processing utopia and dystopia, and perhaps a rejection of "place"

Wikipedia says that "dystopia" is a place of human misery, poverty, oppression, etc, that does not pretend to be anything but what it is. It goes on to say that "anti-utopia" is a place that portrays itself as a utopia, but in reality is quite the opposite. It's easy to call utopia and dystopia opposites, but as we've discussed here and there, that doesn't quite seem to cover the subject. In this post, I'm trying to sift through what these terms can mean in relation to our study, and see where that takes me. I find that I haven't actually gone through the process of asking myself the questions in our interview, and I realize that could be quite helpful in digging a bit further into this study.

Let's start broad-brush and cursory first. There's the actual, physical reality of a utopia or dystopia. That is, someplace that is environmentally and socially smooth and positive, vs someplace of degredation, oppression, the like. It seems much easier to picture a dystopia that actually exists, as opposed to a utopia. Easy answer - some places in Africa we've seen on the news. Environmental degredation exaccerbates power tensions, rivals flare up, violence is the law, and the people don't have adequate means to meet their needs. Right? And if I had to actually admit to some idea of utopia as existing, mightn't I say the PacNW is pretty darn close? I appreciate what I think Jenn said from our interview - the abundance here is quite striking of paradise. I also imagine certain places abroad, perhaps in some small area in Switzerland. Or I can imagine happy, content small villages across the world, but my gut reaction seems to be skeptical that such a small scale utopia isn't just fortunate enough to be ignorant of larger scale dystopias it's embedded in.

Indeed, concrete ideas of utopia/dystopia rapidly begin to crumble... as soon as I zoom in even a little to the ideas presented above, it's not so accurate to label a place one way or the other. In the dystopia scenario, is everything absolutely hopeless? Do familial relations in some positive way or other still exist? Are individuals able to have some sort of light within themselves? The stories paint pictures that strike me as a complete and total hell... but at what scale is one willing to zoom in/out to in order to find traces of utopia in dys, or dys in utop? One need only to inquire as to the people in the PacNW for which abundance is not readily available to see the fissures in this paradise.

I'll take a brief interlude into my experience of Auroville. If you recall, I sent out a video report from the BBC on alleged sexual child abuse in the village. I did a little follow up from the Auroville site, and the report received strong opposition for being carried out in a very poor journalistic way. Still, the accusations highlight the thin veil between utopia and dystopia - or, according to wikipedia, anti-utopia. Auroville portrays itself to be a utopia, if I ever heard one. The stated "purpose of Auroville is to realise human untiy". To live in Auroville, one "must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness" (check out the website to find these references). Brings up ready questions of what that actually means, and how one is supposed to figure out if potential Aurovillians are indeed such "servitors". While I was there, as I may have shared, our group of students was sent on an initial tour of AV, during which we met with several different Aurovillians who lauded and praised the community for its unique and indeed utopic accomplishments. Towards the end of this introduction, we met a man who expressed quite the opposite sentiments of the community, which left many of us feeling betrayed. We came to AV expecting a paradise - a vision that was strongly described in various pamphlets and info we were given before arriving. This one man, even in the midst of the many others who at least told us of their satisfaction and awe of the village, dashed so many of our hopes; and I found just how fragile the glass city of "utopia" we had all constructed in our heads actually is.

That one encounter turned a lot of the students off to AV. Of course they were going to enjoy their time there, but AV was sort of permanently set aside as a joke, or a deranged sort of playground. For myself, I came to the conclusion that there was no way I could fully understand this place; that certainly there were disturbing and negative aspects of it, but there were also beautiful, positive aspects. Even more importantly (I believed then, and it would be an interesting subject to explore again), the core of this place was not physical, but rather constructed around an ideal - a realm of being that existed more in the spiritual lives of the people there than the physical. I also understood that communities cannot be accurately assessed from the outside, which, even as a temporary resident for four months, I certainly was. So, I decided to not write AV off or view it as paradise, but rather accept it as the most I could understand it to be - a complex and open experiment.

Indeed, it seems common that every concept of a physical manifestation of either utop or dystop is taken on somewhat uncomfortably.... one can't help but be skeptical of even one's own construction of what "the ideal" would actually look like. And if we accept that utop can exist in dystop and vice versa, even just in the glimpse of a personal happiness and satisfaction within a very different environment, then the terms seem unhelpful in dilineating anything other than that - happiness, satisfaction, pleasure, joy, or pain, discontent, suffering.

So what can they dilineate? In what sense is it meaningful to even use these terms anymore? "Anymore," because as Jacoby and Harvey write about, utopia seemed to be more viable as a physical reality in earlier times. For a variety of reasons, skepticism has grown around the term. I chalk it up loosely to a widening of perspective - which I believe is also something Jenn mentioned. With the communication and tech we have now, we are hyper-aware of the multitude of realities out there, leaving little room to believe that a true manifestation of the "ideal" is possible. And yet, there is something there, something compelling or salient in utopia...

It's the dream. And it's the nightmare. Maybe utopia and dystopia should just never be used to describe actual place - ironic, considering the meaning of the words, the outright claim that they are concepts tied down inherently to place. What's the equivalent for "space," instead? "Good" or "bad" "space," meaning these terms are meant to be used in the realm of dreaming. They are meant to allow space for one to explore one's dreams and nightmares, and from that space, move into physical place.

All the above processing I think means that I would just rather put to rest the association that people have (traditionally?) between "utopia" and "place". Funny... here we are trying to tie it back down to place. Or maybe just explore the relationship? I guess I'm saying that I would rather acknoweldge my "utopia" only as my own dreams. What makes me happy, and what makes me unhappy. And in a community... if it's "utopic," I would say that the people have common dreams, common ideas of what makes them happy. But the difference, I suppose, between good space and good place is that with space, one (or the comm'ty) acknowledges that the shared dreams are not necessarily shared realities. And so a healthy "utopic" comm'ty to me would be one in which we have common dreams of what makes us happy, but a pluralism of what that looks like in the physical reality. ... And I'm not sure what that looks like, either.

Perhaps I have just processed through a lot of obvious detail, and reached a similarly obvious outcome. But you know how processing goes. I feel at least a little more secure of my own ideas of utopia.... and I think I'm getting a more detailed scope of some of the concepts in this study. More to do...