Somewhere, nowhere; the quest for utopia
Somewhere, nowhere; the quest for utopia
Imagination is more important than knowledge," said Albert Einstein, and his remark seems more relevant than ever today. The world is changing so rapidly that our complacency and established ways of thinking are continually being challenged. The more the technocrat's certainties and the planner's pride are confounded by hard facts, the more the individual capacity for inventiveness is at a premium. "All is flux," said Heraclitus over 2,000 years ago. Have we forgotten that change is inherent in the human condition? We are living at a time when the pace of historical change is such that there is an unparalleled need for new thinking.
And what do we see? At the very moment when we ought to be guided and impelled by the creative spirit, people are asserting that utopia is dead. What justification is there, in fact, utopia is dead. What justification is there, in of inspiration and a guide to action? Many researchers today see a propensity to look beyond existing reality as the hallmark of the Utopian impulse, of the intense desire for change that re-emerges whenever pragmatism sinks into arid, sterile routine. Most of them believe that any great human adventure, whether in science, religion or politics, is an offshoot of some form of Utopian thought, Perhaps utopia can sketch a profile of the future.
But what kind of utopia? And on what terms? Utopia is by definition transcendent, a child of excess which nevertheless remains within the bounds of reason. Such "reasonable immoderation" can make an impact on the real world by raising its aspirations, without for a moment losing sight of respect for mankind. Did not this kind of ambition and utopianism inspire Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela? Such "open" utopias are quite different from those which confine the community within a logic that denies individual expression and tends to crush it.
This sense of vision in utopianism should be regarded as a liberating, dynamic force for immediate, universal action, an encouragement to bold thinking. In the words of Bernard Lown, president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, "Only those who can see the invisible can do the impossible". To increase in this way the power of the imagination and strengthen the human desire to go ever further, is to equip mankind to face reality and respond to the unexpected.
Can utopia be a guarantee of freedom? No final answer has yet been given to this question. But it is a question that is worth asking.
Federico Mayor, Director-general of UNESCO