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Utopia, inside its usual & general caring meaning, refers to the person efforts to produce the better society, the hone society that doesn't survive (eventually).
Ideas which may radically vary my globe come typically known as utopian ideas.
"Utopia" around the veto meaning is utilized to discredit idewhen as as well advanced, as well affirmative or even unrealistic, impossible to understand.
It has as well been utilized to describe actual communities founded inside tries to produce such the society.
Basics of Utopia
Utopia's Family
Adjective - utopian:
Noun - utopian:
Derivation of utopia
A term utopia was coined by Thomas More as the title of his Latin book De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia (circa 1516), known more ordinarily when Utopia. Wise shoppers might scroll through a original text [http://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Utopia here], in the wikisource.
A term "utopia"" is combined from 2 Greek words - "does'nt" (ou) and "place" (topos), thus meaning "nowhere". He created the word "utopia" to suggest two Greek neologisms simultaneously: outopia (no place) and eutopia (good place). In this original context, the word carried none of the modern connotations associated with it.
Related terms
Anti-utopia questions the moral or practical validity of utopias
Dystopia is a negative utopia.
Eutopia is a positive utopia, roughly equivalent to the regular use of the word "utopia".
Heterotopia, the "more place", with its real and imagined possibilities (a mix of "utopian" escapism and turning virtual possibilities into reality) - example: cyberspace.
Other subcategories include Arcadias and Cockaygnes. Ruth Levitas is one who has developed such a categorisation.
History of utopia
Thomas More depicts a rationally organised society, through the narration of an explorer who discovers it - Raphael Hythlodaeus.
Utopia is based on The Republic where all property is held in common. Furthermore it is a perfect version of The Republic where the beauties of society, eg equalism and no war, all exist and the evils of society, eg poverty and misery, are all extinct. It has few laws, no lawyers and rarely sends its citizens to war, but hires mercenaries from among its war-prone neighbours.
It is likely that Thomas More, a religious layman who once considered joining the Church as a priest, was inspired by monastical life when he described the workings of his society. Thomas More lived during the age when the Renaissance was beginning to assert itself in England, and the old medieval ideals – including the monastic ideal – were declining. Some of Thomas More's ideas reflect a nostalgia for that medieval past. It was an inspiration for the Reducciones established by the Jesuits to Christianize and "civilize" the Guaranis.
His book has high popularity that the term utopia became a byword for ideal concepts, proposals, societies etc. Therefore for every author who proposes an utopia, it usually involves criticisms of many evils in the world, and all these evils will disappear in his imaginary society. The things outlined in the utopia are usually radical, revolutionary, inspirational, or speculative. Thus the term utopia becomes the equivalents of idealism.
Although some authors has described their utopia with some sorts of practicality, the term utopia has stereotyped as optimistic & idealistic & perfect; and readers will often mislabel their concepts as impossible or void.
Types of utopia
Economic utopia
Particularly in the early nineteenth century, several utopian ideas arose, often in response to the social disruption created by the development of commercialism and capitalism. These are often grouped in a greater "utopian socialist" movement, due to their shared characteristics: an egalitarian distribution of goods, frequently with the total abolition of money, and citizens only doing work which they enjoy and which is for the common good, leaving them with ample time for the cultivation of the arts and sciences. One classic example of such an utopia was Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. Another socialist utopia is William Morris' News from Nowhere, written partially in response to the top-down (bureaucratic) nature of Bellamy's utopia, which Morris criticized. However, as time passed and the socialist movement matured, utopianism was discarded. Socialists grounded their ideas firmly in what they saw as the realities of the age; among the different emerging socialist currents, Marxism became by far the harshest critic of utopian socialism. (for more information see the History of Socialism article)
Utopias have also been imagined by the opposite side of the political spectrum. For example, Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is an individualistic and libertarian utopia. Capitalist utopias of this sort are generally based on perfect market economies, in which there is no market failure—or the issue is never addressed.
Political and historical utopia
A global utopia of world peace is often seen as one of the possible inevitable endings of history.
Sparta was a militaristic utopia founded by Lycurgus (though some, especially Athenians, may have thought it was rather a dystopia). It was a Greek power until its defeat by the Thebans at the battle of Leuctra.
Religious utopia
The Christian and Islamic ideas of the Garden of Eden and Heaven tend to be a form of utopianism, especially in their folk-religious forms: inviting speculation about existence free of sin and poverty or any sorrow, beyond the power of death (although "heaven" in Christian eschatology at least, is more nearly equivalent to life within God Himself, visualized as an earth-like paradise in the sky). In a similar sense, the Buddhist concept of Nirvana may be thought of as a kind of utopia. Religious utopias, perhaps expansively described as a garden of delights, existence free of worry amid streets paved with gold, in a bliss of enlightenment enjoying nearly godlike powers, are often a reason for perceiving benefit in remaining faithful to a religion, and an incentive for converting new members.
In the United States during the Second Great Awakening of the nineteenth century, many radical religious groups formed utopian societies. They sought to form communities where all aspects of people's lives could be governed by their faith. Among the best-known of these utopian societies was the Shaker movement. The largest such movement was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' settlement in Utah after 1846 (See Mormon Pioneer).
See also: End of the world, Eschatology, Millennialism, Utopianism
Scientific and technological utopia
These are set in the future, when it is believed that advanced science and technology will allow utopian living standards; for example, the absence of death and suffering; changes in human nature and the human condition. In place of the static perfection of a utopia, libertarian transhumanists envision an "extropia", an open, evolving society allowing individuals and voluntary groupings to form the institutions and social forms they prefer.
One notable example of a technological and libertarian socialist utopia is Scottish author Iain M. Bank's Culture.
See also: hedonistic imperative, transhumanism, technological singularity, abolitionist society
Opposing this optimism is the prediction that advanced science and technology will, through deliberate misuse or accident, cause humanity's extinction. These pessimists advocate precautions over embracement of new technology.
Examples of utopia
''Plato's Republic (400 BC) was, at least on one level, a description of a political utopia ruled by an elite of philosopher kings, conceived by Plato. [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/150 a Gutenburg text of the book]
The City of God (written 413–426) by Augustine of Hippo, describes an ideal city, the "eternal" Jerusalem, the archetype of all "Christian" utopias.
Utopia (1516) by Thomas More [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2130 a Gutenburg text of the book]
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) by Robert Burton, a utopian society is described in the preface.
The City of the Sun (1623) by Tommaso Campanella
The New Atlantis (1627) by Francis Bacon
Oceana (1656) by James Harrington
The section in Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift depicting the calm, rational society of the Houyhnhms, is certainly utopian, but it is meant to contrast with that of the yahoos, who represent the worst that the human race can do.
Voyage en Icarie (1840) by Etienne Cabet
Erewhon (1872) by Samuel Butler
Looking Backward (1888), by Edward Bellamy
Freiland (1890) by Theodor Hertzka
News from Nowhere (1891), by William Morris; see also the Arts and Crafts Movement founded to put his ideas into practice [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3261 a Gutenberg text of the book]
Utopia, Limited (1893) is a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta in which a small island nation reforms itself along British lines, with amusingly utter success.
Intermere (1901) by Wiliam Alexander Taylor.
A large number of books by H.G. Wells, including A Modern Utopia (1905)
Herland'' (1915), by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; an exclusively female utopia and its journey towards "bi-sexuality" as presented by one of three male explorers who "discover" the country.
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) can be considered an example of pseudo-utopian satire (see also dystopia). One of his other books, Island (1962), demonstrates a positive utopia.
Shangri-La described in the novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton (1933)
Islandia (1942), by Austin Tappan Wright
B. F. Skinner's Walden Two (1948)
The Cloud of Magellan (1955) by Stanisław Lem
Andromeda Nebula (1957) is a classic communist utopia by Ivan Efremov
Star Trek (1966) science fiction television series by Gene Roddenberry
The Dispossessed (1974), a science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, is sometimes said to represent one of the few modern revivals of the utopian genre, though it is notable that one of the major themes of the work is the ambiguity of different notions of utopia. Le Guin presents a utopian world in which ditches do need digging, and sewers need unblocking — this drudgery is divided among all adults, and is contrasted, in the language of the utopia, with their everyday, more satisfying work.
Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) by Marge Piercy is a feminist science fiction novel in which the protagonist must act to win the utopian future over an alternative, dystopian, one.
Ecotopia (novel) (1975) by Ernest Callenbach
The Three Californias Trilogy (especially The Pacific Edge (1990)) and the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Giver (1993), a novel by Lois Lowry, depicts a "hone" society of the far future whose elimination of war, disease, fear, &c. comes at the inherent price of the repression of human emotions, individuality and free will.
most of the stories in Future_Primitive:_The_New_Ecotopias (1994), edited by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Hedonistic Imperative (1996), an online manifesto by David Pearce, outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life.
The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You (1997) by Dorothy Bryant
The Matrix (1999), a film by the Wachowski brothers, describes a virtual reality controlled by artificial intelligence such as Agent Smith. Smith says that the first Matrix was a utopia, but humans disbelieved and rejected it because they "define their reality across misery & suffering." Therefore, the Matrix was redesigned to simulate human civilization with all its suffering.
Equilibrium (2002), is a film and describes a future in which feelings are forbidden. The movie is strongly influenced by Brave New World (above) and the dystopian 1984 by George Orwell.
Xen: Ancient English Edition, (2004) is a novel about a true Utopia, with a bias toward Matriarchy, in the distant future of Earth, "translated" by D.J. Solomon
Ensaio sobre a Lucidez ("Treatise on Lucidity") by José Saramago (2004), describes a city where there is 83% of blank votes at an election.
Globus Cassus, (2004), is a project for the transformation of the Earth into a large, hollow structure inhabited on the inside, which would be organised by new types of societies and political systems.
Dinotopia, (1992) originally an illustrated book and now expanded into other media, is about an island where humans and dinosaurs coexist peacefully. Most are vegetarian, trade has replaced currency, and nature is carefully protected. However, it's inescapable, and some are displeased by this lifestyle, so one character points out that the word "Dinotopia" doesn't mean "a utopia of dinosaurs," it means "a terrible place."
Neopets, a game set on a world called Neopia, a utopia.
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