Is utopian thinking dangerous?
Interesting question. If you read Utopian fiction (ex. 1984 – Orwell, Brave New World – Huxley, The Handmaid’s Tale – Atwood), the basic premise is that a “Utopian” society is far from perfect and usually the opposite of what we really want. These authors take the seemingly innocent objectives of society now and take them to their logical, most extreme ends. The results are disastrous. However, I don’t think that utopian thinking in itself is dangerous. Really, we need to dream of perfection to get closer to a better world. I do think that it’s easy to take things too far when you have ulterior motives (like money and power). With the way the world is headed, I’m afraid that we will eventually get our “Utopia” and the majority of us won’t be very happy with it. I think that if we want to avoid this, the world needs a better distribution of money, power and education. EDIT:They are prime examples of what utopian thinking is.
