Excerpts from Stephen Duncombes Open Utopia website. http://theopenutopia.org/full-text/introduction-open-utopia/
“Utopia offers us a glimpse of an alternative. Utopia, broadly conceived, is an image of a world not yet in existence that is different from and better than the world we inhabit now. For the revolutionary, Utopia offers a goal to reach and a vision to be realized. For the reformer, it provides a compass point to determine what direction to move toward and a measuring stick to determine how far one has come. Utopia is politically necessary even for those who do not desire an alternative society at all. Thoughtful politics depend upon debate; without someone or something to disagree with there is no meaningful dialogue, only an echo chamber. Utopia offers this “other,” an interlocutor with which to argue, thereby clarifying and strengthening your own ideas and ideals (even if they lead to the conclusion that Utopia is undesirable). Without a vision of an alternative future, we can only look backwards nostalgically to the past, or unthinkingly maintain what we have, mired in the unholy apocalypse that is now. Politically, we need Utopia”.
Personally we need Utopia- Imaginations..
