#im kinda fuckin w the idea of individual utopia rn

[shoezuki]

ooo true would you want to talk about the games Utpoia and Sunday's reasoning?

ok disclaimer i havent finished penacony and also i am exceptionally inebriated. like to a phenomenal degree. so maybe this isnt coherent but also perhaps this is and i follow in the footsteps of thomas de quincey and micheal mcclure? idk.

anyways i have obviously been thinkin of the concept of utopia a lot in terms of penacony especially. because im currently taking my stupid utopia course rn. but penacony is very much a Modern idea/perspective of the concept of 'utopia'

in a lot of the older/foundational portrayals of utopia (at least that ive read so far) the concept is very much devoid of individuality, built on the idea of a utopic upper class being predominant, and that all the people 'that matter' being perfectly happy (i.e. thomas more literally coined the term 'utopia' and his concept of utopia was an island wherein slavery persisted when people acted outside of the utopic norms, and non-christians were tolerated; francis bacon's new atlantis was similar but moreso focused on the idea of technological advancements, but still very christian) OR were somewhat satirical and depicted the gluttonous nature of upper classes, depicting such in unsavoury ways (i.e. the myth of cockaigne, a legendary island of abundant food, and some the most notable depictions of it showed people being lazy and over indulgent such as pieter bruegel the elder's land of cockaigne painting. also technically jonathan swift's modest proposal is a satirical utopia)

honkai star rail's penacony is very much a modern idea of utopia. this wont ever be covered in my course because my prof's a coward but a lot of modern 'utopias' are very much satirical and/or commentary about the concept of utopia being built on suffering. older concepts of utopia are very collective, in that whats best for 'everyone' is decided by the higher peoples. but when looking at modern media the concept of utopia and dystopia is often synonymous.

the best example i can thing of rn is the hunger games. from the capital's perspective, it's a utopia. but anyone in the outer districts? fuck no its dystopian. in similar cases (divergent, basically any hunger games copy cat, some the stuff by ursula de le guin i.e. earthsea, etcetecetc) the concept of 'utopia' is largely whether it's truly utopia when it's formed on the suffering of others.

imo penacony questions this in a similar way, but moreso in whether a utopian society is Truly a utopia if it's built on ignorance (the matrix is a similar thing i just thought of). say, if reality continues to be shit and house suffering, whether our own suffering or that of others, but we could enter a false society that was free of such suffering, would it truly be utopia? is ignorance of suffering the same as a lack of suffering? Additionally i think penacony, specifically sunday's ideals, deal with the concept of collective vs. individual utopia. as before, an overall utopia where everyone ascribes to one ideology and belief is a utopia, but at an individual scale, is it still utopian? If someone has individual and contradictory beliefs, or doesn't Want to be within this utopia, is it still a utopia for them?

okay i need to stop writing. but yeah penacony is a very modern idea of utopia that i fuck with severely because it draws into question whether a utopia can be true when it is forced, when it is hegemonic, when it ignores the suffering within reality without actually solving such suffering. imo it's a coward's utopia, a faux-utopia, and hsr especially challenges a utopia that lacks any ability to choose