visions of utopia feb 2003

[...]... however out of reach, most utopias are meant to be pursued Utopias represent an ideal toward which the mundane world must reach They are examples to be worked for Utopianism creates a political program, giving direction and meaning to the idea of progress; progress is always on the way toward some notion of utopia There are, of course, complicated undercurrents in all this Some imagined visions of utopias... sure how much of More’s vision was meant to be ironic Some utopias are also often critical rather than affirmative, invoking the earthly elements of greed and envy and inequality, only to suggest that if the correct strategies are followed, they might be overcome or avoided But utopias, properly interpreted, are visions of what should be, even if they show what shouldn’t be Utopias are visions we care... contemporary cultural life, experiences that provide glimpses of utopianism and its discontents But no other form of expression has been so associated with the utopian dream as music Music does not, of course, outline utopias such as those of More and Marx; particular sets of social relations are not expressed; there is no literal discussion of money or education or the moral life But as such philosophers... includes hints of what sorts of feelings and ideas might exist in a world in which all such tensions are resolved; his symphonies often end in utopian visions There are also forms of music that may almost literally take on the task of testing utopian ideas, juxtaposing desire with reality, the ideal with the real The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, for example, once suggested that much of the familiar... version of the utopian messenger, pleasing us with his account of an ideal land but also warning us, in his tones, of all the dangers Of course, if music were unambiguously utopian, it would become almost unlistenable pap, a fantasy without boundaries or tensions So musical paradise always comes at a price or after a horrific strug- Utopia and Its Discontents gle; the greatest examples of musical utopianism,... ‘higher phase’ of communism arrives,” he wrote, “the Socialists demand the strictest control, by society and by the state, of the measure of labor and the measure of consumption; but this control must start with the expropriation of the capitalists, with the establishment of workers’ control over the capitalists, and must be carried out, not by a state of bureaucrats, but by a state of armed workers.”... new home of Mind” and chastised the “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel”: “Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us They are based on matter There is no matter here.” Kevin Kelly, who, as executive editor of Wired was one of the most influential early analysts of the Internet, recently wrote a.sort of selfhelp... completely with a utopian idea of the Internet conceived 21 22 VISIONS OF UTOP IA when it was used by just a few tens of thousands of devotees and scientists; commerce was unforeseen and unwelcome Such Internet pioneers imagined that human nature itself would change under the pressures of the new technology They bristled at any hint that as the Internet develops, it could become more like the rest of the mundane... utopia is another man’s dystopia Utopias seem fine if they are far-off and protected realms; bring them any closer and they easily turn sour What is one actually to do in utopia? What sort of life is possible when all desires are satisfied? In the monotonous world of utopias, distinctions and judgments become difficult to make; virtue and horror run together There is no private property in More’s utopia, ... education or the moral life But as such philosophers as Theodor Adorno have shown, music creates an autonomous world of sound with its own set of laws and relationships, its own sort of order, its own conceptions of tension and release And in the midst of these abstract orders are encoded visions of utopia and dystopia For now, these ideas must remain admittedly vague and suggestive and general, but my proposal . in which the notion of utopia challenges the boundaries of human imagination. Furaha D. Norton VISIONS OF UTOPIA AND IT SHALL COME TO PASS, IN THE END OF DAYS, THAT RIVERS OF MILK AND nectar shall.