Utopia

Leszek Kolakowski writes: "When I am asked where I would like to live, my standard answer is: deep in the virgin mountain forest on a lake shore at the corner of Madison Avenue in Manhattan and Champs Elysees, in a small tidy town" (Modernity on Endless Trial, 131). This is his definition of utopia.

It is so utterly crazy. It is so utterly contradictory. Of course. That what utopia is. Utopia is something we create in our mind that is contradictory. It is impossible to have utopia. As Kolakowski points out, utopia cannot exist. In order to have a utopia, where all is peace and joy, one has obtain it at gun point, which is in violation of what utopia is. Utopia becomes, of necessity, totalitarianism, because the ideal must be enforced.

We are now reading a disturbing book by Omer Bartov, Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity. Using the Holocaust as a focal point, Bartov writes, "Totalitarianism is modern utopia brought to its ultimate concrete conclusion" (p. 158).

I think we all have a little bit of a Utopian in us. We often say (or think) things like: "If the rest of world just saw things like I did..." That is a Utopian statement. We are contemplating what our ideal would look like when enforced on the world.

Perhaps we need to get beyond our fascination with an idyllic world. The next time you think about how great your Utopian world would be, remember you are probably the only one thinking that. (Am I being Utopian saying that?)

By the way, my utopia involves a couch, high speed internet, and an unlimited supply of sweet tea.