Word: utopianizing
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...Stevens has charisma, he also has an unusual outside sponsor in Michael Oliver, 51, an American real estate developer, coin dealer and fervent antiCommunist. In the mid-'70s, as the leader of a group called the Phoenix Foundation, Oliver tried-and failed-to build a Utopian, tax-free haven for free enterprise on Abaco, in the Bahamas. Over the past decade, Oliver estimates, he has spent $130,000 on air fares, radios, even flags, in support of Stevens' secession movement...
Collectivist systems have failed to achieve their professed ideals. Pure Communist societies, from 19th century Utopian communities like New Harmony, in Indiana, to the hippie communes of the late 1960s, have struggled with the reality of individual self-interest. Sixty years of Soviet efforts to make workers more productive and innovative through slogans, medals, bonuses and threats have not overcome the basic problems of the U.S.S.R.'s inefficient agriculture and erratic industry. Bertolt Brecht, the Marxist German dramatist, said sardonically after the 1953 workers' riots in East Berlin that in view of the system's problems with its subjects...
With the rise of "prosumerism" and more interesting work, Toffler reports, a "personality of the future will be born." This 11-page discussion ends on a cheery note. "We shall create not a utopian man or woman who towers over the people of the past...but merely, and proudly, one hopes, a race--and a civilization--that deserves to be called human." These new human beings, in turn, will engage increasingly in minority politics, necessitating a change in the Constitution, which Toffler chummily outlines in a letter addressed to "The Founding Parents." The new race will get more...
...fashion show. He can sound as grim as Charlton Heston in a disaster film or as upbeat as a born-again Christian, or, as diversified Third Wavers might prefer, a Zen Baptist. There are also some hot-tub exhortations: "As Third Wave civilization matures, we shall create not a Utopian man or woman who towers over the people of the past, not a superhuman race of Goethes and Aristotles (or Genghis Khans or Hitlers) but merely, and proudly, one hopes, a race-and a civilization-that deserves to be called human...
Those who support the concept usually think in Utopian terms: happy habitat, happy citizens. Planners, architects and governments, notorious optimists, constantly envision a Better Future...