Utopia — An obsolete concept

If Utopia is taken to be a future ideal state or some imagined general condition of perfection of social, political and institutional, and personal life, then it has no place in contemporary thinking. The conditions for imagining a Utopia do not exist today in the general Western world, and have to the best of the author's knowledge never existed in the non- Western tradition. Utopian thinking ultimately comes from the recognition that the world does not have to be the way it is. Utopias, recognizing people as social animals, have usually drawn attention to their shortcomings, to unfairness, threats, inequities, risks, and the hazards of simply living. Reading and enjoying the accumulated utopian literature is fun and has important and strong historic value, but it will increasingly become like being fluent in Sanskrit, interesting and entertaining as an avocation, but with little or no significant payoff.