Word: utopianizing
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...deeper and more human sense, Harvard is an ideal more than an institutional reality. Like any other utopian ideal, Harvard has become an absolute value which is referred to by the non-Harvard man when he feels that he or his institution is not living up to the highest conceivable ideals of the life of the mind. Harvard also resembles utopias because it is seen as a place where the normal pressures affecting ordinary college teachers are not present-a recurrent story told to me by peers at the conventions involved Harvard's indifference towards publication. The moral of this...
That first and greatest of Utopian thinkers, Plato, banned most poets from his Republic because they exalt emotion over reason. Even so cheerful a philosopher as Sir Thomas More (who invented the name Utopia, which is Greek for no place) argued that all sensual pleasures should be pursued only for the sake of health. Other Utopians were equally antiseptic. In The City of the Sun, by the 17th century writer Tommaso Campanella, no woman was permitted to have sexual intercourse until she was 19; a man had to wait until he was 21-or longer, if he happened...
When the age of sentiment arrived in the late 18th century, emotions, it is true, were treated with more forbearance. The Utopian socialist thinker Charles Fourier designed a "phalanstery" (from the Greek "phalanx"), a community where self-expression was to be freely indulged; its 1,600 inhabitants-the ideal number-would work and make love as they pleased, at least until the millennium came, when the oceans would be transformed into the kind of lemonade Fourier enjoyed at Paris cafes. But the principal passion of most Utopias continued to be rule making. A mythical land called Lithconia, invented...
...like to play God," the master-manipulator proclaims. "Who wouldn't, under the circumstances? After all, even Jesus Christ thought he was God!" In a way, it is something of a relief to turn from social architects who want to program human behavior to the modern variety of Utopian, who seeks power only for pleasure. "Do it!" commands the Utopian sprite Jerry Rubin-meaning just about anything one wants to do. And it can be done with a clear conscience as well. Even if someone does not want to do anything, he can help build Utopia. If Marshall McLuhan...
...classic Utopias were often quite relevant to the real world. They projected patterns of life and politics that were later adopted. Universal suffrage, the separation of the powers of government, the basic ingredients of the welfare state were first suggested by Utopian thinkers. Wrote Anatole France: "Without the Utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked. Utopia is the principle of all progress, and the essay into a better world." A world increasingly threatened by universal pollution and weapons of total destruction needs Utopian thinking more than ever. It may be that only a vision...