A glimpse of utopia

Implementation of unrealistic projects is the way of human existence

It would seem that there is nothing more distant from the everyday life of our lives, nothing more “botanical,” as modern youth put it, than the theme of utopia. This topic was of concern to many philosophers, not only in the classical period. In the last century, one of the most famous writers, George Orwell, said the following thing: the 20th century showed that utopia came true more often than anything else. The property of the most incredible hypothesis, the most incredible and fantastic assumption, is the property of coming true.

"Utopia" is translated from Greek as a place that does not exist. In human consciousness we are talking about a place that does not yet exist. But since people talk about this place, since people draw, plan utopias, describe utopian pictures, then this place must exist somewhere. It is not in physical reality, but it is in the imagination, in the project, in the human spirit, in the human will. And if so, then this place is the most important. What already exists, built and created, what lies before our eyes and does not require any additional effort from us, inevitably belongs to entropy.

Everything realized is doomed to destruction, every existing thing is a thing that is obviously finite and mortal. But what has not yet been created, what lives in the human spirit and resides in the space of utopia, has yet to be realized. Or even if it doesn’t, it will be preserved in the form of an idea, in the form of a structure that is not subject to entropy and decay.

Plato once said that “ideas either die or die” - a very beautiful metaphor. When ideas float in the eternal sky, they are not subject to decay and entropy. But as soon as ideas begin to be realized, they are immediately subject to decomposition, rotting and decay. Therefore, from the point of view of philosophy and human history, utopia is a very serious, very important and very real substance. After all, when a utopia arises, a place is formed in the human spirit and human will that is not subject to decay - an imperishable, sacred place. As a rule, the property of a sacred place is not to be empty. If there is not something on it that we know, that we ourselves have placed there, that we have consecrated and the structure of which we are aware of, this place in human consciousness, where the human dream and the human will converge in a single resonance, will definitely take something something else.

When utopian thinking was overcome, we saw that utopian models became part of very many ideologies. One of the components of Marxism was French utopianism, which described an unprecedented communist reality. Despite the fact that these utopian ideas seemed very strange, unthinkable and absurd to many, they were partly embodied in Marxism and implemented in Marxist political projects.

Utopias are different: there are communist utopias, there are utopias of equality, utopias of inequality, utopias that magically glorify man, theocratic ones, where we are talking about the advent of the kingdom of heaven, etc. Utopia, utopia, discord. The most common thing that unites all these utopian projects, plans and fantasies that have not yet been realized is that they will most likely be realized someday.

Here it is very important to pay attention to the fact that projects are, in principle, very important to a person. Every morning we start by making a plan for the day, then we make a plan for the week, for the rest of our lives. What is it? This is a utopia! We want to do something that doesn't exist yet. To a large extent, utopia absorbs all thoughts, all dreams, all fantasies about the new. The usual in utopia and in our plans is considered as something routine, unprincipled, unimportant. Therefore, utopian descriptions emphasize what is new, unexpected and unusual, which is not found in ordinary practice.

One way or another, when we make a plan, we put into it a certain will to encounter something new, unusual, we put into it a certain project associated with utopia, with what we would like from life. The French like to say: “Impossible is not French.” One can just as well say that it is impossible for a person to exist without utopia. A seemingly unnecessary, distant, unattainable utopia becomes something practically necessary and completely inseparable from us.

Many philosophers have noticed that a material person, largely occupied with satisfying his carnal needs, by and large does not consider himself such. Being largely an animal, man is categorically opposed to this idea. What distinguishes a person from an animal? Utopia. An animal does not have a utopia, it agrees with the conditions in which it finds itself, but a person does not.

How do utopias influence political ideologies? The influence of the utopian socialists Thomas More and Tomaso Campanella on communist ideology is well known. They painted an image of a society of social justice and inspired 19th century politicians, philosophers, practitioners, and workers in the labor movement, so that in the next century, a third of the planet tried to either think about, accept this communist ideology, or simply subscribe to it. We will not evaluate the results yet, but the very fact that such a project as the USSR, the Bolshevik revolution and the construction of communist regimes on a significant part of the earth’s territory was a success confirms the power of utopia. And this cannot be ignored.

A terrible anti-human utopia also underlay the fascist and national socialist ideology, which assumed that the Aryan peoples would rule the world in the planetary Reich. It is interesting that if we dig deeper, we will see the most incredible descriptions in the theory of National Socialism. In one of the books of Levenfels, a theoretician of a completely delusional pseudo-church that preceded National Socialism, a typical Aryan is described: he is the “electron of God,” that is, a one-dimensional polar being that is projected as a ray into the earthly worlds. What follows are completely delusional pictures of his interactions with people, animals, and different races.

Such utopias lay at the core of fascist ideology. Obsessed with “electrons of God”, “monkeys of Sodom” and other ariosophical nonsense, the fascists, alas, found in themselves enough strength, enough will, enough organizational abilities to conquer most of Europe. Of course, this utopia was anti-human. But the very fact that such nonsense inspired entire nations to implement very specific political and geopolitical goals deserves serious attention. Because the power of utopia is colossal.

There are utopias not only communist or fascist. American political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote the famous book "The End of History". In fact, this is an exposition of the concept of Hegel, who greatly influenced both the utopian communists and the utopian fascists, for example Giovanni Gentile, who saw the end of history in the Italian state. Fukuyama applied this model of the end of history to liberal ideology. In the nineties of the last century, the idea of ​​the end of history, where there are no states, no ethnic groups, no cultures, but only one world market, was practically realized.

So the element of utopia is characteristic of any political ideologies. Faith in utopia revives even the most liberal political and ideological forces, focused only on the reason and material interests of people.

Friedrich Nietzsche said a very beautiful phrase: “In every heart there is a desire higher.” This look above the usual horizon, somewhere beyond, is not just something additional to a person, it constitutes the essence of a person. Man is a being that is inextricably, irreversibly connected with utopia. We know that many of us will not reach the top, many will not receive even the slightest “promotion”, and some will lose even what they have. But if we stop striving somewhere upward, if we lose this utopian horizon from the sphere of our attention, then we will collapse, give up and turn into a pile of useless garbage.

We live as long as we have a project, we live thanks to a dream, often without even admitting to it, because sometimes it can be frighteningly distant.

Alexander DUGIN, philosopher, culturologist