Utopia Is An Unattainable Aspiration.

Why Utopia Is An Unattainable Aspiration.

Do this experiment; close your eyes for 5 or even 10 minutes.  Now, envision your perfect world.  

How will your day start, what aspects of your day make it perfect in your eyes.  

Consider everything; what are you eating? What car will you be driving-will you even drive? What foods will you be eating? Who are your neighbours?  Do you have neighbours?  Where do you live?  Do you live in a house, or something entirely different?  

Explore all the things you have thought about over time and wished were either different or would actually be implemented. 

Consider what your government would be like, do you even want a government?  Is your government democratic, marxist, communistic?  Do you have a head of state or a president?  

Keep identifying your ideal world until all your ideas are exhausted, or you have run out of time.

Now, after your 5 or 10 minutes have gone by and you have developed your idea of what your perfect world would be like, consider this;  How many other people will have exactly the same ideals as you?

Of course there will be things the majority agree upon, like preservation of environment for all Earth inhabitants not just humans, or a need for sustainability of all resources and therefore population stability not growth as a method for continued life.  

But, across the billions of people on this planet you will be hard pressed to get all of them to agree to 100% of your imagined utopian existence.

Why?  Because the perfect world means something different to each and every one of us; none of us wrong and none of us right.

No matter how we foresee our Utopian future we are unable to determine if the things we don’t know yet will be the things that make our ideals ineffective.  

I am not saying that we should not strive for utopian thinking, after all this urge to find perfection is what ameliorates our moral compass.  I merely pose the question of the attainability of such lofty aspirations.

Many people over time have aspired to create their own Utopia; with minimal success.  Most don’t succeed longer than a few short decades.

There was a group of Australians led by William Lane who moved to Paraguay in 1893 in pursuit of their Utopia.  The group consisted of some 238 disenchanted citizens, calling themselves the New Australia Movement.  

This new utopian socialist colony was named ‘New Australia’ and to this day descendants of the original founders remain in the settlement.  However the ideal of a utopian existence did not survive due to external pressures of traditional local government policy, internal bickering and dissent.  

William’s ideal society was founded on six key constitutional principles:

1. A common-hold, rather than a common-wealth
2. A brotherhood of English-speaking Whites
3. Life marriage
4. Preservation of the 'Colour-Line'
5. Teetotalism
6. Communism

As you can see, and I hope you agree, these ideals are far from being universally acceptable by all people and are clearly a ‘White Australia’ based doctrine, with no room for multiculturalism or freedom of choice.

With this in mind, if we are unable to create an environment to which all people would feel that they had reached their personal Utopia, Utopia cannot exist.

It is and always will be in the eye of the beholder.

I want to leave you with this quote:

“PERHAPS THE GREATEST UTOPIA WOULD BE IF WE COULD ALL REALIZE THAT NO UTOPIA IS POSSIBLE; NO PLACE TO RUN, NO PLACE TO HIDE, JUST TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS HERE AND NOW.”

JACK CARROLL

Until next time.

Robyn Williams