Utopia (Serena Ryder Album)

A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia'', describing a fictional island society in the New World. However, it may also denote an intentional community. In common parlance, the word or its adjectival form may be used synonymously with "impossible", "far-fetched" or "deluded".

Hypothetical utopias focus on—amongst other things—equality, in such categories as economics, government and justice, with the method and structure of proposed implementation varying based on ideology. Lyman Tower Sargent argues that the nature of a utopia is inherently contradictory because societies are not homogeneous and have desires which conflict and therefore cannot simultaneously be satisfied. To quote:
The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia. Utopian and dystopian fiction has become a popular literary category. Despite being common parlance for something imaginary, utopianism inspired and was inspired by some reality-based fields and concepts such as architecture, file sharing, social networks, universal basic income, communes, open borders and even pirate bases.

Etymology and history

The word ''utopia'' was coined in 1516 from Ancient Greek by the Englishman Sir Thomas More for his Latin text ''Utopia''. It literally translates as “no place”, coming from the el, οὐ (“not”) and τόπος (“place”), and meant any non-existent society, when ‘described in considerable detail’. However, in standard usage, the word's meaning has shifted and now usually describes a non-existent society that is intended to be viewed ''as considerably better'' than contemporary society.

In his original work, More carefully pointed out the similarity of the word to ''eutopia'', meaning “good place”, from el, εὖ (“good” or “well”) and τόπος (“place”), which ostensibly would be the more appropriate term for the concept in modern English. The pronunciations of ''eutopia'' and ''utopia'' in English are identical, which may have given rise to the change in meaning. ''Dystopia'', a term meaning "bad place" coined in 1868, draws on this latter meaning. The opposite of a utopia, ''dystopia'' is a concept which surpassed ''utopia'' in popularity in the fictional literature from the 1950s onwards, chiefly because of the impact of George Orwell's '' Nineteen Eighty-Four''.

In 1876, writer Charles Renouvier published a novel called ''Uchronia'' (French ''Uchronie''). The neologism, using ''chronos'' instead of ''topos'', has since been used to refer to non-existent idealized times in fiction, such as Philip Roth's ''The Plot Against America'' (2004)'','' and Philip K. Dick's '' The Man in the High Castle'' (1962)''.''

According to the ''Philosophical Dictionary'', proto-utopian ideas begin as early as the period of ancient Greece and Rome, medieval heretics, peasant revolts and establish themselves in the period of the early capitalism, reformation and Renaissance (Hus, Müntzer, More, Campanella), democratic revolutions ( Meslier, Morelly, Mably, Winstanley, later Babeufists, Blanquists,) and in a period of turbulent development of capitalism that highlighted antagonisms of capitalist society ( Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, Cabet, Lamennais, Proudhon and their followers).

Definitions and interpretations

Famous writers about utopia:
* "There is nothing like a dream to create the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood tomorrow." —Victor Hugo
* "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias." —Oscar Wilde
* "Utopias are often only premature truths." — Alphonse De Lamartine
* "None of the abstract concepts comes closer to fulfilled utopia than that of eternal peace." —Theodor W. Adorno
* "I think that there is always a part of utopia in any romantic relationship." —Pedro Almodovar
* "In ourselves alone the absolute light keeps shining, a sigillum falsi et sui, mortis et vitae aeternae alse signal and signal of eternal life and death itself and the fantastic move to it begins: to the external interpretation of the daydream, the cosmic manipulation of a concept that is utopian in principle." — Ernst Bloch
* "When I die, I want to die in a Utopia that I have helped to build." —Henry Kuttner
* "A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that if these nitedStates should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other." —Alexander Hamilton, ''Federalist'' No. 6.
* "Most dictionaries associate utopia with ideal commonwealths, which they characterize as an empirical realization of an ideal life in an ideal society. Utopias, especially social utopias, are associated with the idea of social justice." — Lukáš Perný

Utopian socialist Etienne Cabet in his utopian book ''The Voyage to Icaria'' cited the definition from the contemporary ''Dictionary of ethical and political sciences'':

Marx and Engels

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