Etymology and history [ edit ] This is the woodcut for Utopia's map as it appears in Thomas More's Utopia printed by Dirk Martens in December 1516 (the first edition). Science and technology [ edit ] Utopian flying machines, France, 1890–1900 (chromolithograph trading card) Sargent, Lyman Tower (2010). Utopianism: A very short introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. p.21. doi: 10.1093/actrade/9780199573400.003.0002. ISBN 978-0-19-957340-0. If you are as devoted to Location, Location and Kirsty and Phil as I am, you’ll be gripped. ― The Oldie

A hugely fun tale of how the super-rich buy their super-prime lairs – I was absolutely boggled throughout. Toto, I have a feeling we’re not on Rightmove anymore . . . — Marina HydeCalifornia's Utopian Colonies (1983), by Robert V. Hine. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-04885-7 A utopia ( / j uː ˈ t oʊ p i ə/ yoo- TOH-pee-ə) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members. [1] It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, which describes a fictional island society in the New World. It can also refer to an intentional community. Kirk, Andrew G. (2007). Counterculture Green: the Whole Earth Catalog and American environmentalism. University Press of Kansas. p.86. ISBN 978-0-7006-1545-2. a b Longxi, Zhang (2005). Allegoresis: Reading Canonical Literature East and West. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p.182. ISBN 978-0-8014-4369-5. In ourselves alone the absolute light keeps shining, a sigillum falsi et sui, mortis et vitae aeternae [false 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

The Greek poet Hesiod, around the 8th century BC, in his compilation of the mythological tradition (the poem Works and Days), explained that, prior to the present era, there were four other progressively less perfect ones, the oldest of which was the Golden Age. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. [...] 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 [11] If the youngsters learn to live useful and independent lives, that must surely be the most desirable outcomeIn 1905, H.G. Wells published A Modern Utopia, which was widely read and admired and provoked much discussion. Also consider Eric Frank Russell's book The Great Explosion (1963), the last section of which details an economic and social utopia. This forms the first mention of the idea of Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS). And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; [...] And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman and brought her unto the man. These mythical or religious archetypes are inscribed in many cultures and resurge with special vitality when people are in difficult and critical times. However, in utopias, the projection of the myth does not take place towards the remote past but either towards the future or towards distant and fictional places, imagining that at some time in the future, at some point in space, or beyond death, there must exist the possibility of living happily.

Perhaps the oldest Utopia of which we know, as pointed out many years ago by Moses Finley, [36] is Homer’s Scheria, island of the Phaeacians. [37] A mythical place, often equated with classical Corcyra, (modern Corfu/ Kerkyra), where Odysseus was washed ashore after 10 years of storm-tossed wandering and escorted to the King’s palace by his daughter Nausicaa. With stout walls, a stone temple and good harbours, it is perhaps the ‘ideal’ Greek colony, a model for those founded from the middle of the 8th C onward. A land of plenty, home to expert mariners (with the self-navigating ships), and skilled craftswomen who live in peace under their king's rule and fear no strangers. Grove, Richard (1995). "Green imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island Edens, and the origins of environmentalism, 1600-1860". Cambridge University Press . Retrieved 14 August 2022. A hugely fun tale of how the super-rich buy their super-prime lairs – I was absolutely boggled throughout. Toto, I have a feeling we’re not on Rightmove anymore . . .’ – MARINA HYDE Hypothetical utopias focus on, among other things, equality in categories such as economics, government and justice, with the method and structure of proposed implementation varying according to ideology. [2] 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: a b Gaétan Brulotte& John Phillips, Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature, "Science Fiction and Fantasy", CRC Press, 2006, p. 1189, ISBN 1-57958-441-1

Anthropologist Richard Sosis examined 200 communes in the 19th-century United States, both religious and secular (mostly utopian socialist). 39 percent of the religious communes were still functioning 20 years after their founding while only 6 percent of the secular communes were. [23] The number of costly sacrifices that a religious commune demanded from its members had a linear effect on its longevity, while in secular communes demands for costly sacrifices did not correlate with longevity and the majority of the secular communes failed within 8 years. Sosis cites anthropologist Roy Rappaport in arguing that rituals and laws are more effective when sacralized. [24] Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt cites Sosis's research in his 2012 book The Righteous Mind as the best evidence that religion is an adaptive solution to the free-rider problem by enabling cooperation without kinship. [25] Evolutionary medicine researcher Randolph M. Nesse and theoretical biologist Mary Jane West-Eberhard have argued instead that because humans with altruistic tendencies are preferred as social partners they receive fitness advantages by social selection, [list 1] with Nesse arguing further that social selection enabled humans as a species to become extraordinarily cooperative and capable of creating culture. [30] Gu, Ming Dong (2006). Chinese Theories of Fiction: A Non-Western Narrative System. Albany: State University of New York Press. p.59. ISBN 978-0-7914-6815-9. In science fiction and technological speculation, gender can be challenged on the biological as well as the social level. Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time portrays equality between the genders and complete equality in sexuality (regardless of the gender of the lovers). Birth-giving, often felt as the divider that cannot be avoided in discussions of women's rights and roles, has been shifted onto elaborate biological machinery that functions to offer an enriched embryonic experience. When a child is born, it spends most of its time in the children's ward with peers. Three "mothers" per child are the norm and they are chosen in a gender neutral way (men as well as women may become "mothers") on the basis of their experience and ability. Technological advances also make possible the freeing of women from childbearing in Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex. The fictional aliens in Mary Gentle's Golden Witchbreed start out as gender-neutral children and do not develop into men and women until puberty and gender has no bearing on social roles. In contrast, Doris Lessing's The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980) suggests that men's and women's values are inherent to the sexes and cannot be changed, making a compromise between them essential. In My Own Utopia (1961) by Elizabeth Mann Borghese, gender exists but is dependent upon age rather than sex– genderless children mature into women, some of whom eventually become men. [67] " William Marston's Wonder Woman comics of the 1940s featured Paradise Island, also known as Themyscira, a matriarchal all-female community of peace, loving submission, bondage and giant space kangaroos." [68] Curl, John (2009). "Communalism in the 20th Century". For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America (2ed.). Oakland, California: PM Press (published 2012). pp.312–333. ISBN 9781604867329 . Retrieved 24 June 2020.

From Sir Philip Sidney's prose romance The Old Arcadia (1580), originally a region in the Peloponnesus, Arcadia became a synonym for any rural area that serves as a pastoral setting, a locus amoenus ("delightful place"). Galt's Gulch: Ayn Rand's Utopian Delusion" (2012), by Alan Clardy. Utopian Studies 23, 238–262. ISSN 1045-991X America and the Utopian Dream – Utopian Communities". brbl-archive.library.yale.edu . Retrieved 14 May 2017.

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 Looking for advice on what to read or give? We love a challenge. Please let us know if we can help via the button below. Normally we aim to respond within 24 hours, busy periods & C-19 notwithstanding People all over the world organized and built intentional communities with the hope of developing a better way of living together. While many of these new small communities failed, some continue to grow, such as the religion-based Twelve Tribes, which started in the United States in 1972. Since its inception, it has grown into many groups around the world.