Is it possible to create a Utopia?

a utopia is a personal opinion. Perfection is in the eyes of the beholder.

@Kiev749 .. i like it… evasive… but i like it

its what i’m good at… :P

I think about people who are biochemically and constitutionally incapable of controlling their worst impulses, or even the sudden flashes of passion that ordinary people are prone to and I don’t think it’s possible. I think of egos and how easily they’re bruised and how common it is for people to misunderstand each other even in the simplest communications, where situations often escalate to a catastrophe occurring even before we know what’s happened.

We really can’t seem to do much better than we’re doing now with people who infringe the rights of others. And for some of those rights, we can’t agree on what they are in our own towns, much less states or on a national level. We would have to have 100% global agreement on what rights everyone inherently has, among other issues.

It makes me doubt that an eutopia is possible.

You can only create utopia by setting some principles which can guard you through your life. Freedom without restraint can lead to bondage. Hence, find out which is the best path to go, and follow it.

What other people? Wouldn’t a utopia be of our own making so we choose who is allowed in?

If everyone is allowed in it would never work.

ypud need a dictator or one big power peice t bring together this utopia, most utopias today are pipedreams

@kevinhardy… so that’s a no right?

Yes. Enoch did it.

I remember when I first started reading and studying philosophy. I was so excited by it all, the ideas were so profound and crystal clear! Ah, but then I came crashing back to Earth. Human nature gets in the way. Every. Damn. Time. It was so depressing when I realized that, for the most part, people suck. Ok, I’m exaggerating, but just a little.

So, I’m going to have to say no. It isn’t possible. The best we can do is to make incremental changes to our own little corners of the world and hope that in some unimaginably distant future human beings will evolve to the point where it becomes possible.

@augustlan – too true. Pretty much every utopian vision is smashed to tiny pieces by human nature.
Utopias- a place where everyone is equal, happy, and without need, is to eliminate the greed from people- the irrational want for more more more.
Eliminate that, and we’ll have a utopia.
But will we truly be free?

The closest we’ll get to utopia is a system in which we can appropriately handle the lack of utopia.

Utopian societies have been attempted, without sustainable success.

Close to it, I think it’s possible.

I don’t think any two people could ever agree on a vision of utopia. What’s perfect for one person will leave another lacking something. Utopian communities inevitably have disputes, and break down after a while. Even if it were possible to create a utopia for a group of people, individual expectations would grow beyond the capacity of the utopia to provide. That’s just the way we are. The more we have, the more we want. I don’t mean this just in a materialistic way. It’s the same spiritually, emotionally, and cognitively (as well as any other “ly” you can think of).

Utopias were only ever meant to be allegories. As Sir Thomas More, the person who coined the term, used it, utopia was an unrealistic ideal that is impossible to achieve. It serves as one of those ideas that motivates us to action so that we can achieve something, but it’s not feasible to get it all.

The more realistic issue to me, is whether we could get any group of significant size to agree on a vision of utopia. In the past, utopian communities were not all that big. The largest one I could find with a short search was a religious utopia that only had a population of 8000. It was called Zion City, and the leader who built it was eventually overthrown! How utopian is that?

Still, people try. I have my own vision of a utopian community. It’s my ideal to shoot for and perhaps get near before I die. Mostly it’s an artistic community, and we’d have students coming through for residencies and then they’d go back to where they came from and another group would come through. We’d train them in a variety or creative techniques, and we’d be together with all kinds of interesting and creative people (including, I think, political types, because we don’t want to be divorced from the world), with whom we’d have all kinds of talks, and who would present an artistic seminar every night. It’s an ideal. It’s not realistic. But the dream helps me keep on going.

Refer to The Giver for more information.

The irony is in the word itself. Utopia can either mean good place or no place etymologically. Either way, when one thinks of utopia, they often think of a perfect place which does make it impossible to create. No one is perfect and it follows that no place would be perfect, but there are good people and there are good places. In that sense, there are utopias but they suffer from crime, poverty, unemployment, chemical dependencies and everything else.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing him or herself.

@TitsMcGhee I LOVED THA BOOK… i was actually thinking about it when i asked the question…. once more you manage to impress and intrigue me… which begs the question… am i easily impressed?

Out of Popsicle sticks, maybe…

Apparently communism is a perfect system but humans are too imperfect and mess it all up.

The basic theory behind comunism may be sound… but the precept of taking from some in order to give to others in the spirit of fairness and equality is not only a contradiction in terms… it’s also the easiest way to breed dissent and inconformity… for that system to work you’d have to have all parties begin as equals… you can’t implement it in a pre-existing society without forcibly taking from those with more (money, property etc).

The worker’s paradise is a Robin-hood type system that has no hope of working even without factoring in human nature.

@Dr_C – I would assume that in a Utopia, you are not actually taking from some to give to others, but that everyone would give what they could to others as a matter of course.

@fireside… you may have a point.. but still giving in that way still has the potential of dividing a society into “those who give” and “Those who receive”... not to mention the possibility of resentment inherent in the giving for a specific cause. Again i think the possibility can only exist if there is an equal starting point

@Dr_C: Nope, I’m just quite an impressive lady :P

look ar rome, it fell

Honestly, @kevinhardy, I’m not sure I take your point. Any elucidation available?

Utopias, much like communism and trickle down economics, only work on paper.

collective reality is a real bastard like that

if we buidl another utopia it’s doomed to fall

Was there any utopia in the first place? Or are you saying the the USA is doomed to fall?

I would hardly equate Rome with Utopia.

@augustlan – Right? Even their vaunted Republic was a hotbed of corruption, murder and brutishness.

the reason i asked if one could create a utopia in the first place is because to date there hansn’t been one in the strict sense of the word…. or any sense of the word for that matter… Rome may have been a great empire and republic in it’s time… but there’s no way it could be classified as a utopia.

bah, you nay sayers. you guys need to open your eyes. utopia is what we’ve been creating all along. why the hell is a black person the president of the u.s.a? why has life expectancy increased? and women have.. “rights” ??!!! things are getting better. the pope just high fived darwin a few days ago, banks and evil corporations are being held accountable, all kinds of good things are going on. you just have to look at it in the big picture. global decreases in violence. pollution is slowly but surely being addressed if you’ve noticed how everyone’s marketing green so much these days. culture is shifting yet again and it will again and again and eventually things will be awesome. As humans, we can’t help but look for sound solutions to our problems. Eventually, we’ll figure it all out. We’ve come a long way already just gotta keep it up… i think we could double time it if we really wanted to. we just have to want to.

@Dr_C in one strict sense of the word, utopia means no place, therefore to date there could not have been a utopia. in another sense utopia means “good” place not “perfect” place, and I think there are good places.

From the Merriam-Webster dictionary: \yu̇-ˈtō-pē-ə\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Utopia, imaginary and ideal country in Utopia (1516) by Sir Thomas More, from Greek ou not, no + topos place
Date:
1597

1: an imaginary and indefinitely remote place
2 often capitalized : a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions
3: an impractical scheme for social improvement

we could nitpick about the denotation or connotation of the word and the intention behind the question but that would divert us from the topic… be it an imaginary place or a place of social perfection… there hasn’t to date been a society that fits the description of the accepted meaning of the word. That’s where the question stems from… if it hasn’t happened yet.. can it really happen? and if so.. how do we bring it about?

Yes if it’s a folie au deux
No in general
Fun to try for

There are fictional Utopias and fictional anti-utopias (Dystopias). What I find interesting is that in fictional utopias we are told HOW people SHOULD behave to create a paradise. On the other hand in fictional Dystopian stories we are told HOW to MAKE people behave in order to create an anti-paradise. Classic examples are Brave New World, 1984, and Hellstroms Hive. I suspect a certain fanatical ruthlessness is required to create a utopia. It’s obviously disturbing to libertarian types who equate absolute freedom with utopia. The reality is that utopia does not mean unfettered freedom. It never has.

Is it possible to create a Utopia? Yes. Is that very likely to happen? No, not so much.
Unless it’s a work of fiction.