I would like to be clear about my own personal thinking about utopia. While I very much reject the "techno-utopianism" discussed in my 2013 blog post #134, published yesterday, I do remain committed to the kind of "utopian" thinking that I have frequently advocated here, throughout the 1,237 blog postings I have made to date on this Two Worlds blog.
My idea of "utopian" thinking is based on a realization that within the world that human beings create anything is possible. We have the ability to make both our dreams and our nightmares "come true." If we can think it, we can do it (within our human world).
"Utopian thinking," in this context, is the rejection of the apparent "reality" of what exists now, if we think of "reality" as immutable. Whatever exists now (in our human world) is subject to change. In our world, we create the realities, and if we can think it, we can do it (within our human world).
But the World of Nature we cannot change. It has its own, "natural" laws which cannot be "broken." On that world our own world is ultimately dependent.
Utopian thinking, in other words, only works within the human world that we make. When our "utopianism" starts believing that human beings can escape the limits imposed by the World of Nature, and that we can defy its inevitabilities (like death, for instance), we are way off the track.
http://vimeo.com/user3572559
The imaginal excesses of the 19th century re-action to the Industrial Revolution may have removed us from daily living with respect to the Utopian vision, but there were forward thinking folks (like William Morris), who made the natural world the basis of their dreaming. Check out the influences of the Arts & Crafts Movement - they are in the intertwining of natural materials with visionary inspiration.
ReplyDelete