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Utopianism refers to the many various social and political movements, and a significant body of religious and secular literature, based upon the idea of paradise on earth. See Utopia.
Various conceptions of past and future paradise
In many cultures, societies, religions and cosmogonies, there is some myth or memory of a distant past when humankind lived in a primitive and simple state, but at the same time one of perfect happiness and fulfillment. In those days, the various myths tell us, there was an instinctive harmony between man and nature. Men's needs were few and their desires limited. Both were easily satisfied by the abundance provided by nature. Accordingly, there were no motives whatsoever for war or oppression. Nor was there any need for hard and painful work. Humans were simple and pious, and felt themselves close to the gods.
These mythical or religious archetypes are inscribed in all the cultures and resurge with special vitality when people are in difficult and critical times. However, the projection of the myth does not take place towards the remote past, but either towards the future or towards distant and fictional places (for example, The Land of Cockaygne, a straightforward parody of a paradise), imagining that at some time of the future, at some point of the space or beyond the death must exist the possibility of living happily.
These myths of the earliest stage of humankind have been referred to by various names, as the following examples will demonstrate:
Krita Yuga
The Krita Yuga, the First and Perfect Age, as described in the Mahabharata, an old Hindu epic:
Golden Age
The Greek poet Hesiod, around the 8th century BC, in his compilation of the mythological tradition (the poem Works and Days), explained that, prior to the present era, there were other four progressively most perfect ones, the oldest of which was called the Golden age. In this stage:
- * they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods.
But one day, Pandora opened its box filled with all the misfortunes of mankind and these flooded the Earth. After the Golden Age, it came the Silver Age, and, successively, the Copper Age, the Age of the Heroes and, finally, the Iron Age.
Several centuries later (29 BC) the Golden Age was depicted in Virgil's The Georgics. Here, the poet looked back again to sing the good old times before Jupiter, when:
- Fields knew no taming hand of husbandmen;
- To mark the plain or mete with boundary-line-
- Even this was impious; for the common stock
- They gathered, and the earth of her own will
- All things more freely, no man bidding, bore.
The topic is taken up again by Ovid's in his Metamorphoses (AD 8):
- The golden age was first; when Man yet new,
- No rule but uncorrupted reason knew:
- And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
- Unforc'd by punishment, un-aw'd by fear, *
Also Plutarch, the Greek historian and biographer of the 1st century, dealt with the blissful and mythic past of the humanity.
Arcadia
Arcadia, e g in Sir Philip Sidney's prose romance The Old Arcadia (1580). Originally a region in the Peloponnesus, Arcadia became a synonym for any rural area that serves as a pastoral setting, as a locus amoenus ("delightful place"):
- Does not the pleasantness of this place carry in itself sufficient reward for any time lost in it, or for any such danger that might ensue? Do you not see how everything conspires together to make this place a heavenly dwelling? Do you not see the grass, how in color they excel the emeralds *
Though depicted as contemporary, this pastoral form is often connected with the Golden Age. It may be suggested that its inhabitants have merely continued to live as people did in the Golden Age, and all other nations have less pleasant lives because they have allowed themselves to depart from the original simplicity.
See also Arcadia (utopia)
The Bibilical Garden of Eden
The Biblical Garden of Eden as depicted in Genesis 2 (Authorized Version of 1611):
- And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. *
- And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. *
- And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; * And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
The Land of Cokaygne
The Land of Cokaygne spelled Cockaygne or Cockaigne (in the German tradition referred to as "Schlaraffenland"*) has been aptly called the "poor man's heaven", being a popular fantasy of pure hedonism and thus a foil for the innocent and instinctively virtuous life that is depicted in all the other accounts mentioned above. Cockaygne is a land of extravagance and excess rather than simplicity and piety. There is freedom from work, and every material thing is free and available. Cooked larks fly straight into one's mouth; the rivers run with wine; sexual promiscuity is the norm; and there is a fountain of youth which keeps everyone young and active.
There is a medieval poem (c. 1315) written in rhyming couplets which is entitled "The Land of Cokaygne":
- Far in the sea, to the west of Spain,
- Is a country called Cokaygne.
- There's no land not anywhere,
- In goods or riches to compare.
- Though Paradise be merry and bright
- Cokaygne is of far fairer sight....
Finding utopia
All these myths also express some hope that the idyllic state of affairs they describe is not irretrievably and irrevocably lost to mankind, that it can be regained in some way or other.
One way would be to look for the earthly paradise -- for a place like Shangri-La, hidden in the Tibetan mountains and described by James Hilton in his Utopian novel Lost Horizon (1933). Such paradise on earth must be somewhere if only man were able to find it. Christopher Columbus followed directly in this tradition in his belief that he had found the Garden of Eden when, towards the end of the 15th century, he first encountered the New World and its peoples.
Another way of regaining the lost paradise (or Paradise Lost, as 17th century English poet John Milton calls it) would be to wait for the future, for the return of the Golden Age. According to Christian theology, man's Fall from Paradise, caused by man alone when he disobeyed God ("but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it"), has resulted in the wickedness of character that all human beings have been born with since ("Original Sin") and, consequently, in the mediocre world full of crime and vice we are still living in. The Christians believe in a future that is radically different from, and much better than, the here and now. In other cultures and religions, there are similar beliefs.
Theorising Western Utopias
The idea of a Utopia has existed since Plato and continues to the present day. While there is little to suggest a conscious development of a single Utopian strand of thought, there is enough influence present in the writings and lives of Western Utopists to show a tradition of Utopian theorising. (Kumar 1991)
The tradition can be described as a heretical tradition. In its broadest form, this is a philosophy of rejection of a current system based upon observation of its workings, and suggestion of a new system that may question the methods or even fundamental values of the writer's time and place. (Manuel and Manuel 1979)
For example, Plato's description of Socrates (who featured heavily in Plato's Republic, a work that was to influence Utopists in future) is evocative of this archetype. In More's Utopia, More explicitly wrestles with this idea in Book One, where he debates the merits of a philosopher - or Utopist - entering public life, where his views might be compromised.
One of the interesting developments in Western thought about utopia has been the shift from spatially distant regions to a distant future. That made them more 'real', as people found it now easier to think about that as something that can be achieved.(Habermas, 1989 *)
The End of Utopianism?
While rarely considered mainstream in the first place, the reputation of Utopian thought suffered greatly following the Second World War. Thinkers like Karl Popper lambasted the grand designs implicit in a Utopia, while dystopias such as Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four became the primary method of Utopian expression and rejection. (Kumar 1987)
Still, post-war era also found some Utopianist fiction for some future harmonic state of humanity (eg. Demolition Man (film)).
See also
References
- Kumar, Krishan (1991) Utopianism (Milton Keynes: Open University Press) ISBN 0-33-515361-5
- Manuel, Frank & Manuel, Fritzie (1979) Utopian Thought in the Western World (Oxford: Blackwell) ISBN 0-67-493185-8
- Kumar, K (1987) Utopia and Anti-utopia in Modern Times (Oxford: Blackwell) ISBN 0-63-116714-5
External links
- Utopia and Utopianism is an academic journal specializing in the subjects of utopia and utopianism.
"Utopianism"