Utopia : a useless dream or the construction of a future?
The word
"utopia" was first used by Thomas More to describe an imaginary
island that had an ideal social and political system. He formed the word
"utopia" from the greek word "topos" (place) and the
negative "ou", so we could translate the word "utopia"
into: a non-place, or a place that doesn't exist.
Since then, the word "utopia" has been used to describe
fictitious political and social models imagined by various thinkers. It has
also taken a connotation, an utopia is somehow like a dream, nice but unreal...
Has utopia a place in today's society ?
The major criticism made towards all the different utopias imagined
throughout the centuries is that they don't take into account reality,
"nice ideal, but totally disconnected from the real world" many would
say. Or that these social and political systems are so different from the ones
we live in that it would be impossible to change society so much in one go.
So if these utopias can't be realised, what is the point in writing them
down? No more than any other novel, a nice thing to read and to dream about.
But is that really the only contribution utopias can bring to today's
society? For even though it is true that it is very difficult to install
radical changes into a social and political system, does that mean it is
useless to try?
History has proven to us that social and political systems are not
static, and that radical changes can occur (not necessarily for good). And here
is, I think where utopias take an important dimension because they are, in my
opinion, an obstacle to conservatism. They can become the physical support to
new and revolutionary ideas, those ideas that have trouble being expressed via
other medias. Presented as dreams, they show to humans that human nature isn't
static, that changes, even drastic ones, can at least be produced mentally. And
what humans conceive can eventually be achieved.
So utopias, far from being merely useless fictions, participated in the
construction of possible futures by offering to our minds new perspectives,
free from the bounds of our conservative societies. Opening our minds is not an
utopic idea!
Alice S. Dransfield
The Philosophy Takeaway Issue 49 'Open Topic'
