reproduce' and pass on various advantages to their children. According to Boudieu, this was because the wealthy were able to endow their children with cultural capital. To Bourdieu, children from wealthy families entered school already prepared to succeed in it - they shared a common mode of speech, style of interaction and have prior awareness of both the ways of teaching and content of the syllabus. The idea therefore is that these children come with something - a form of capital.

Now, my interest is primarily in discussing cultural capital in a more general sense - not focussed on educational attainment but as a form of capital that individuals can accumulate, spend and convert. I see his analysis as descriptive - it provides a way to see the world. I won't comment here on to what degree it is metaphysically substantive.

 

Bordieu's three kinds of cultural capital

Bordieu distinguishes between three kinds of cultural capital, which I will denote as follows:

<1>: The embodied state

<2>: The objectified state

<3>: The institutionalised state

Let's discuss these in order.

First with the embodied state (<1>) - this refers to capital that is linked to the body and is internal. It refers to our knowledge, our skills, our experiences. One important aspect of <1> is the difficulty in cultivating it. I cannot simply pass my knowledge to you - you have to somehow cultivate it over time. The somehow of this is extremely important and I'll discuss it in more detail later in this post. The development of <1> is what I describe as cultural enrichment.

The objectified state (<2>) refers to cultural artefacts - for example books, paintings, sculpurse. Rather facetiously - if it's British Museum, it's probably this second kind of cultural capital. What's interesting is the transmission of <2> objectified cultural capital. I can of course sell you a collection of paintings, but what is transferred is only the legal ownership of the artefact - not the means of 'consuming' the painting. This point about consumption is vitally important - imagine I sold you first edition copy of Descartes meditations in the original French. While the artefact has value in itself, if you're unable to read French then you cannot really consume it. To consume the book you will need to be able to understand French (and philosophy) to a sufficient level - part of your embodied (<1>) capital.

The third state (<3>) refers to recognition received by an institution, for example a qualification. The problem with (<1>) embodied capital is that it is a part of you - there's value but someone might not believe it (in comparison e.g. to (<2>) objectified capital). By having recognition from an institution, you can validate your capital. Qualifications are a form of a signal that tells onlookers certain things - here being my level of (<1>) embodied capital. It is important of course to distinguish the qualification from the skill - qualifications are external while skill is internal. You need to show someone your qualification for it to be of value (and in theory you can fake it), while your skill requires no witness.

Consumption of cultural content

Now that I've discussed the three kinds of cultural capital, I want to focus on what I describe as cultural content. Rather abstractly, I'm referring to the 'meaning' or 'value' behind cultural artefacts (<2>) or qualifications (<3>) that is amassed in the embodied state (<1>).

Let's return to my example of French. 

The embodied state (<1>) refers to my actual ability in French. For example how I am able to speak the language, how I am able to read French books, how I am able to understand native speakers and so on. 

The objectified state (<2>) might refer to all the French books or films I have. It could also refer to various French museums or artefacts. Note that such cultural artefact or films have some kind of content that I cannot fully access unless I'm able to actually French. 

Finally, the institutionised state (<3>) might refer to my French qualifications - a DELF exam or an A-level.

The key here is this idea of content -  the more cultural capital we have in the embodied state, the more we can content we can consume. It's worth highlighting here that there more forms of consumption than simply cultural artefacts - we can for example consume an interaction (e.g. a conversation with a French person) or an experience (e.g. a French film).Indeed, we can think of our ability to consume capital in the embodied state (<1>) as the way we can spend our cultural capital. We use to gain access to content that we would otherwise be restricted from.

A natural conclusion is therefore to think about how we can increase our cultural capital in the embodied state  (<1>). Well quite obviously to anyone who has tried learning a language, I need to consume more content. I.e. I need to speak more French, I need to read more French and so on. Note that there's clearly some kind of loop involved - develop <1> by consuming <2> and vice versa. Of course the more we develop <1> the more we are able to consume <2> and only with a sufficient amount of <1> are we able to legitimately develop <3>.

Now, the development loop for language learning is relatively, but other kinds of cultural capital are more complex to develop. For example, what does it mean to develop greater knowledge of a certain culture - what might it mean to learn how to be 'truly French'? 

Is it it about reading up on the country? Or does it involve living in the country and experiencing an specific lifestyle? What if I go to the country but never talk to anyone? Is that better than sitting in my UK home and watching videos about France? 

Without knowledge of how to properly consume content, we might struggle to develop wide cultural capital. I could visit the van Gough gallery every single day, but if I'm rushing through the paintings each time, am I really developing my cultural capital or understanding of impressionism? Is it wasted on me? They say practice makes perfect, but I think it is targetted or active practice that does so.

I went to visit the Angkor Wat recently spending a day looking at various temples. I spent around $40 on a day pass and $20 on a Tuk Tuk driver to take me around for the day. Why did I do this? Well aside from the fact that I thought it would be interesting (and a great photo opportunity!), I also believed that it would culturally enrich me on some level - but how? What is the difference between e.g. just looking at photos of Angkor Wat in comparison to seeing it in person?

Another way of framing this question – how do I consume the Angkor Wat?

On some level, this question seems bizarre – we do not consume a temple. The point however is that we can get more or less out of the experience of visiting Angkor Wat. It can add to my cultural capital to a large degree, or it can barely affect me. Think about the guy who visits each place and only takes a photo from the outside and then moves onto the next. What does he gain from the visit, except a bunch of photos (that are probably worse than the stock photos used for advertising the site)? It feels like this guy is missing out on something.

Reading online, I saw a bunch of suggestions on what to do when visiting Angkor Wat. They suggested sitting for a bit in each temple, looking around and feeling the atmosphere. They suggested hiring a guide to talk about the differences between each temple, and the history involved. They suggested looking out for specific inscriptures on the walls of the temple. These all seem like suggestions on how to more effectively consume the experience of viewing Angkor Wat.

I saw this interesting post the other day on viewing art that discusses various techniques one can use to view art - for example by looking the art medium and looking up the context of the art. I think that these are ways to improve our ability to consume art and hopefully get something more out of the experience.

I'll leave this post here with the key message that to properly develop cultural capital we need to invest in properly consuming content. In the next post I want to go into some more detail about the difficulty in determining the value of cultural capital and the resultant risk we incur when we invest in cultural capital.

What do I mean by cultural enrichment? To build cultural capital

What do I mean by cultural enrichment?

Cultural enrichment is a phrase I use frequently. I tend to use it to justify doing certain things, and as an end in itself. In this post I discuss the theory behind cultural enrichment and why I think it is important to seek.

The short answer to my title question is the following:

“To build cultural capital”

This of course leads to the next question – what is capital? Capital is often used in economics to refer to money, or resources of some kind. For example, a business needs capital (typically financial) in order to initiate running.

I tend to think of there being three main types of capital.

Financial capital

Social capital

Cultural capital

 

Let's survey them:

Financial capital is relatively self explanatory – it is about your financial power – how much money you have and your capacity to spend that money to achieve your means. Money that you cannot spend is not useful – liquidity is important. It's important to note that there can be some scaling benefits of financial capital – the more money you have the easier it tends to be to make more money. On the flip side, money scales with significant diminishing returns against happiness – you need a certain amount of money to be 'sufficiently' happy. More than that amount doesn't increase your happiness by much.

Social capital refers to your social power or rather, your network and your ability to leverage your network. What matters here is who you know and who you are. For example, connections can help you get a job or access to other special opportunities. Note there's a slight nuance here, we are talking about the 'value' of those in our network, but there multiple kinds of value. The obvious one is for example knowing royalty, a politician or a CEO. The perception is that such direct value can be exploited in some sense. In our current society that prides itself in meritocracy, we tend to think that such exploitation would amounts to nepotism. The second kind of value I'd mention is more indirect – it focuses more on the sort of knowledge and experience provided by those who you know. As we will discuss shortly, it is crucial that we can convert between different kinds of capital – almost like a form of currency exchange. The final kind of social capital is more matter of fact – having relationships is vital to happiness. Loneliness – literally – kills. Emotional support is very important.

I tend to think of cultural capital as as combination of the below:

Human capital: Our skills, experience and ability to do things.

Physical capital: Our physical and mental health as well as our physical and mental resistance and capability.

Cultural knowledge: Our knowledge, understanding and ability to engage in our culture and other cultures.

Some analyses would differentiate these three aspects instead of putting them all under the umbrella of cultural capital. The reason I don't do this is because I tend to view cultural capital as 'everything aside from financial and social capital'. Doing so allows me to categorise such capital in the following way:

A person with only physical capital is one who basically enters a new society with no experiences, skills and know no one. The only thing at their disposal is that they have the money to buy whatever they need. A useful example is to think of them as a rich tourist – they are vulnerable to being scammed but will get by regardless.

A person with only social capital is one who knows and is connected to important people, but they themselves have no skills, experience or even money. They get by because important people want them to. A useful example is to think of them as a CEOs son.

This then leaves a person with cultural capital as someone who has wide skills, experience and so on but have nothing otherwise. For example if we are transported into a new society with no money and knowing no one, it is our ability to adapt and thrive in said society.

Conversion

Let's discuss conversion – perhaps the most immediately obvious conversion is from financial capital to other forms. For example, if I have a lot of money I am more likely to be well connected with other rich and powerful people (perhaps via my business, or my job). I can pay people to get what I need. Furthermore, I can use money to help develop my cultural capital – I can pay for private tutors to teach me languages, I can get a personal trainer and a gym membership and I can go skiing on the weekends. It's worth highlighting that capital can take time to convert – we can't just amass huge amounts of financial capital and expect to be able to cash in instantly.

With social capital, we can more easily find useful opportunities. We become aware of the hidden politics behind organisations and power. We can for example get a well paid job leading to more financial capital. We can also understand more about the world by engaging with other people with cultural capital. Through this we can better understand what is valuable and how best to approach issues.

Finally with cultural capital, our skills and experiences can lead us to important opportunities. Through this we can meet interesting people and develop our network.

One of the big challenges with conversion is that it is difficult to measure. Financial capital has its own currency, while social and cultural does not. There's no obvious 'cultural currency' with an exchange rate to dollars. There's a sense that we need to trust we can do this conversion without knowing what the exact worth.

Cultural enrichment

We've now discussed the different kinds of capital as well as how conversion might work. I've mentioned earlier that to me, cultural enrichment is about developing one's cultural capital.

The question is therefore – how do we develop cultural capital?

Let's first discuss a few examples of cultural capital and corresponding ways to develop it.

• Awareness of other cultures, for examples their history, their norms, their state of affairs.

  • Developed by speaking to people from different cultures and reading their history. Visiting other places.

• Up to date knowledge of our own culture, for examples recent events and potential developments.

  • Developed by keeping up with the news, speaking to people around us and considering how issues might relate to one other.

• Skills and experiences in relevant areas, for example languages, technical abilities.

  • Pursuing education, in the form of courses, qualifications. Supplemented with practice.

• Social awareness and relatable experiences to establish common ground.

  • Practice engaging with a variety of people and trying out different things.

• Physical and mental capability to be able to follow through with potential options.

  • Physical training and having a good mental health. Developing a solid baseline to easily try out new activities.

So when I say cultural enrichment I mean doing some of the above activities to develop cultural capital.

It is clear to me that many of these things will 'cost' or require other kinds of capital to achieve. For example, visiting other countries will obviously incur travel fees. Indeed, the time itself to pursue these activities can be costly as we need to sustain ourselves. Some of these activities are much better done (or outright require) other people to support us. Having friends from other cultures is very valuable to support cultural understanding and to accurately pinpoint the most valuable things to do.

I've also discussed previously how many of my goals are centred around eudaimonia – a 'flourishing' sense of happiness. I've already mentioned how money in itself has rather diminishing returns for happiness. So from my perspective it is best a certain point and then invest any excess into building social and cultural capital instead.

My career break is an example of my pursuit of cultural enrichment. I am trading off my financial capital (savings, and lost earnings from not working) in order to develop my cultural capital by developing myself and travelling around the world. It is an investment with unclear return – but one that I am willing to bet will be valuable in the future.