I suspect that some sort of biologically driven urge to dominate the gene pool will keep humanity from ever reaching any form of utopia. As long as we are programmed to compete with each other, this will always reflect in the way society is organized.
To me it seems that all of these utopian scenarios have in common that people allow others to be successful, expecting the same in return. This only works if everyone behaves this way and seems easy to abuse by people taking advantage of others. In other words, we don't need to worry about retaining unhappy feelings at work, others will make sure that you will remain unhappy at work. Or you will become someone that makes others unhappy at work.
It may work on a small scale, here and there, but in general on a global scale I believe we are doomed to live in an endless cycle of evolutionary driven struggle of some sort. I do hope I am wrong, but in any case we are a long way from reaching it, socially, not so much technically. Which makes me a bit sad at times.
The core problem of utopias is that they take one dimension of human character and push it to its extreme. We are both competitive and cooperative beside many other things. On top of that, the same person can become/look as if more competitive or more cooperative in different groups. That is, even in a group of heavily cooperative people the one with more competitive tendencies will be described as competitive. This may even results this guy being expelled from the group.<p>Many novels and movies use this to build their story. In a "bad" world a guy saves everybody or in a "good" world things go wrong because one of them starts doing "bad" things.<p>The modern approaches we take give more emphasis to the differences of people in both work environment and society.
The problem is when people expect work to be pleasurable. It's good when it is is, and it's something to strive for, but the reality of work is that some of it is unpleasant.<p>Software development in particular is hard. The problem you work on doesn't care about your feelings. We gloss over this fact when we turn our workplaces into creches. Pride in doing a job well is more sustainable than a demand for happiness and novelty.
I thought most, if not everyone was unhappy at work?<p>I always thought the idea of being happy about doing a job was a little weird, and maybe it's just me, but given that almost every job puts you in a service position, I find it weird that people expect you to be happy to act as a service-monkey to someone's whim all in the goal of making someone else lots of money.
I don't need utopia; I would be happy with just less stress, more support, and more free time.<p>Stress is working over 55 hours a week. It's having bosses who want impossible things faster. It's being overwhelmed with complexity and responsibility with little control. It's being compelled to continuously mask my personality, identity, and emotions.<p>But, that's just me.<p>I just want a safe, simple place to think about ideas and concepts and collaborate with other like-minded people whom I trust to build them into reality. The trust part is really important (and increasingly hard to find).
I think the most accessible evidence for the likelihood of anything nearing a "utopia" is right here in the discussions people have about it. You have divisions, factions, "camps"...opposing points of view on this and anything else that human minds might ponder. As long as people are capable of disagreeing with each other, you will never have peace. While you might try to put constraints on how damaging a certain division might be, that form of control or "management" will only produce a feeling of oppression in those it would constrain, no matter how well intentioned. As long as anyone can feel disenfranchised or marginalized at any level (the key here is "feel", again, intentions don't matter), you have the seeds of rebellion.
"Utopia" is simply one person's idea of the ideal. If he's lucky, he'll get a group of people together to build that vision, but eventually new people will be born or coerced into it, and be unhappy with it because they would not choose such a structure.<p>Not to mention the fact that not a soul on this planet is capable of the foresight necessary to endure the changing needs of the people. We feel far safer keeping rigidly to the known doctrine, even if it makes everyone miserable.<p>Every single utopian vision is tyranny.
Historically, competition is what drives humanity forward. For a utopia to be stable, it'll probably need homogeneity has well, which sort of defeats the purpose.
the war against any emotion other than "happy", is a real thing, but it's also something that we do subconsciously because of lack of grounding