WHAT IS UTOPIA, REALLY?

Have you ever had this feeling when your thoughts disconnect from your surroundings, the time when your thoughts naturally flow, and you feel kind of empty in a pleasant way? This feeling occurs maybe on a rainy day when you are just sitting in a traffic waiting the time go by. At this moment our mind mind is somehow fulfilled with thoughts concerning life itself. Things such as what you want from your future, what your life will look like in ten years, or maybe you ponder about the purpose of everything in general. We imagine a perfect life.

I think the origins of the concept Utopia is somehow forgotten or misunderstood as time has gone by. The thought about a perfect and good life has been around for a long time, from Plato to modern philosophers. The first person in western philosophy who described the concept of perfect life and using the title Utopia, was Sir Thomas Moore in 1516. Originally the book was meant to be a socio-political satire, it was written in ethos to take a stand against the societal life of the time through fictive narrative. The book mainly criticized strict morals and ethics of the Catholic Church.

The narrative is written in a form of a story where a character named Raphael, travels to New World finding his path to an island of Utopia. Raphael can be easily understood as a modern anthropologist who finds comfort in the Utopian Island. He spends there five years on the island studying customs of native people, the culture, and the society in general. The findings of Raphael are somehow astonishing. People live side by side and for each another, there is no private property, all men and women need to learn at least one occupation of importance for the life of the community. The working hours are reduced to a minimum, thieves are forced to serve as slaves in gold chains, long as their behaviour is suitable for living peacefully again in the community.

At the same time the Utopian Island or the “state” also offers free hospitals and healthcare, allows euthanasia, divorce, and all religions on the island are tolerated. Have you ever heard place like this, or can you imagine something that resembles the Utopian Island? The Moore’s Utopia is often seen as socio-democratic version of Plato’s Republic, where the former can be seen as attempt to form ideals of perfect state for modern man and latter describes ancient life of human through concept of good. Now, let’s take couple steps back to that feeling what I was describing in the beginning. To that feeling when you ponder about our life and all the wonderful things that you want.

It is easy to imagine what the perfect life would look like through a subjective perspective. A degree, good job, money, an easy and healthy life, everybody want’s that right? But do we have it already? When we think about perfect life, we might often sense that there is something wrong, some issues that we can’t do much about.

The situation is far more different when we move to a societal level by taking the society as an “objective” which we try to examine. Should there be an absolute economic equality between all the citi-zens of the “state”, what about equality between man and woman or genders? Should we tolerate all religions and personal believes? Or should we arrange our communal life so that the poor, sick, criminals and all the outcasts you can think of, can wear gold chains long enough so they learn how to participate peacefully again to life of the community. What about morals, aesthetics, or status symbols? What is the purpose of owning a supercar, earning a medal of honour, or buying Rolex just because “everybody” has one? How would we describe people who are famous or know what is good? Would we still hurray for annual growth of mass consumption as we simultaneously destroy the environment where we live in?

Now we may see that the feeling which I was talking is often related to these kinds of questions. These feelings occur now when you feel that you are somehow obligated to something which is mandatory, and you don’t know are they good or bad in general. Maybe it’s a mortgage, a stereotypical relationship, possible poverty, or the future of your possible children. These norms, morals, and rules which we are bound by in this society don’t really depend on us. It is the other way around – our life is shaped and guided by them.

Now as we can see that these questions and feelings which they generate, operate on a level that is far away from the powers of an individual. The origin of these feelings or ideas is outside of our sphere. One could argue that if we are subordinated to societal powers, which do not feel ours or correspond our ideals, the realistic possibilities achieving perfect life are quite small. If the state power, norms, and culture penetrate our days, the possibilities are the following - take a leap of faith to ignore these issues in total, move off the grit or take the power in our hands to change the surrounding society to correspond our ideals, values, and morals.

If we take a small study in recent history, we can see that there have been intellectual and concrete attempts to form Utopian society, mainly through ideology of Utopian Socialism. The Utopian Socialism can be seen as a description of perfect life in society, but as we all know they have only remained as attempts. But why have they failed and remained only as attempts? Everybody wants a better life, sometimes also for our fellow citizens. The main counterforce often comes from same address which originates these unpleasant feelings and obstacles when we reach for perfect life in society.

Let’s move little closer to the present and wrap this up by looking at current political debates, issues, and movements. In present day as the communist or socialist political movements are mainly subject of mockery during coffee table talks. The ideas concerning a better life, equality and a better future has changed form and place, where they occur to find more suitable political ground. The Black Lives Matter movement, modern feminism, identity politics, alternative ways to live – such as ecologism – resemble questions related to Utopian ideals.

The core ideas of these movements or ways to live are attempts to tackle moral and ethical problems of modern society on a societal level. They are concrete attempts to reform the existing state so that life in the community or the world would be better. The Utopian idealism has changed form in the way of how they it expresses itself, from concrete solid ideology to a fragmented set of practical ideas which ultimately diffuses to daily political life as an attempt to describe and form better life in society. Despite this, the ideas, or Utopian ideals which Utopian Socialism carried are not forgotten.

The Utopian ideas which concern perfect life exist still among us. The main question is that do we have enough courage to think of these issues or ideals and act to change the society. Other possibilities are buying a self-help book and meditate towards ignorance or close our eyes from the oppressive reality, while we focus to plan perfection in our personal life while waiting for retirement, so we can move off the grit. Our thoughts of future life after all resemble closely something like Utopia which maybe becomes reality for some of us in the future.

AARO TARVAINEN