Exam­ples from the past can only take us so far. To cre­ate some­thing new, it may help to look to worlds con­jured from imagination

A short­com­ing of some utopi­an fic­tion is an occa­sion­al ten­den­cy to present a world that is far too per­fect. Such work can still prove valu­able as a way to reflect upon our own faults, but the ide­al human soci­eties these sto­ries fea­ture fail to reck­on with the inevitable nature of con­flict. Utopi­an fic­tion is at its best when pre­sent­ing a soci­ety with all the human flaws and con­flicts (like avarice and cor­rup­tion) that are ripe for trans­for­ma­tion­al resolutions.

Efforts to make improve­ments to our soci­eties in the real world, should not be moti­vat­ed by the fruit­less desire to change human nature itself, but by the desire to change the orga­ni­za­tion­al prin­ci­ples and pat­terns that large­ly dic­tate how we man­i­fest our human nature through social inter­ac­tion. There will always be argu­ments, dis­agree­ment, sad­ness, and hard­ship, but we should aim to orga­nize soci­ety to mit­i­gate the worst and encour­age the best of it as much as we can.

Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s 1974 nov­el, The Dis­pos­sessed, presents a fic­tion­al­ized utopia with the kind of nuance that allows us to imag­ine how such a polit­i­cal exper­i­ment may actu­al­ly feel in real­i­ty. Le Guin was heav­i­ly inspired by the polit­i­cal writ­ing of anar­chists Peter Kropotkin and Paul Good­man, and she sought to explore their the­o­ries through her sto­ry­telling. The 200-year-old soci­ety she describes began after rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies on a plan­et named Urras fought to estab­lish their own soci­ety on a neigh­bor­ing plan­et called Annares. In this new soci­ety pop­u­lat­ed by the descen­dants of rebels, all prop­er­ty is shared. Goods are con­tained in pub­lic ware­hous­es and any­body who needs them may take them. Their lan­guage of Prav­ic was pur­pose­ly con­struct­ed to work in tan­dem with their polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, and this lan­guage reflects their cul­ture by con­tain­ing lim­it­ed options to express the pos­ses­sive case. Work is tech­ni­cal­ly vol­un­tary and dis­trib­uted accord­ing to the pref­er­ences of the work­ers. How­ev­er, eco­nom­ic neces­si­ties and social pres­sures tend to make out­casts of those who do not pitch in when able to con­tribute. In this con­text, life on the near-bar­ren plan­et can be hard and aus­tere, and utopi­an ideals of shared resources become more and more complicated.

The pro­tag­o­nist, a physi­cist named Shevek, becomes frus­trat­ed with creep­ing bureau­cra­cy and per­ceived lim­i­ta­tions of free­dom, and he choos­es to break con­ven­tion by vis­it­ing the cap­i­tal­ist nation of A‑Io on the plan­et his peo­ple left 200 years pri­or. He becomes fur­ther dis­il­lu­sioned dur­ing his time there, dis­gust­ed by the pre­ventable pover­ty and baf­fled by the mar­ket mode of exchange. Faced with his own society’s oppo­site, Shevek’s expe­ri­ence on A‑Io clar­i­fies for him the impor­tance of the polit­i­cal project on Annares. He flees from the uni­ver­si­ty in which he had been effec­tive­ly sequestered and finds him­self embroiled in an upris­ing. In his speech to rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies in the work­ing class dis­tricts of A‑Io, he explains:

“We have noth­ing but our free­dom. We have noth­ing to give you but your own free­dom. We have no law but the sin­gle prin­ci­ple of mutu­al aid between indi­vid­u­als. We have no gov­ern­ment but the sin­gle prin­ci­ple of free asso­ci­a­tion. We have no states, no nations, no pres­i­dents, no pre­miers, no chiefs, no gen­er­als, no boss­es, no bankers, no land­lords, no wages, no char­i­ty, no police, no sol­diers, no wars. Nor do we have much else. We are shar­ers, not own­ers. We are not pros­per­ous. None of us is rich. None of us is pow­er­ful. If it is Anar­res you want, if it is the future you seek, then I tell you that you must come to it with emp­ty hands. You must come to it alone, and naked, as the child comes into the world, into his future, with­out any past, with­out any prop­er­ty, whol­ly depen­dent on oth­er peo­ple for his life.”

Shevek is speak­ing about the need for renounce­ment of mate­r­i­al con­cerns. One must break com­plete­ly from the con­ven­tions of the past in order to be free.

“You can­not buy the Rev­o­lu­tion. You can­not make the Rev­o­lu­tion. You can only be the Rev­o­lu­tion. It is in your spir­it, or it is nowhere.”

Le Guin does not present utopia as a final state of per­fec­tion. She imag­ines utopia as a process, not a place. She sees it in strug­gle, in fight­ing for change, and in embody­ing the dai­ly search for the lib­er­a­tion and flour­ish­ing of all peo­ple. Read­ing sto­ries like hers encour­ages us to bet­ter define exact­ly what we mean when we call for change. What is it we real­ly want? Is it more pros­per­i­ty? More free­dom? What does free­dom even look or feel like? What might we have to sur­ren­der to achieve these things and are we will­ing to do so? In our search for the next orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ples that will define the upcom­ing iter­a­tion of the human jour­ney, we must avoid past pit­falls. Utopi­an spec­u­la­tive fic­tion is like a test­ing ground to expand upon oth­er­wise untest­ed the­o­ries, and serve as an explorato­ry tool to help us grasp alter­na­tive states of living.

An emerg­ing sub-genre of sci­ence fic­tion, solarpunk, explores a future built on renew­able ener­gy, sus­tain­able liv­ing, and green spaces. The mind­set of a solarpunk cit­i­zen is cen­tered around har­mo­ny. In these fic­tion­al works, humans are no longer sequestered from the wild,  veg­e­ta­tion has entered the cities and their homes. The cities are still tall and sprawl­ing, but are now engulfed in plants and wildlife of all kinds. It is still a high-tech soci­ety, but all arti­fi­cial­i­ty is soft­ened by the ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence of diverse organ­ic life. Human­i­ty func­tions as a self-orga­niz­ing organ­ism with­in these spaces. Peo­ple work togeth­er to main­tain the con­di­tions of their exis­tence and do not seek to expand with­out lim­its. As a genre, solarpunk helps show us that we need not choose between a false dichoto­my of nature and tech­nol­o­gy, we can dis­cov­er  sophis­ti­cat­ed ways to weave them together.

As read­ers of these gen­res, we’re ready to see the impli­ca­tions of these utopi­an ideas live off the page, and add col­or to our every­day realities.