Hello Guys,

Auroville was founded in southern India in February 1968 by Mirra Alfassa, a French woman nicknamed "the Mother"

"The Mother" is author of the utopia. It could be alike an "opensource" society.

Discover:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByRE62_vq30
https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows...y-of-auroville

Just another religiously inspired utopia! There have been so many already and none of them worked.

Just out of curiosity, how do you tell whether they worked or not?

One difference of opinion and you have, voilà, politics.

Indeed. Furthermore,...

If they have money (even cashless), they have crime.

Conflicts will always occur unless you are a hermit. There are only 2 ways to resolve conflict - Coercion or Negotiation. Both can involve Politics, but Negotiation defines Politics. There is no escaping politics, only the recognition that refusing checks and balances and eschewing negotiation leaves only coercion.

The trouble with utopias is that those who found and rule them seldom allow any kind of negotiation. They know that they are right and that they have created the perfect society, so if you don't agree with them, you can leave. And you might not even be allowed to do that. Remember the People's Temple?

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the Paradise in the Bible - God's Kingdom

Jesus as king, 144,000 associate rulers, all individuals perfect in qualities all of us lack. When you see that vision, you'll realize the mother with her human frailities and limited lifespan isn't a contender.

Everything's perfect in heaven! The point is utopias on earth never work.

I read that the word utopia literally means "nowhere" as in "It doesn't exist."

How do you test whether an earthly "utopia" is working or not?

Their experimental society (financially supported, ... supported by Unesco and more orgs) seems to be viable, and it is actually working.

The only problem with "utopias" is ... actual humans.

Inevitably, all human societies must have controllers, and this is where the problems begin. The unspoken concept of "utopia" is that actual human beings do not compete, ostensibly because they do not have to do so anymore. Because their controllers, never mentioned of course, magically "take care of everything." The essential problem being that there is no such "magic," while inevitably there is, and always must be, "competition."

"The Afterlife,™" at least according to the Christian religion, is supposed to be a world where everybody has a Mansion, where the only thing left to do is "singing praises," and where Gold is so commonplace that it is used as a paving stone. "Somehow never mentioned" is how people are surely then going to want to decorate "their Mansion," and somehow make it a little better than "the one next door."

Agreed - to date. And human imperfection is the reason why human efforts fail.

But God's Kingdom is a heavenly administration, with earthly subjects. Look, for example at Revelation 21:3-5. It says death, mourning, pain etc will be no more. But those things were never in heaven, were they? So it's talking about the earth. And in verse 5, it talks about 'making everything new.' Since when do they need to redecorate heaven? But the earth could use some attention!

There is a brand new reportage/documentary about it on France24, which dates from 9th July / 10th July.

Auroville, revisited, with its historical story.
Nice documentary.

https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows...y-of-auroville

I would add to that the lack of a unifying, overarching, principled ideology. Without that, all is lost.

The concept of "negotiation" has been mentioned a few times, but negotiation can only occur over issues that are, well, negotiable. If there's a dispute between A and B over something that both parties consider core to their ideology, it's more than likely that neither party will be willing to give an inch.

When that happens, the question is whether one or both parties are willing to enforce their views and values on the other by force: See the Muhammad cartoons (the Free Speech right to criticize religions) vs. fundamentalist Islam, biological science vs. gender ideology, meritocracy vs. equality of outcome, etc. etc.