Futurist Interviews
A
New Look at
Utopias
WorldView 2002 conference chairman
Arthur B. Shostak,
a sociology professor at Drexel University, has taught several courses on utopian dreams
and dystopian nightmares. Based on his 40 years of teaching experience, plus contributions
from 34 fellow scholars and 10 students, he has just published a compilation of source
materials and sample course outlines for college use. Utopian Thinking in Sociology:
Creating the Good Society (American Sociological Association, 2001), is available from
the Futurist Bookstore. Order Now.
Future Times asked Shostak to explain why he
believes utopian studies are important to a sound twenty-first-century education.
Future Times: Are
utopian studies growing at this time in academia? Does this growth (or the lack of it)
fairly reflect interest in utopias among the public at large and young people in
particular?
Arthur Shostak: Judging by the extraordinary turnout
recently for the New York Public Library’s exhibit, "Utopia: The Search for the
Ideal Society in the Western World," interest in utopias among the general public is
strong. Combine this with the public’s obvious long-standing fascination with
dystopian visions in many films (such as A.I., Aliens, A Clockwork
Orange, etc.), and it would seem the audience for such material is very large and
possibly still growing.
Within the university, I am encouraged by the wonderful
reception in terms of sales and accolades that has greeted our new teaching manual for
sociologists. Utopian studies is a creative subject, wide-ranging, and
multidisciplinary—a type of course increasingly popular nowadays.
And as for students, my 47 years on campus, the last 40 of
them as a teacher (I’d rather say "co-learner"), have convinced me that
young collegians are always hungry to explore the twin notions of possibilities and
perfectibility. They are mature enough to understand that "possibilities"
include a number of preventable futures rife with every sort of horror that human
ingenuity at its worse can devise. Accordingly, they want instead to promote desirable
possibilities and thwart the nightmare. Most crave more from life than is offered by the
shopping mall, and they understand that living a life that matters requires pursuing ideal
goals—including many that cannot realistically be achieved in their own lifetime.
FT: How can futurists best use the
concept of utopia in their work?
Shostak: Gingerly. Cautiously. Very carefully. The
concept is rife with problems, only some of which are evident. It is clear, for example,
that the term "utopian" bears the burden of being thought a synonym for
"impossible," "impractical," and "unattainable"—i.e.,
beyond human grasp or even human vision. Less clear are the veiled values, such as racism
and sexism, that contaminate many past visions of an "ideal" society. These
deep-seated faults take a heavy toll on many self-proclaimed utopias and are all the more
damaging for being implied rather than stated openly. As if this weren’t enough,
"utopia" will always and understandably mean very different things to different
cultures, religions, and epochs.
All the same, futurists can profit from using the concept
of utopia in three ways. First, utopias can expose and question commonly held assumptions
about human nature, fate, the prospects for planned change, and the limits of human
capabilities. Second, utopian studies allow us to compare and contrast different visions
and to explore how different people define "the Good Life" and "the Good
Society." These mental constructs, which vary greatly across times and among
cultures, explain much about the future(s) we set out to create (or neglect) in the
present. And third, utopias help us to expand our grasp of what is possible and what we
really mean by "perfect." Helpful here are magazines like YES!,
The
Journal of Utopian Studies, and of course THE FUTURIST, as well as works of fiction
like Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach and EarthFuture by Guy Dauncey.
FT: Do concepts like
"preferred" or "normative" futures mean the same thing as
"utopian studies," or are there crucial differences?
Shostak: I’d say one important difference is that
utopian studies goes out of its way to celebrate humility, tentativeness, and respect for
individual differences. I think the notions of "preferred" or
"normative" futures should be kept dynamic and fluid—open to change and
interpretation—rather than allowed to harden into what George Orwell, an astute
student of dystopian terrors, has called "smelly little orthodoxies."
FT: In your opinion, have
any practical experiments in utopia succeeded?
Shostak: Oh, yes—many. Once you concede that there are
no panaceas, no single "right" vision of utopia, once you get past thinking that
perfectibility is a state of being and realize instead that it is a process, a moving
target. Then you can begin to appreciate just how well the early monasteries succeeded in
helping to rescue learning during the Dark Ages, how thoroughly the early Kibbutzim in
Palestine helped test socialist ideals, and how many good ideas for urban planning and
sustainable community design were introduced and refined in the early New Towns built up
outside war-ravaged London, and in certain nineteenth-century utopian communities in the
United States.
Other praiseworthy utopian experiments include the creation
in the 1840s of America’s system of public schools, the New Deal in the 1930s, the
Marshall Plan in the late 1940s, the creation of the United Nations, and, more recently,
such quiet (and unexpected) triumphs as the end of apartheid in South Africa and the
peaceful division of Czechoslovakia. Each of these represents a profound contribution to
our grasp of what is possible for humanity.
FT: How can individuals benefit from
studying the attempts made to build utopias in the past?
Shostak: Naturally we can try to identify errors we
might avoid repeating and highlight constructive lessons worth emulating. We can
"stand on the shoulders of giants," and see farther and more broadly. We can
revel in thrilling dreams of our predecessors, and dream our own still finer Dream. Above
all, we can take inspiration and hope from the example of those utopia builders, like
Gandhi, whose lives instruct and honor us all.
FT: Can multiple utopias, based on
differing—or even conflicting—visions co-exist? Or must one set of basic values
become broadly accepted to provide significant benefits on a sustainable basis?
Shostak: Given the primitive state of human intellect,
insights, and emotions, it would be premature to consider closing off any of our future
options. Far better is to greatly improve our models of change, our communication
abilities, and so on, through a healthy competition among mutually respectful versions of
utopia.
This said, 50,000 years or so of settled co-existence have
field-tested a wide and steadily growing number of basic virtues that probably belong in
any variation on utopia. Specifically, it would seem far more utopian for a society to end
capital punishment, to reject the use of terror and torture, to provide for the needs of
its least-well-off citizens, and to bolster the hopes and ability of all persons to
compete.
Similarly, basic values that appear to promote utopian
gains include the cultivation of artistry, caring, creativity, curiosity, empathy, faith,
honor, humor, love, sensitivity, and other virtues celebrated by healthy,
life-appreciating people everywhere.
FT: Is college the best time to explore
utopian ideas and their application in history, or can younger students usefully study
utopias, too?
Shostak: Pre-kindergarten children are old enough to
"play" with ideas (and sounds, and colors, and fragrances). Such
"play" enables them to test what is good, what seems better, and to imagine what
might possibly prove ideal.
Every level of schooling, and every stage of our lives,
offers appropriate material with which we can hone our skill at imagining possibilities
and exploring how much closer we can get selected aspects of life to
"perfection."
Lifelong schooling, provided we stay in touch with our
frailties and our foolishness, should profit from a conscious exploration of utopia—a
preferable and, I believe, an ultimately possible place. It will not be quickly or easily
secured, but the endless pursuit of it has us draw on the best of our potential.
