The pursuit of utopia

I can't quite remember when I first heard of the word 'utopia', but one of my first thoughts were "oh, so that's why it is called "Fruitopia", and "that sounds amazing. Why does it not exist?".


In that very thought itself, lies the danger of utopia. As I was growing up, I was learning about society; how to function in this built world, how to merge seamlessly into the world of others. "But why?" is a question children often ask their parents and teachers, sometimes taking them so off-guard that their answer is, "that's just how the world works." But the world, as it currently exists, was created by humans. So in that itself, there must be a reason why these contradictions and defects in our world exist. As more of these questions were left unanswered, my mind drifted to trying to solve them myself. "This is a problem. What can be done to solve this, how can the process be changed, how can we build this differently?" This is a staple of progress and technology, but in terms of more philosophical endeavours, they cannot be as easily integrated.

Still, the idea of a utopia remains appealing to me. What is not to like? A perfect world where everything is beautiful, where everything has a purpose and a reason, where everything co-exists peacefully, who could find a fault in that?

However, a dark, sobering thought also occurs to me; the reason some things are beautiful to us is because there are things that are grotesque. The reason we feel happiness is because we know sadness, anger, disappointment, loneliness, disillusionment. To be fulfilled, we need to know what it is like to feel empty.

I've written about a few of Haruki Murakami's novels before, but not of my favourite, non-fiction pieces. I recently finished Underground, and while the interviews with both the victims and followers opened my eyes to the terrible ordeal, what struck most were his comments post-interviews. It is here in which he tries make sense of how the construct of society led to the fatal attacks that day in 1995. It is a thought-provoking book, in which the lens he shines on one of the many gaps in society, slowly becomes a mirror.

As humans, our humanity is our fatal flaw in the pursuit of a utopian world. How can an imperfect being create a perfect world? A utopia will forever remain a daydream, a hope that society can strive towards, an ideal; but in reality, it is simply impossible, and for many, it will be a bitter pill to swallow.