![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Enlightenment’s promise of ineluctable progress-the fading of superstition, the gradual spread of reason and knowledge-seemed to practically guarantee a future of peace and abundance. Others squinted toward the horizon, speculating about a golden age to come: the end of history, the withering away of the state, Some looked backward, seeking paradise in the green shade of prehistory. Utopia ceased to be a place it became an era. When the utopian imagination began to run out of blank space on the map (not that there had ever been any), it turned to the calendar. ![]() Following the format laid down by More in 1516, most literary utopias were travelogues: fictional voyages to some hidden Shangri-La where people had finally figured out how to live in harmony. Like certain photographs, visions of utopia offer a glimpse beyond the all-eclipsing present, revealing possibilities obscured by the torrent of daily life.Įarly dreams of utopia were wrapped up in fantasies of distant, unknown lands. Far from being impractical, the utopian imagination is a sharp-edged tool for comprehending the world and its discontents. It was less than a century after Thomas More’s beheading that the adjective utopian became shorthand for naive or outlandish aspirations. ![]()
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