Conservative apologists for the status quo often stigmatize their opponents as “utopian.” But socialists and feminists shouldn’t be afraid of the term, since utopian thought can play an important role in helping us develop practical alternatives.
[…]
Today’s conservatives do not merely resist change. Project 2025, for instance, is in many ways a textbook example of utopian thought, with an ethical vision that grounds its specific policy proposals and touches on every aspect of society, from family to trade, from gender to taxes. This imagined world is one they want to produce, not preserve, even if it’s wrapped up in traditionalist ideology.
The Left needs its own counterproposals: rich accounts of a transformed society that both help us decide what steps we should take now and keep us motivated for the long haul. I’m not suggesting all leftists should unite around one utopia but rather that debate and experimentation around ambitious aims for social transformation is an urgent political project rather than a matter of merely academic concern. Pace Marx and Engels, utopia’s radical potential has not yet been exhausted.
I feel like wasting less food is a non-starter. Here in the UK they got rid of expiry dates on fruit and veg a while back to supposedly reduce food waste (read: sell shittier produceand it’s such an assault on the psyche. Now I just assume they’re all single use and toss em if I haven’t just bought em, probably throwing away way more than I ever have before.
Are you talking about fresh fruit and vegetables? That sounds like you’re wasting a lot - in terms of money, not just in terms of food. It’s pretty easy to tell whether fresh fruit and vegetables are going bad (getting rotten, getting moldy, and so on), and if they’re not going bad they’re fine to use, whether there’s an expiration date or not.
Idk if they’re “fresh” or not or what you even mean by that, they come from the supermarket? Not like a farmers bazaar or w/e.
I am simply not going to risk my health and well-being on guesstimates, I want expiry dates, so I can be safe in the knowledge that there’s liability on the corpo that makes them that I can sue.
I will not, and cannot be educated out of this and my mind will not change. No amount of gaslighting by the rich into this personal responsibility organic bullshit is going to make me agree to this downgrade of my living standards for no fucking reason at all.
Any losses in money just aren’t worth the health risk for me, I don’t want to die from thinking maybe the onion smells just like an onion and not slightly stronger which is how I’m meant to know it’s expired.
Plenty of stories of people who’s judgement was good until it wasn’t and confidence was high.
The cultural divide between you and I is so great that I don’t even know where to begin to respond. I appreciate you sharing your point of view, at least.
Yeah I think there’s no point in attempting discourse if you find it so alien. Thanks for being honest though, I do appreciate you just saying that instead of twisting my words or giving some half assed nonsense replh attacking aesthetics as so many do both here and on reddit.