Other
Worlds:
Utopian Imagination from More to the Enlightenment
When
the humanist scholar Thomas More wrote about a kingdom called
Utopia located just off the coast of the newly explored lands
of the Americas, he brought the ideal society out of the realm
of the hereafter into the realm of earthly possibility. Despite
its questionable existence (through a clever pun on its Greek
roots, utopia means both "good place" and "no
place"), Utopia was an entirely human construction, inhabited
by ordinary people rather than the blessed or the virtuous. More’s
detailed descriptions of the island kingdom sparked the creation
of an entirely new literary genre, inspiring similar fictions
up to this day.
Renaissance
architects were also looking at ways to construct the ideal living
space. They turned to classical theories of proportion and urban
planning in their efforts to design the ideal city, an organic
whole that brought order and health to all its citizens. Their
experiments sought to bolster the belief that human behavior could
be changed by the built environment.
Beginning
in the late fifteenth century, the emergence of a "New World"
offered a blank slate onto which Europeans, including More, could
project their various fantasies. Some viewed the Americas as a
pre-Christian land of possibility, others as a rediscovered Golden
Age, or the site of the Earthly Paradise, or the perfect place
to create an ideal community. The native peoples, depicted alternately
as innocent naifs or savage cannibals, were seen as potential
converts, slaves, enemies, or allies. Engravings and maps of the
time reveal the explorers’ and settlers’ diverse and
often conflicting visions, and they trace the development of this
"no place" into a concrete presence in the minds and
on the maps of the Europeans.
In
the ongoing search for the ideal society, the Internet has been
proposed as a "place" in which an ideal society could exist. Take
the poll to help you think about and give your opinion on
the Internet as a utopia.
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