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Comment by lordleft | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of the thought of Isaiah Berlin, political philosopher and historian of ideas; utopian philosophies often conclude that there if there is a "right" way to live, i.e. a maximally rational way of life, then utopia will consist of everyone converging on this lifestyle. For a certain type of person, this monistic vision of life annihilates pluralism, optionality, and genuine diversity. Berlin himself espoused value pluralism, the idea that there are an infinite number of fundamental human values and ideals for which once can be deeply committed but can also be at conflict and mutually exclusive with one another.

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That's unconvincing, because there's a very clear difference between a lifestyle and a social contract.

Social contracts sketch social relationships in very broad terms. You can still have plenty of lifestyle diversity and plurality within them.

In fact you need a social contract to have any kind of diversity.

Otherwise a culture reliably degenerates into autocracy, which isn't known for its tolerance.

That itself a distinctly modern framing. For many ancients, there was no such division; the way one lived was deeply entangled with the social contract. For example, there are religious sects that dictate specific political arrangements.

As for the diversity you speak of, I think it can be plausibly argued that many utopian conceptions of life really reduce to utilitarianism or hedonism. Diversity manifests in having different options for pleasure or utility. For a lot of people, that's inadequate.

I happen to be a philosophical liberal, and do not wish to live under a theocracy. Nonetheless, I think the fact that many of the highest aspirations of liberal philosophy amount to "having a good time" is a great risk that must be reckoned with, for it can undo the entire liberal project.

My country's founding myth is that everybody deserves "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", but what that pursuit looks like is up to the individual to figure out. Which seems right to me. Some will choose the pursuit of pleasure, some will choose other things.

An unconvincing argument considering people who allegedly believe in god and the afterlife are continuously caught raping children.

It is not religion but empathy that keeps people on the golden path- sociopaths gonna sociopath.

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