The Utopian
February 6, 2023
Utopien 04, Makis E. Warlamis
THE UTOPIAN does not believe in the perfectibility of individuals. He is quite pessimistic about the individual. Instead, he believes in the perfectibility of society. The collective can — and must — evolve in order to ensure individual and universal happiness.
The very finiteness of the individual life offends the utopian. He demands immortality, not in another world, but in the right social system. He is zealously optimistic when it comes to what human beings can achieve under the enlightened rule of social engineers or “philosopher kings.”
Understanding the utopian mentality is very important because it is so common today and has strongly influenced all of our lives. The idea, for instance, of controlling the climate through social action, global no less, is utopian to the core.
Étienne Cabet, a 19th-century French philosopher, was one of many thinkers who envisioned utopia. In his Travels to Icaria, he described communities of complete human equality, group ownership and workers cooperatives:
Stables, hospitals, bakeries, factories and warehouses are all on the outskirts of the city, and the inhabitants live in the centre, where the streets are clean, broad and straight. The houses, clustered with balconies, are never more than four stories high … The government is communitarian. The Republic of Icaria is in charge of administration and public services, for instance, but the laws are made by the citizens according to the dictates of their needs and consciences. (Dictionary of Imaginary Places; Macmillan Publishing Co., 1980; p. 173)
Icarians established real communes in Missouri, Iowa and California before the experiment faded away.
In The Republic, his famous dialogue, Plato described the ideal city-state ruled by a philosopher king and where all human reproduction and child-rearing is regulated by the state, so that parents do not know their own children. But utopian thinking predates Plato. It has existed since the beginning of human society — and it will always exist, as Thomas Molnar says in his outstanding book Utopia: The Perennial Heresy. You might call Eve the very first utopian, for she was snared by the promise of a better world, in which she would “know good and evil.” The serpent did not offer riches or beautiful objects. He offered her abstractions. He offered her enlightenment. It is from the first human beings that we inherited “the utopian temptation.”
The utopian seeks political solutions to most human problems. He is willing to sacrifice freedom for the attainment of a long-term objectives. The end always justifies the means. Indeed, one finds very often that the utopian is willing to see his fellow citizens penalized, ostracized, imprisoned or even killed if they do not share the same vision and cooperate with the plan for the future, as is so common in Communist societies and as we recently saw around the world. There’s a fine line between utopia and dystopia — actually, no line at all. The utopian values equality, peace and brotherhood above all else. He does not like friction, but in order to achieve a friction-less society he is willing to create a great deal of friction.
One characteristic time and time again of utopian thinking is an insistence on regulating family relationships and distancing parent from their children, as in The Republic. The establishment of the perfect society requires the denigration of attachments which may draw the citizen to the historic or traditional. In order to make the New Man, as Molnar describes it, “natural sentiments are torn out by the roots and replaced by false feelings and aspirations.” Children are sent to schools as early as possible.
The utopian has a great reverence for his chosen political leaders. I think of a swooning comment I overheard one day in a store, “Oh, I just love Anthony Fauci.” The leader, as Molnar says, is the “secularized incarnation” of wisdom. He must be trusted and even idolized because collective perfection (maybe the eradication of the flu?) cannot be achieved by anything but collective action.
More from Molnar:
“Compatible in every way with the utopian leader’s love of the common citizen is his utter ruthlessness and use of force. With but slight variations, this feature is to be noted all through the history of utopias. Although, generally speaking, utopias present a dreary and monotonous picture, they manifest at least a certain air of serenity about them, the result of their citizens’ final acquiescence to the concept of happiness imposed by a gentle force. The truth is different, for a careful reading of utopian texts reveals the same features of life as does the reading of reports from Communist societies, whether of the religious or Soviet brand. In their enthusiasm and naiveté, utopian authors unwittingly allow revealing passages to slip into their encomia much as the speeches by Soviet leaders are revealing in-between-the-lines reading.”
A society dominated by utopian thinking is one dominated by an un-elected, highly ambitious elite that ardently believes in the rightness of its intentions and of its social plans. Sound familiar? In. love with abstractions, they are often not in love with ordinary men.
The oddest thing about the utopian is that while he so passionately seeks the good of mankind in the abstract, he often passionately despises human beings as they are. In our time, he resents the natural differences between the sexes. He resents the fact that human beings create waste. He resents the real diversity of human races and ethnicities and wants them all banished to create a blissful Tower of Babel.
Quoting Molnar once again:
“The unreasonable pessimism about the individual and the equally unreasonable optimism about the collectivity betray the utopian’s contempt for creation, for the world and for nature as they are.”
Can the utopian be truly happy? For the utopian’s schemes so often founder on the rocks of reality.
To be continued.
— Comments —
KSG writes:
Excellent essay, Laura! I had come to believe that our current set of self-described and self-anointed “elites” are mad as hatters.
To speak blithely about killing billions of humans with wars, starvation, “vaccines”…excepting themselves, of course, to justify global mass murder due to not having personal “need” of so many humans, betrays a level of disconnection and extreme psychopathy that is difficult for a normal person to grasp. But it appears to be even more than that. These individuals are possessed, apparently little is left in them that is actually human, as we understand it. And the way they are pushing nuclear war, it appears they are after complete destruction of God’s Creation … an anti-utopia.
Laura writes:
Thank you.
God’s completely in control.
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Galatians 6:7
This utopian thinking we see among the cognoscenti is shared by many normal people
George Weinbaum writes:
Reading your piece reminded me of two things: Lenin supposedly said, “you have to break eggs to make an omelette” and New Harmony, Indiana. In about 1814 Robert Owen created his utopia at New Harmony. It dissolved, if I recollect properly, in about 1824.
Keep up the good work.
Laura writes:
Thanks.
Late 18th- and 19th-century America had much utopian ferment. Other examples are the Oneida Community, the Shakers and Brook Farm. Those communities dissolved, but the trend has not ceased and actually has gone mainstream.
