Utopia

Utopia is the title of a Latin book by Thomas More (circa 1516). The word "utopia" is intended by More to suggest two Greek neologisms simultaneously: outopia (no place) and eutopia (good place). The word utopia has taken on a more general meaning, to describe any imaginary but good image of society. Further, it has been used to describe actual communities founded in attempts to put such theories into practice. Finally, utopian is often used to refer to good but (physically, socially, economically, or politically) impossible proposals, or at least very difficult ones.

More depicts a rationally organised society, through the narration of an explorer, Raphael Hythlodaeus. Utopia is a republic which holds all property in common. For example, it has no lawyers, and rarely sends its citizens to war, but hires mercenaries from among its war-prone neighbours. Possibly More, a religious layman who once considered joining the Church as a priest, was inspired by the monachal rule when he describes the working of his society. It was an inspiration for the Reducciones established by the Jesuits to Christianize and "civilize" the Guaranis.

The utopia can be idealistic or practical, but the term has acquired a strong connotation of optimistic, idealistic, impossible perfection. The utopia may be usefully contrasted with the undesirable dystopia (anti-utopia, pseudo-utopia) and the satirical utopia.

Table of contents

1 Economic

2 Political and historical

3 Religious

4 Scientific and technological

Economic

Centered on the nineteenth century, many utopian novels arose, often in response to the social disruption promoted by the development of commercialism and capitalism. Proposing a "better" situation were socialist and communist utopias that generally revolve around an equalitarian distribution of goods, frequently with the total abolition of money, and citizens only doing work which they enjoy and which is for the common good, leaving them with ample time for the cultivation of the arts and sciences. One classic was Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. William Morris' News from Nowhere is another socialist utopia written in response to the top-down (bureaucratic) nature of Bellamy's utopia. George Orwell's 1984 was a dystopia that might be seen as a critique of Bellamyite socialism and also of the USSR, fascism, and the statist tendencies in the United Kingdom and in the McCarthyite United States of the time (1948).

Unlike the collectivist tone so often found in utopias, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein is an individualistic and libertarian utopia. Capitalist utopias of this sort are generally based on perfect market economies, in which there is no market failure -- or the issue is never addressed. Some cynics see most economics textbooks as being nothing but stories of capitalist utopias.

Political and historical

A global utopia of world peace is often seen as one of the possible inevitable endings of history.

Sparta was a militaristic utopia founded by Lycurgus (though some, especially Athenians, may have thought it was rather a dystopia). It was a Greek power until its defeat by the Thebans at the battle of Leuctra.

Religious

The Christian and Islamic ideas of heaven tend to be utopian, especially in their folk-religious forms: inviting speculation about existence free of sin and poverty or any sorrow, beyond the power of death (although "heaven" in Christian eschatology at least, is more nearly equivalent to life within God Himself, visualized as an earth-like paradise in the sky). In a similar sense, a Buddhist concept of Nirvana may be thought of as a kind of utopia. Religious utopias, perhaps expansively described as a garden of delights, existence free of worry amid streets paved with gold, in a bliss of enlightenment enjoying nearly godlike powers, are often a reason for perceiving benefit in remaining faithful to a religion, and an incentive for converting new members.

Scientific and technological

These are set in the future, when advanced science and technology will allow utopian living standards; for example, the absence of death and suffering; changes in human nature and the human condition. A technological utopia is sometimes called "extropia," especially by transhumanists.

Opposing this optimism is the prediction that advanced science and technology will, through deliberate misuse or accident, cause humanity's extinction. These pessimists advocate precautions over embracement.

Examples

Warning: Plot details follow.

The City of the Sun (1623) by Tommaso Campanella
The New Atlantis (1627) by Francis Bacon
Oceana (1656) by James Harrington
The section in Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift depicting the calm, rational society of the Houyhnhms, is certainly utopian, but it is meant to contrast with that of the yahoos, who represent the worst that the human race can do.
Voyage en Icarie (1840) by Etienne Cabet
Erewhon (1872) by Samuel Butler
Looking Backward (1888), by Edward Bellamy
Freiland (1890) by Theodor Hertzka
News from Nowhere (1891), by William Morris; see also the Arts and Crafts Movement founded to put his ideas into practice
Utopia, Limited (1893) is a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta in which a small island nation reforms itself along British lines, with amusingly utter success.
A large number of books by H.G. Wells, including A Modern Utopia (1905)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) can be considered an example of pseudo-utopian satire (see also dystopia). One of his other books, Island demonstrates a positive utopia.
Islandia (1942), by Austin Tappan Wright
B. F. Skinner's Walden Two (1948)
Star Trek (1966) science fiction television series by Gene Roddenberry
The Dispossessed (1974), a science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, is sometimes said to represent one of the few modern revivals of the utopian genre, though it is notable that one of the major themes of the work is the ambiguity of different notions of utopia. Le Guin presents a utopian world in which ditches do need digging, and sewers need unblocking---this drudgery is divided among all adults, and is contrasted, in the language of the utopia, with their everyday, more satisfying work.
Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) by Marge Piercy is a feminist science fiction novel in which the protagonist must act to win the utopian future over an alternative, dystopian, one.
Ecotopia (novel) (1975) by Ernest Callenbach
The Three Californias Trilogy (especially The Pacific Edge (1990)) and the Red / Green / Blue Mars (1990s) trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Giver (1993), novel by Lois Lowry, depicts a "perfect" society of the far future whose elimination of war, disease, fear, &c. comes at the inherent price of the repression of human emotions, individuality, and free will.
most of the stories in Future Primitive - The New Ecotopias (1994), edited by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Hedonistic Imperative (1996), an online manifesto by David Pearce, outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life.
The Matrix (1999), a film by the Wachowski brothers, describes a virtual reality controlled by artificial intelligence such as Agent Smith. Smith says that the first Matrix was a utopia, but humans disbelieved and rejected it because they "define their reality through misery and suffering." Therefore, the Matrix was redesigned to simulate human civilization with all its suffering.

External links

Utopia is the name of a US progressive rock group, generally fronted by singer/musician/producer Todd Rundgren.
Isaac Asimov's Utopia is a science fiction novel by Roger MacBride Allen, set in Isaac Asimov's Robots/Empire/Foundation universe.
Atopia is a nomadic pluridisciplinary webzine sharing philosophy, literature, arts and politics. It is hosted in Tokelau, an island group in the Pacific.
Atopia is a book by Helmut Willke-- Atopia means a society, which does not have territorial boarders.
Heterotopia - physical locale set apart from traditional public life where rules and expectations are suspended, often to address moments of crisis or deviance, developed by Michel Foucault
Omnitopia - convergence of the Latin omnis for “all” or “universal[ly]” and the Greek topos “for place” (deriving from koinos topos for “common place”) - an experience of place as the convergence of multiple spaces such that each individual “location” appears as a manifestation of the whole.