Full transcript
0:02Utopianism.
0:04Utopianism is the ism of utopias.
0:06It means a belief or interest in a perfect world -
0:09or at least a world designed to be perfect.
0:12The word 'utopia' was coined in 1516 by Sir Thomas More -
0:16writer, saint and opponent of Henry the VIII's marriage plans -
0:19in his book of the same name.
0:21Utopia has been taken by some people at face value
0:24as a book about a perfect land.
0:26But others point to the fact that the word 'utopia' literally means...
0:30and that the book is a satire.
0:32But that hasn’t stopped people.
0:33Through the years there has been all sorts of ideas
0:35about a perfect society.
0:37Economic utopias with no poverty...
0:39ecological utopias where humans live in harmony with nature
0:42and so on and so forth.
0:44Many cultures and religions
0:45have a myth of a perfect society in the past,
0:48like the Garden of Eden.
0:50Communes, music festivals and naturist camps
0:52could all be seen as attempts to create a mini utopia on Earth.
0:56There are many kinds of utopias
0:58but one of the central qualities of any utopia, paradoxically,
1:01is that it doesn’t exist.
1:03Being a utopianist essentially means being a dreamer.
1:07When John Lennon sang,
1:08"You may say I'm a dreamer"
1:10in his famous hit single and utopian anthem, Imagine,
1:12he was referring to exactly this quality.
1:15Utopianism's main flaw is its obsession with perfection.
1:19This can lead to absurdities like the Soviet Russian belief
1:22that one day all crime would be eradicated
1:25because under true socialism crime would not be necessary.
1:29Or the more sinister belief in fascist ideologies
1:31that racial purity would eliminate all evil from society.
1:36Perhaps this is why much discussion of the topic
1:38is now confined to utopianism's dark side -
1:41dystopianism,
1:43a way of describing worlds, real or imaginary,
1:46in entirely negative terms.
1:48From George Orwell's 1984 to Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale,
1:52dystopian fiction has become increasingly popular in books,
1:56films and television.
1:58But interest in utopias isn't going anywhere -
2:01references within books have been on a steady rise since the 1900s
2:05with clear spikes in the 60s and also - perhaps surprisingly -
2:09in the 80s.
2:11And who could deny the perfection of the world - at least in microcosm -
2:15as you sit by an ocean
2:17and listen to the sound of the waves crashing on a beach.
2:20Or when you first see a blanket of bluebells in the spring.
2:24And without at least striving for a better world, where would we be?
2:28In chains, with rats chewing off our faces,
2:31that's where.
2:32Thanks for watching! :)
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