We Already Live in Utopia. So Why Are We So Miserable?

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If your income was guaranteed — if you knew, as a fact, that you would not starve no matter what — what would you do?

The unreasonable ideas of today become the inevitable policies of tomorrow. Every major milestone of civilization — democracy, the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage — was once dismissed as a dangerous utopian fantasy.

It's unsettling because it forces us to reckon with how much of our lives are organized around fear rather than desire. Around survival rather than meaning.

But if we can build a society where survival is a given, Bregman suggests, imagine the explosion of human creativity and flourishing that might follow.

That's not a fairy tale. That's a policy proposal.

We're already living in the medieval dream. Maybe it's time to dream again.

Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World

Available for broadcast on PRX

PRX Series: The Possible World

Feb 27: S6 E38- The Good Wolf We Keep Starving/ Why Our Cynicism About Human Nature Is Killing Us

Mar 10: S6 E43- We Already Live in Utopia. So Why Are We So Miserable?

Mar 12: S6 E44- The Print Shop Rebels: Why History’s Steering Wheel Isn’t Out of Reach

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