The Audacity of Hope

At Confluence this past weekend (which had really great programing, BTW) there was a panel on Utopias. While the panel was supposed to be nominally about utopian fiction, James Morrow as moderator took the panel in a different direction. He asked the panelists (his wife Kathryn Morrow, Kathryn Cramer, Joe Haldeman, Charles Oberndorf) what they had done, or are doing, to bring about utopias in their own lives. Well, five great stories later and the panel is almost out of time. At the end, I got the last question, what was greeted with a reaction I didn't quite expect.

I asked that since in most fiction (excluding libertarian fantasies which tend to exclude small details, like reality, to get their systems to work) and in real life, most utopias fail or become dictatorial, or in literature are used as farce, why do we still dream of these?

Apostasy is my strong suit. Have you noticed?

Anyway, I was responded to first with the same look that people give to the person that farts in Church during the epistle. Then began an attempt to assure me that, basically while they didn't use these words, hope springs eternal and shouldn't we "progress"?

I'm highly dubious of the later as it tends toward personal preference and elitism, and has unpleasant political ramifications (as when it's is carried out to the nth degree). Ie. Your progress may not be my progress.

No problem with hope. I have the same feeling when I start flipping TV channels. Heck, I'm a speculative fiction author who thinks he'll be able to do this as a retirement income. If that's not a symptom that I have hope, it must be brain damage.

But really, I know of no utopia in real life that has survived. Some communities have lingered, but they're dependent on tourist trade (Chautauqua, Lillydale) coming in for seminars and events. The Amish who left the old country for their utopia in American have long been compromised (even some Old Order). I think this is why the Free Tibet Movement has such strong support here in the US (full disclosure, I am a proponent of getting China out of Tibet, or Province 13 as they call it), it's the belief in Shangri La; or for our US westerward expansion, the belief in Beaulah or Goshen; or the technological Biosphere; the personal belief that if we flip this switch just one more time the lights, or whatever wasn't working, will work this time. Did you know that at the advent of electric generation there was a plan of a supercity built at Niagra where the majority of North America would live in electronic bliss? They called it Metropolis; not making this up. It was also to be a utopia.

So, given the reality (and literary custom) of utopian epic fail, why do we still believe in Utopia? What drives us to make things better? Where does this belief in "progress of the human condition" come from? Haven't we learned that vox populi is vox deu? (Utopian dreams tend not to be populist ones, although those playing the populist card tend to make their dreams sound like utopian ones, "the shining city on a hill" for example.) And vox populi likes "American Idol" and "Survivor" not opera and Shakespeare.

(Also, full disclose, I ended up a councilman because I attempted to help make my community better by avoiding a Potterization, ala "It's a Wonderful Life," from happening to my village. That'll learn me.)