About Utopia

Is utopia impossible? What is imagination for?

Every creative act carries within it an utopia”

Edson Luiz André de Sousa.

When we speak of utopia, we are not referring to the common sense that associates utopia with the impossible, with a delusion, or with a destiny frustrated in advance. Utopia is not a plan or a destination: utopia is the horizon, the direction of the walk (or navigating), the light that guides us, the imagination that sculpts desire and sucks us in its direction to be more and more similar. to the dream. It is born from the present, because it is born from the criticism of the present and from the imagination that fills the gaps, and returns to the present, because desire impacts subjectivity and inspires action. Utopia is therefore present, real and active.

The word “utopia” was born with the classic book by Thomas More, first published in 1516. It describes, in detail, an imagined island, called “Utopia”, where a form of government unlike any other in the world is practiced. and better than all of them. There, there is no private property and no circulation of money, for example. Although the island of Utopia is imaginary, it deals with real problems of the society of the time and it is from them that the author draws an ideal society, in which those problems would be solved. Thus, utopia constitutes an exercise of imagination that starts from the critique of the present and opens windows to conceive alternative possibilities. The name Utopia comes from the Greek: “or + topos”, “no place”, or “I + topos”, “happy place”. (Read more about Thomas More’s Utopia in our library).

Situated on the horizon, utopia is the boldest, most absolute desire. The best image that imagination is capable of creating. The maximum point to which the imagination is able to take the desire, or the desire is able to make the imagination extend. Such an image of desire is born here and now, and is thrown to the horizon; of the horizon, bounces off the gaze, and alters the attitude towards the present.

What would the ideal world look like? What problems in our society would we like to eliminate? What is the best society we can imagine?

Utopia is a provocation. It provokes thought, imagination, the status quo. It arises from a critical look at society, together with the desire to create something else. It has the function of causing counterflow: utopia always seeks to circumvent dogma, boycott inertia, think outside of what is given when envisioning other forms of life and social organization. Utopia does not need to be a project (doable or not), it is, above all, an opening, an invitation to imagine. The ability to imagine multiplies possibilities, instigates those who imagine, moves the subject and transforms reality. If we imagine a more beautiful, more peaceful, more powerful life, we can go in that direction, acting in accordance with what we imagine. We still don’t know what will be, in practice, possible or impossible. It’s a matter of experimentation. But as for utopia itself, that would be the same as asking: is imagination possible?

Philosopher Carla Ferro comments: “Utopia seems to me to be no longer a state utopia that appeals to a better functioning of our social organization, but an immanent utopia, a zone of instability where a greater difference in potential energy causes a disturbance in the order of flows and interactions. The impossible would thus reveal itself as a kind of source of new possibilities. On the edge of this world we know”.

In the view of psychoanalyst Edson Luiz André de Sousa, “A thought about the function of utopia comes, therefore, to provoke the imagination to open other possible paths to thought so that we are not paralyzed in the obscurity of the moment. Utopia has the important function of resisting the imperatives of consensus that the social bond increasingly imposes on us”.

A society incapable of imagining tends to stagnation and bankruptcy. This is one of the faces of the multiple crisis facing the world today. The current time is particularly demanding of utopias: if we do not change our form of social organization, we will experience a profound ecological catastrophe, which the human species may not survive. We need to reinvent our social, political, economic, affective, subjective, energetic forms… Which direction will we take? Let’s start now!

Are other ways of living possible? What other ways of living already exist? How do other societies, at other times or in other places, organize their lives?

To imagine utopia is to imagine the different. Thus, many times, aspects of the utopia of one society can resemble concrete aspects of another. The way of living that a society knows will never be the only possible way, and the possibilities of reality multiply as the imagination feeds on experiences lived in other places or times. To be drawn, utopia interrogates everything it finds, researches alternatives and turns curiosity into raw material.

Among inspirations: indigenous societies of different ethnicities and origins (Guarani, Yawanawa, Aymara, Quechua, and hundreds of others) can inspire utopia with balanced relationships with nature and the biosphere, as well as the constitution of community life as a fabric of trust and reciprocity. The Buddhist tradition inspires the cultivation of utopia from the mind: a “practice of the self” (as the philosopher Michel Foucault would say) dedicated to shaping a subjectivity that is beneficial to other beings. Animal, plant and mineral communities also have to teach us: let us observe the typical balance of nature’s intelligence between the various elements that compose it – and that include us. Living well, the common, the pluriverse, metamorphosis, and so many other concepts and practices can help us to conceive of life in other ways and to imagine fairer, healthier and more solidary worlds. (Drill down to these and other inspirations in our library.)

Note: taking inspiration from other societies does not mean taking them as models of perfection. Every society has failures and achievements; the advantage of imagination is its freedom to mix and create. Utopia itself, as such, is never perfect – being a human creation, it is subject to limits and errors. Its value is the critical and creative exercise, starting from what we know, to the limit of what we can imagine. Mixing everything we know, what dreams are we capable of?

And what exactly are “utopian experiences”?

Utopian experiences are those that take utopia seriously and begin to turn it into fact.

If utopia is the horizon, the utopian experience is the step towards it. Utopian practices are those in which action is directed by what is believed to be most desirable. Collectives, communities, networks, social movements that demonstrate different ways of organizing, producing, exchanging, moving, building, educating… For example, the Banco de Tempo is a bank in which, instead of using money as a bargaining chip, hours are used. If you offer one hour of piano lessons, you will earn one hour on your account. You can use it to buy an hour of massage, or an hour of babysitting, or a loaf of bread! And this is just one example among the many good ideas out there.

This kind of experience demonstrates alternatives to some of the more ingrained conventions of Western society, such as money, hierarchy, authority, oppression, exploitation, reason and progress. In place of these values, dynamics of solidarity, commonality, cooperation, complementarity, reciprocity, affection and care come into play. By avoiding dogma, utopia demonstrates the vastness of the possible and the infinite that exists outside the given.

What is the relationship between utopia and thought?

Just as utopia pierces the apparent solidity of social reality, it also pierces the fabric of thought of those who imagine it. Utopia is the power of what is external, strange, which takes thought to the limit of itself. In the words of Fredric Jameson: “the vocation of utopia is failure, its epistemological value is in the walls that it allows us to perceive around our minds, in the invisible limits that allow us to detect by mere induction, in the quagmire of our imaginations in the mode of production. We conclude, therefore, that utopia shows what we cannot imagine”.
To think about utopia is to stretch, stretch and transform the very thought that thinks it. We will?