Reflection

I have always been fascinated with utopias and dystopia. Over my junior year summer, I began following the bread crumbs going through Animal Farm and 1984 by Orwell and from there going on to look at science fiction dystopias/utopias like the world of Manna in which AI causes humanity to relegate its unneeded members to taking this class. From this class I have come to the conclusion that utopia itself does not actually exist outside of fantasy - a fantasy that is a projection of the dreamer.

In my other blog post for this weak, I decided to group the concepts of utopia and dystopia together and previously explored how societal values are promoted and tie communities together. From this I came to the conclusion, every utopia is only for the subset of humans who hold certain beliefs. However with such exclusions, indoctrination must be examined - utopias try to promote their values beyond all else. The element of indoctrination fueled my belief that utopias are a form of dystopia requiring people to conform to a certain belief. Utopias that work smoothly and appear perfect to someone will always be appealing to an idealistic fantasy on an individual level which if true would be horror on an existential level. To have a society built of one's self seems appealing but at the same time appalling knowing individualism would die. All utopian dreams that are require utopia to be perfect are an idealist's fantasy. No such thing as utopia can ever exist nor will it - people are too individual, no community speaks to all of human kind.

My definition of utopia hasn't really changed and I don't protest the existence of the communities that call themselves utopia. It is just that I recognize the idealist's fantasy of utopia as impossible. If we decide to view utopia on a less general level of a perfect society it becomes possible to construct a functional community but at that point utopia has lost the wonder of being an amazing dream.