I’m going to do something against the ordinary and describe the particularist elements of my own personal utopia, as they would be chosen according to taste.
My own utopia, constructed to my particular tastes, would be placed in a nearly subtropical, temperate rangeland consisting of natural meadows and woods, perhaps along the coast so as to maintain a more stable subclimate.
A network of villages would form a highly-wooded and intermittently-pastured city, planned according to Nature’s design principles, as per permaculture design and efforts such as fabric-formed concrete. Architecture and infrastructure would make use of natural principles for design and construction, and would tastefully range from being hidden into the landscape, being rustic, and being modern in the sense of simplicity and geometry. Transportation would consist of a natural pool style “lazy river” that is tended against snakes and pests by sponsored carnivores (such as owls, hawks, cats, domesticated otters, etc.), bicycle and animal-drawn carriage roads (or electric vehicles for the handicapped), rope tows and ski lifts for roller blades or skateboards or scooters and skis, monorail, and commercial and special transport roadways, with automotive transportation being limited to commercial deliveries.
Village infrastructure would include well-tended recreational parks with pools connected to the “lazy river” and nature preserves with bike paths connected to the bike roads. Village planning would be along the lines of new urbanism, with pedestrian-friendly courts and outdoor marketplaces, cohousing hamlets and condominium apartments, producer-owned malls, and many third places, such as juice, smoothie, soda, and coffee shops, or art and music venues, or science or philosophy clubs and churches, featured alongside home and freestanding stores and cottage industries, and mills and factories for local export items. Homesteads and farmsteads would be strewn between hamlets and village centers. Every wall or pillar or bridge of confederal or village-owned infrastructure would be treated as a commons for street art, the ethic of which would follow the standard customary law of not putting tags over pieces and only covering pieces that are old or which can be outperformed, with shame put to the name of the artist who covers a piece with a lesser work, and honor going to the masters. Feasts and festivities would be common place in the halls, roads, and marketplaces of the villages.
Power would be generated by way of solar-powered Stirling engines, wind pumps, and water drop, and would be stored in the form of gravity at high heights, which would be used to generate electricity by load (rare), to direct-power utilities (common), or to compress air or biogas (an acceptable combustion material). Non-renewable and imported combustion fuel sources would be generally frowned upon as a moral and ethical failure, and would be taxed by Pigovian means. Villages would control their own internet infrastructures and network by way of the confederation or through alternate networks.
Silvopasture and alleycropping would be common farming methods, and farming a common means of living, though not an inescapable one, practiced according to permaculture principles. Meat consumption would be limited to what is left after farm and household carnivores (including wild or semi-wild ones used to control pests, etc.) have eaten of the supply, and supplies of flesh limited by the most productive stocking rate to the land, with vegetarianism standard in the country and city, and veganism common in the city.
The general atmosphere of the culture would be one of a convivial mundanity and secular religiosity, where everyday life is celebrated, the preternatural inspired, Nature revered, and entertainment abolished in favor of arts and creativity. The religion would be a dualistic but fairly agnostic pantheism with competing and evolving particulars, being supportive of free thinking and truth-seeking.
The sexual mores would be of a heterosexual vanilla variety, though not limited to the slow and emotional type, or to two-person relations, and sexual play would be commonplace between friends and lovers, with pair- or triad-bonding allowed for those who form exclusive attachments or family commitments in the process (which I call henofidelity).
Villagers would dress neatly and plainly in form-fitting clothing (as obesity would be abolished with combustion transportation!) of colors that complement their ethnic traits, and according to the occasion at-hand. The preferred art styles would be modernist and remodernist, with an emphasis on realism and practical idealism. New tattoos are expected to represent some sort of meaning, such as convictions, and not to be purely aesthetic in content.
Neighboring villages to my own would reflect the unique local competitive advantages of their environments, as well as the unique souls that inhabit them, in the ways they do things, with each one having its own flavor, perhaps as composed of both separatist as well as cosmopolitan elements in their approaches to living, and having various forms of organizational structures and cultural dynamics.
Compulsory education would be non-existent, though may be mandatory by contract. The educational system would be composed of competing schools, classes, and lectures of voluntary subscription, apprenticeships, self-education, and third-party certifications, much of which supported by a confederal education infrastructure plan that establishes an inter-village library and lab network as well as workshop and classroom space for use by the villagers. Televisions would be commonplace still, along with computers, but the top-heavy News would be replaced by dialogue, debate, and deliberation on various matters according to channel, and all programming would consist of instructional, educational, modeling, or inspirational content produced by common people, with computers used to cast votes on important issues.
Good craftsmanship and manual artisanry, including many traditional skills and their products, are to be seen as prestige and heritage items worthy of pride and honor, and products of labor should be expected to be beautiful, utilitarian, and to last for a long time so as to serve as sustainable heirloom items for future generations. Ingenuity and innovation of a socially- and ecologically-responsible sort is praised even above the efforts of the farmer and tradesman, and founders, inventors, and entrepreneurs are given special privileges within associations as trustees with considerable but limited directive powers that expire upon their deaths or the deaths of their named successors.
The economy would be a geo-mutualist one, with an economy full of membership associations including cooperatives, and no bosses. Marginal land and secured credit would be made freely available without rent or interest or landlords or creditors, with optimal land being taxed by the confederacy for funding or otherwise divided between all excluded from its use. Everyone would have everything they need, and would control their own living, working, and consuming situations. The federation would function according to syndicalist and market socialist principles and would be governed by way of a constitutional republic with an executive branch that governs directly-democratically by way of formal consensus (with weighted range-voting utilized where principled objections or blocks are absent), and would have an executive branch with bureaucracies filled by the same means with recallable bureaucrats, and a judicial branch focused on mitigation, mediation, and arbitration before litigation or proposed legislation. All administrative efforts should be overseen by an independent commission of monitors, ombudsmen, and auditors, and governed by way of a secretariat responsible for the maintenance of an organizational bulletin that serves as a free deliberation forum in print, on air, and on screen, as well as a perpetual assembly through which initiatives, referenda, and recalls may occur. A confederal website accessible to all village networks would establish a website that contracts out to perform the functions of central clearing house, organizational bulletin, social media platform, online marketplace, cadestry, exchequer, chancery of forms, and online wallet, with Georgist and Pigovian dynamics to level the playing field relating to digital real estate, product placement, and online externalities in the marketplace.
Duelling would be a legally acceptable but culturally discouraged means to sort out differences between males, particularly matters of disrespect, but with manslaughter charges being brought against anyone who accepts a duel while clearly in the offense or murder charges if having had won the duel, and no charges able to be brought against an individual clearly defending their honor against undue disparagement. External pesticide use, as well as herbicides and fungicides, would be a sin and a crime. Drugs would be forbidden, excepting for marijuana, magic mushrooms, and moderate alcohol consumption. Circumcision is forbidden. Animal cruelty would be an offense equal to the same cruelty against a human, though rabid animals could readily be put down without offense, and violently so in the case of emergency. Law enforcement would be primarily carried out by local sheriffs and their deputies chosen by lot, and mitigation would be mandatory with free choice of mutual insurance providers. The legal system would be henocentric, with monocentrism being established by consensus and polycentrism being declarable by dissent, such that each home follows only its own laws, excepting for those arising from consensus on the level of the hamlet, village, or confederation, which, even then, is locally nullifiable. While statutes would exist, and common law interpreted on each level, the tendency would be for contract, third-party affirmation, and reputation to perform the major regulatory functions, with officials merely having a secondary role and only when necessary.
I would have a home in a cohousing hamlet on a homestead with my wives, alongside select neighbors our age. I would milk sheep and cows, and collect eggs and feed the livestock for my morning and evening business, and otherwise focus on teaching and administrative or entrepreneurial responsibilities in the village, with one or more of my wives serving as an assistant or partner in my efforts. My other wives would raise my children in my cottage or dogtrot and garden its curtilage or with the other women of the hamlet in a community plot, and tend house while the other men of the hamlet do things like steward the woodlot, farm, work wood and metal, and perform maintenance and construction duties, while creative or less menial work such as cobbling, tailoring, family cooking, baking, and etc. might be performed by men, women, or both, or even completely outsourced to the village or even confederal market. Some people may work offsite, too, in village factories or warehouses and stores or third places. The hamlet would contain a commons with a toolsharing cooperative, part of a larger toolsharing cooperative network in the village. Common meals might be taken in the common house, hall, or chapel of the hamlet according to an agreed upon schedule and menu. On my time off, I would visit friends and meet new ones in the lazy river or bike path on a journey with my wives or friends, or perhaps visit one of the many third places in another village or hamlet, or would spend time with my wives at home making ice cream, and study, attend an event, or play games. Bullmastiffs would freely traverse the village in semi-wild, slobbery, loving packs.
