Another problem for me is economic equality. Jyotsna: Creating a utopia is really a lot of hard work. You want to fix all the problems you see in the world, but you also realize that there are so many problems, you wonder if your own utopia could even handle all of the fixes. That said, in my utopia there would be no need for environmental alarm. People would respect nature.
Politics would be about the betterment of people, not power or personal gain. I would be friends with Robert Redford. Also, colleges would be free, or at least cheaper. Ryan: Some of the conflict that comes from an imperfect world makes it better. They should have different views, because debates are often entertaining and make life more worth living. Competition can also give meaning to life. Utopia should have a certain amount of inequality to make things interesting, but not a staggering amount to where people suffer because of it.
Wilson's Thrilling Prophecy of "Paradise" on Earth. Why You Should Choose Optimism. The views expressed are those of the author s and are not necessarily those of Scientific American. For many years, he wrote the immensely popular blog Cross Check for Scientific American.
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Sign Up. Read More Previous. Support science journalism. Knowledge awaits. See Subscription Options Already a subscriber? What we DO know is that zero waste living, food, energy and construction sustainability , and a social architecture of fulfilled living, personal growth, and contribution , is possible and something that can be created in a manner that is duplicable and financially viable for any small group of organized people.
Traditionally when past groups of people have tried to create utopias, they have focused on the form: how to share, how to create equitable social structures and an equitable economy, how to incorporate sustainable practices, etc. However, these attempts have rarely led to utopian societies because utopian societies are not possible without utopian people.
One Community is addressing that necessity through a process of training and screening. We are maintaining this focus because we believe that if we are to truly transform the planet to create a world that works for everyone, then it is not enough to just institute best sustainable practices, but we must also move into a consciousness of Loving and a dedication to working and acting for the Highest Good For All Life in all decisions that we make.
Only then can we create a utopian Community, and as people see this model demonstrated, see how much happier, healthier and more abundant these residents are, then the model will be replicated as people realize that, by shifting their consciousness, they can live more fulfilling lives too. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. If we are ever to accomplish mainstream adaptation of the massive utopian projects currently being suggested, or re-creation of the utopias of legend, the ecological communities of today need to be comprehensive new paradigm , have mainstream appeal more fun , and be sustainable community strategy designed for duplication , not isolation; all of which are possible and being created by One Community and others right now small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens changing the world.
This is what we are capable of and what we, as a growing group of conscious creators, are finally waking up to and doing not because it is a new idea, but because, for the first time in our living history it is possible.
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Please read them here. Creating Utopia: Exploration and Implementation. Search One Community Search. Connect with One Community. The Victorian period was filled with earnest discussion among do-gooders and intellectuals on how to alleviate the conditions of the poor.
Most of these schemes failed — or at least did not last long. Also still with us are the model communities of Bournville near Birmingham and Port Sunlight near Liverpool, the first built with chocolate money by the Cadbury family, the second with soap money by Lord Leverhulme, founder of Sunlight Soap now owned by Unilever.
Both were capitalist attempts to build comfortable environments for workers. Less successful was a town called Pullman near Chicago, Illinois. In , railroad entrepreneur George Pullman of Pullman Palace Car fame launched the ambitious model village, named after himself.
He aimed for the town to run as a business and return a profit to investors. Second, there were no public gatherings of any size. Third, workers had to buy goods in the over-priced Pullman shops.
And fourth, no blacks were allowed. In short, it was a disastrous mixture of the worst of centrally-controlled socialism and grasping capitalism — with racism thrown in for good measure. Following the great market collapse of , Pullman hiked rents.
In , 4, Pullman residents, like thousands of workers across the US at that time, went on strike. The situation got violent; troops went in to quell the uprising. The government forced Pullman to sell his town. He died in so widely loathed, he had to be buried 12 feet underground for fear that his body would be dug up and desecrated by disgruntled employees. And since most utopias are inflexible, what happens to your ideal community when market conditions — which are outside your control — change?
At around the same time in England, William Morris was concocting a far gentler version of paradise. The generously bearded Victorian hero wrote one of the great utopian fantasies, News from Nowhere — a book full of charm, wit and good ideas. Morris himself was absurdly energetic, managing to pursue simultaneous careers as a poet, artist, novelist, printer, pamphleteer, painter, designer, typesetter, business man, socialist pioneer and rabble-rouser he was thrown in jail for attending an anti-war rally.
Morris is dearly loved by the British left; the great Marxist historian EP Thompson wrote a long and adoring biography of him which emphasised his socialist principles. Unlike the big-headed Pullman, though, Morris never imposed his utopian visions on anyone else by actually creating a commune or village.
He was a romantic who became a revolutionary. As he wrote of himself:. Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, Why should I strive to set the crooked path straight? News from Nowhere was published in Really, Morris wanted all people to live what he called a refined life, to have the leisure time to read and play music and think and be poets. John Ruskin, another medievalist and fan of the guild system, was outlining projects for ideal village communities, while the Arts and Crafts movement also was inspired by the Middle Ages.
Morris was attacking the sordid utilitarianism which dominated his own age. Money has been abolished. There is no private property. The inhabitants have a lot of fun: the narrator, for example, records with pleasure that dinner is served with a bottle of very good Bordeaux. Immediately following Morris came HG Wells, who wrote a dozen utopian and dystopian novels. Tolstoy, an anarchist and a Christian, held that the state was responsible for most of the bad stuff: taxes, wars and general irresponsibility.
Tolstoy counselled passive resistance and non-violence instead. The familiar elements were there: a return to handicrafts and small-scale agriculture, partial rejection of the gewgaws of the modern world, communal dining and shared expenditure.
Two of these communes still exist today in the UK. One is the Brotherhood Church of Stapleton, which, according to a recent New Yorker piece, is home to four humans, a deaf cat, a few hens and an enormous cow. The other is the Whiteway Colony in the Cotswolds, formed in More village than commune, Whiteway is a collection of 68 houses loosely bound by a monthly meeting.
In a young Indian philosopher started to correspond with Tolstoy. In , the young man — Gandhi —launched a cooperative colony in South Africa which he named Tolstoy Farm. One of my favourite 20th-Century utopian societies, however, is the anarchist occupation of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. It is described without sentiment by George Orwell, who fought for the anarchists, in his account Homage to Catalonia.
Meanwhile, utopias continued to hatch from the imaginations of novelists. In this ideal society, there are no men at all, and the women prize education above all else. Women have learned to reproduce via parthenogenesis — no men required. Children are the responsibility of everyone, though during the first two years of life the child is closely attached to her real mother.
There is no war or private property. At the same time, other novelists decided that it would be more fun to write dystopias than utopias — and hence science fiction began. In this grim fantasy, the people live alone in underground cells, connected to everyone else in the world by screen The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is The Machine.
The genre ultimately gave birth to two of the most famous utopian experiments of the 20th Century, both of them literary. To read the book today is startling as so many of its predictions have come true — like the Philistinism of the state, the debasement of sex and the insistence on happiness.
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