Perfection. Does the term conjure up images of rainbows, or attainable goals? How we define an ideal state of social, political, and economic being varies considerably. We are, after all, people who embody distinct backgrounds, personalities, needs, desires, biases, fears, and values.
While Utopia is relative, it has certainly been around the time line. Our quest for it dates back millennia. And by no means has the burning desire for the ideal society gotten stuck in time. Instead, it continues to evolve and progress.
We can explore the circular movement of this quest by dipping into historical Utopian ideals, exploring early practical movements, reviewing international inspirational examples, and drawing some conclusions.
Historical Utopian Ideals
Plato’s Republic is one of the first published attempts to ascertain the point to being good, particularly as the wicked always seemed to be happier and more successful. For Plato, the path to answering the question had to include the community. Group behavior, or politics, was at the heart of it all. If you could sort out the best way to organize the community in such a way that the community was healthy, happiness of the individual, he argued, was irrelevant.
But this self-sacrificing ideal held only for the State’s "guardians" and the "auxiliaries." It was not meant for the so-called productive classes. It also featured an unusual twist. Stirpiculture (special stock or race breeding) was prescribed as the method of preserving the exceptional qualities of guardians and auxiliaries, along with state-controlled child rearing.
Unlike Plato, Sir Thomas More didn’t restrain his discussion in Utopia to the class that governed. Instead, he incorporated the entire social structure. In More’s Island of Utopia, reason was the foundation of the order.
Written in 1516, More’s Utopia addressed issues of great urgency at the peak of the Renaissance. These issues included absolute monarchy consolidation in principalities and kingdoms; monarchy development as the leading controlling element in international relations; lowered prestige and power of Catholic leaders; and humanistic ascendancy, both in a religious context (i.e., "simple piety") and in the secular sphere (i.e., emphasis on Greek classics).
More’s key message was that good individuals have constructed a fine society. He asserted that behavior determines the health of a society, and that none of this comes at the expense of pleasure.
"The pursuit of pleasure is central to the Utopian philosophy," writes Richard Schoeck in The Achievement of Thomas More: Aspects of His Life and Works. "[It] is developed to enable the individual to pursue...pleasure to the point where it conflicts with larger interests, whether society’s claims or God’s." Yet More’s treatment of pleasure is clever. "By making the performance of good and virtuous deeds the source of the greatest pleasure," adds Schoeck, "More has cunningly reconciled not only the Stoic philosophy but Christianity as well with the best potentials in Epicurean philosophy."
Since More’s Utopia, numerous scholars, philosophers, and writers have introduced idealistic versions of a perfect society, though in some instances they are more representative of alternative lifestyles than "Utopia."
Among the variations on Utopia introduced was Gargantua by Rabelais (1534), in which a tremendous giant sets up a religious order unlike any other. Men and women of great beauty and the right disposition are accepted, and no vows, routines, or regulations exist. The only clause at Theleme (a Greek derivative meaning "free will") is "do what you will [and find pleasure in]."
Of course, some utopias are more... utopian...than others. In the essay "On Cannibals," Montaigne depicts a "barbarous" society that lives close to the original state (no clothes, riches, poverty, servitude, no agriculture and know nothing of lying, avarice, envy). Its ideals lie in love for the wives and intense courage in war. With war playing a key role in this society, survivors of wars bring heads as trophies and share the "kill" with friends and family.
On the other hand, there is the more beneficent society in the last adventure of Gulliver’s Travels. There, Swift unfolded the story of an ideal country where a particular breed of horse-like beings live in harmony, have no vices, and never lie. These ideal creatures are contrasted with a despicable breed of human-like creatures who also live on the island, and were the "civilized" humans in Europe and England, whose vile habits spoil society.
In New Atlantis by Bacon (1624), mankind’s happiness is accomplished through natural sciences, and in City of the Sun (1637) by Campanella, property — and a return to stirpiculture — prevail.
Practical Efforts
Intentional communities represent the most practical efforts in the pursuit of a perfect or near-perfect society. Some of these have formed societal interests in religious or philosophical ideals, others around political or Utopian socialist leanings.
It has been said that long before More’s Utopia, Sparta’s renowned Lycurgus initiated a communal living experiment. Plutarch, a Greek biographer, wrote of Lycurgus "To...expel from the state arrogance and envy, luxury and crime, and those yet more inveterate [long, habitual] diseases of want and superfluity, he‘persuaded the wealthy few’ to renounce their properties and to consent to a new division of the land, and that they should live all together on an equal footing."
Examples of religious and non-religious communities in this country also abound, and some of them date back to the early days of the republic. Ephrata, for example, was founded in Pennsylvania by German immigrant Johan Conrad Beissel in 1732. It was comprised of a cluster of individuals who shared work duties running paper and flour mills, a bakeshop, and a tannery. No full religious vows were taken by this group. The unmarried individuals lived relatively secluded, wore white robes, and worshipped four times daily. Also in Pennsylvania, the Community of Equality was founded by another German immigrant and his son in 1803.
Eventually, George Rapp sold Community of Equality to Robert Owen, an English reformer, who transformed it into a non-religious commune in 1825. He named it and based it in Indiana. An economic cooperative, New Harmony hosted a kindergarten and the country’s first public school, trade school, and free library .
Central Iowa became home to one of the longest running communities, the Amana Colony, settled in 1859 by German Protestants. This experimentation in "Christian communism" declined after the Civil War. In the 1930s, it dissolved communal ties and became a marketing and producing co-op.
Eventually, Massachusetts-based Brook Farm, originally set up as a pilot in humane living via dialogue and education, got reorganized as a phalanx. Even though it was dissolved after just two years, it was well-known because of the individuals associated with it. It included the likes of Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, Charles A. Dana, Bronson Alcott, John Greenleaf Whittier, and James Russell Lowell.
One of the most infamous non-religious communities was the Oneida community in New York, founded in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes. Despite its alleged non-religious focus, Oneida was a collection of "Christian Perfectionists" who ventured to find a new Eden. They tried to live sin-free, held Bible readings, and shared all other aspects of life — work, play, studies, child rearing, and even sexual partners. Free, zealous sex was encouraged among members.
Monogamous marriage was replaced with "complex marriage," allowing all women and men to be shared. Rules existed though. "Special love" was forbidden to prevent romantic liaisons, and copulation liaisons were monitored. Men were required to bypass sexual climax as a birth control method. A breeding committee was eventually set up to develop a more spiritually advanced race, and children were brought up communally and away from their moms to avoid the development of adoring love.
Youngsters were matched up sexually with elders for "spiritual benefits." Older women initiated young men into the world of sexuality, and Noyes himself took on the task of introducing virgins into complex marriage. Concerned about getting arrested on fornication and adultery charges, Noyes migrated to Canada in 1881, and Oneida dissolved. Its assets were collected and a joint-stock company was formed, now known as Oneida Ltd., which sports a well-known brand of silverware.
Inspirational Examples in the Twentieth Century
More recently, a number of inspirational communities have popped up throughout the world. The Biotechnical Research and Development group was organized in 1973 by a small group of individuals in Wales. Its goal was to become self-sufficient in energy, food, and water through the technical expertise of a number of members. Similar groups have emerged in the U.S. and Europe, all of which attempt to rely on simple technologies that are environmentally friendly and make no use of non-renewable fuels.
Gaviotas (which means seagulls), a Colombian community founded by Paolo Lugari in 1971 and located sixteen hours away from the nearest major city, represents a bright beacon of human perseverance and ecological foresight. It is a model of environmental sustainability in the drug-infested and guerrilla-plagued nation of Colombia.
But Lugari insists Gaviotas is not about Utopia, whose Greek derivation refers to "no where" or "no place." Lugari says "Gaviotas is real. "We’ve gone from fantasy to reality."
With a population that has fluctuated between 200 and 500 persons over time, Gaviotas is kept intentionally small. Because of its clever methods for harnessing the powers of sun, soil, wind, and water and its sustainable practices, the United Nations has designated Gaviotas as a model to the Third World.
The community’s accomplishments, inside and outside of Gaviotas itself, are many. Among its external accomplishments have been the development of solar collector technology for water heating that’s used by condominium complexes in Bogota. The largest solar-heated public housing project worldwide (7,500 units at the outskirts of Gaviotas) was developed by this unique community of rural peasants, Guahibo Indians, scientists, artists, and former street children. Other such projects are under way — one in Bogota, the other in Medellin.
At one of the country’s biggest hospitals, individuals from Gaviotas are installing solar water boilers that pump out sufficiently hot water to sterilize medical equipment twenty-four hours a day. They’ve even developed a clothes dryer that runs on energy harnessed from the sun.
After studying fifty-eight windmill models, mechanical engineers at Gaviotas also have developed a custom model that would pump the resource-depleted Llano region. Thousands of these custom windmills have been installed across the nation by technicians from Gaviotas.
Their most momentous invention to date is a contraption that takes advantage of river currents for field irrigation (the distance between river and field is one kilometer). They’ve also developed a cattle trough that’s fueled by a windmill and a sloped, cement flooring where cow dung slides off the slant into a gutter system. This feeds into a vat where fermentation takes place and churns out compost and methane at the other end.
Since all residents receive a salary, they need to produce and market their windmills and solar and pump creations. Yet the community is not interested in patenting its inventions. It prefers a model of sharing freely, which has allowed Chile and Central American nations to copy designs for their own needs.
Lugari and company also have applied their inventiveness to problems specific to Gaviotas. Because the region’s soil is only two centimeters thick and laden with aluminum toxicity, they have experimented with the best and most appropriate vegetation to plant. They claim to have planted more trees in 1993 than the country’s forestry department. The experiment has been highly successful.
At Gaviotas, showers are fitted with water-saving faucets and families usually eat in community, even though they have their own kitchens. They tend a hydroponic farm that produces lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and cabbage. They also raise meat, pork, and fish, although Gaviotas is not yet fully food self-sufficient. Television doesn’t reach Gaviotas.
Their government is by consensus rather than written rules, and the unwritten ones are simple and few in number. Alcohol is restricted to homes to dissuade public disorder, neither guns nor dogs are allowed, in order to preserve wildlife, and Wednesdays rather than Sundays are days of rest, so visitors can see Gaviotas at their work activities.
There has never been any need to lock doors or jail people. There’s no toleration of "loafers," but there has been no problem with loafing, anyway, possibly because pay begins above the Colombian minimum wage, and medical care, meals, housing, and schooling are free. As of 1994, no rapes or murders had occurred. If the community’s protocol is violated in some other way, such as when a store-minder confessed to overcharging to help pay for his honeymoon, the individual is virtually forsaken by other community members until he repays the debt.
Conclusions & Inspirations
Utopia is relative. For some of us, it might mean an economy of price stability. For others it might mean participating in "Critical Mass" where bikes, not cars, rule. Still others may see it as a plethora of organ donors, a complete recovery from greed, or the disappearance in the world of AIDS and child abuse. And there are the millions who would consider a full belly once a day la crème de la crème.
I think the Greeks had it right. Utopia is "no place." Instead, it’s a composite of what we carry or pick up from our ideals, our personae, and our environment. It’s about our quixotic philosophies, benign actions, and spiritual space. And it doesn’t have to remain an elusive dream. We can shape it into a useful, concrete vision with our families and neighbors, and close friends.
In the words of Lugari, potent with his experience at Gaviotas, "With imagination and perspiration, we can do anything. That’s how Utopian miracles become truths."
Ana Arias Terry is a freelance writer based in the mountains of Bellvue, CO. She is vegan and a fan of hugs, and believes in Don Quixote and the pursuit of dreams.