Utopia & Dystopia

Utopia (pronounced yoo-toh-pee-uh)

(1) An imaginary island described in Sir Thomas More's Utopia, a place enjoying perfection in law, society and politics; such a place cannot exist.

(2) An ideal place or state of being.

(3) Any visionary system of political or social perfection.

(4) A popular product name in the illicit drug industry.

1516: From the New Latin utopia (literally "nowhere"), coined by Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) and used as title of his 1516 book about an imaginary island enjoying perfect legal, social, and political systems although the author’s meaning was rather more nuanced than that the casual use of “utopia” is used usually to convey.  The construct was the Ancient Greek οὐ (ou) (not) +‎ τόπος (topos) (place; region) + ia (from the Classical Latin ia and the Ancient Greek ία (ía) & εια (eia) which form abstract nouns of feminine gender).  The meaning was extended to "any perfect place" by the early seventeenth century.  Marx used the word in disparagement of the “…useless utopian myths…” he thought infected the schools of socialist too remote from political and economic reality.  The French form was utopie.  Utopia, utopographer, utopianizer, utopianization & utopianism are nouns, utopian & utopist are nouns & adjectives, utopianize is a verb, utopianistic is an adjective, utopianly is an adverb; the noun plural is utopias.

Dystopia (pronounced dis-toh-pee-uh)

(1) A society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.

(2) Any imaginary place or state of being where everything is bad.

1868: A compound word dys + (u)topia, the word coined by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) and its first public use was in one of his speeches delivered in the House of Commons.  The construct was the Ancient Greek δυσ (dus) (bad) + τόπος (tópos) (place; region) + ia (from the Classical Latin ia and the Ancient Greek ία (ía) & εια (eia) which form abstract nouns of feminine gender). It’s since usually been used in the sense of any bad place, real or imagined.  In popular culture, depictions of dystopia have tended to follow the concerns of the time; pandemics, nuclear war, alien invasion, dictatorial régimes and climate change.  The spelling distopia is erroneous but not uncommon.  Dystopia, dystopographer, dystopianizer, dystopianization & dystopianism are nouns, dystopian & dystopist are nouns & adjectives, dystopianize is a verb, dystopianistic is an adjective and dystopianly is an adverb; the noun plural is dystopias.  The constructs follow the model of those derived from utopia although in use, most are rare.

Urban future by noted practitioner of dystopian art, Polina Kulagina.  There is an entire genre of dystopian art and literature.

For something which More insisted can't exist, utopia has survived well and it's proved a popular building block.  A gaytopia is the sort of place (real or imagined) which is (for whatever reason) a paradise for the LGBTQQIAAOP community and the hetrotopia was apparently a right-wing reaction to that, the idea being a "gay-free" zone.  A pornotopia is a place (real or virtual) in which every form of pornography however depraved was available; it was a specialized form of an infotopia which was something like the original vision of some for the WorldWideWeb (WWW) back when Al Gore (b 1948; US vice president (VPOTUS) 1993-2001 & in 2000 the next president of the United States (NPOTUS)) called it the "information superhighway".  Apparently he invented the internet so it's reasonable he assumed naming rights.  Pornotopia was originally used to describe a imagined world where all were willing (even anxious) to engage in all forms of sexual activity while an intimatopia was a fantasy world serving as an ideal setting for sexually charged relationships involving a high degree of sustained emotional intimacy.  The romantopia was a world imagined by women as the ideal setting for romantic love (it has dismissively been called millsandboonatopia).  A cyberutopia is a kind of heaven for nerds, a place full of cables, computers, routers and coffee machines where Coca-Cola & pizza are free.  The technoutopia is much the same sort of place and one inhabited by technoutopians and technoutopists dedicated to the pursuit of technoutopism.  An autopia was envisaged as an urban landscape designed around the use of the automobile and it's long been used as a critique of certain cities of which Los Angeles is the best-known example although there are many cities where traffic management is far, far worse.  The negative forms can be a bit fuzzy (and remember More's Utopia was used as an internally negated concept).  Dystopia is well known but there is also unutopia & anti-utopia, all appearing to mean "the antithesis of utopia".  On the rare occasions anti-utopia & unutopia appear, it's advised to deconstruct the context.

The dystopian vision of Dante's Inferno: The Fifth Circle (1587) by Stradanus (1523-1605)), depicting Virgil and Dante on the River Styx in the fifth circle of Hell where the wrathful are for eternity condemned to splash around on the surface, fighting each other.  Dante Alighieri's (circa 1265–1321), Divine Comedy was written between 1307-1321 and helping the pair cross is the infernal ferryman Phlegyas.  Stradanus was one of the many names under which the Flemish artist Jan van der Straet painted, the others including Giovanni della Strada, Johannes della Strada, Giovanni Stradano, Johannes Stradano, Giovanni Stradanus, Johannes Stradanus, Jan van Straeten & Jan van Straten.

So influential has been Robert Bolt’s (1924–1995) play A Man for All Seasons (1960) in forming the public perception of Sir Thomas More that he seems now remembered as a kind of proto-liberal.  It is true he held opinions which would have been shared by few (lord) chancellors of the last 500-odd years including a condemnation of private property and the idea that the very structure of English society was a “conspiracy of the rich”.  Centuries before Karl Marx (1818-1883), he discussed the surplus value of labor and the mechanisms by which working people were alienated for this value so it could be absorbed by the already rich to add to their wealth.  So he ticks many boxes of wokeness but he also held views on women and their place that would make social media identity Andrew Tate (b 1986) follow his X (formerly known as Twitter) account.

More’s book Utopia is similarly misunderstood, the modern use of the word meaning many who have never read it merely assume what it means.  Structurally, it was influential because it contains threads identifiable as both science fiction (SF) and fantasy and in both these genres, authors have often described “utopias”, usually either as (1) places of unrestricted self-indulgence or (2) places in which everything is so antiseptically perfect that humans, with their inherent imperfections, just “don’t fit in”.  In these alternative universes, being fictional, something has to happen and what often occurs is that they turn into dystopias, the ultimately inadequate human inhabitants dealt with; that which doesn't "fit in" must be "thrown out".  More wasn’t quite so theatrical; his original title for the book was in Latin and is best translated as something like “the Best State of a Commonwealth on the New Island of Utopia” and, living in troubled times, his book explored ways society might be arranged in another way that would ensure the intrigue, corruption and scandal with which he was familiar might be avoided.  Unlike England with its then quite rigid hierarchical structure, Utopia was a communal venture and one in which forms of wealth existed but only as a means to ensure things run smoothly.  Not only was the quest to accumulate wealth not pursued, the very idea was absurd because it would fulfil no useful purpose.  Unfortunately, such is the nature of man that it seems such a place can never exist, or at least not long survive, thus the choice of the name Utopia (“nowhere” in the New Latin).