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WHAT
ARE UTOPIAS? AND ITS USES
Utopias! One who lives in the
world of dreams is called a ‘utopian.’ But the world would be a poor place to
live in if there were no utopians and dreamers. Shelley was a dreamer and so
was Dr. Muhammad Iqbal. But can you think of a practical man who brought
greater joy to the world than these “seers of visions and dreamers of dreams”?
Matthew Arnold condemned Shelley for being a utopian.
“He was a
beautiful and ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain."
Utopias! Yes! the angel he was and
refused to make a compromise with the practical world of oppressors and hangmen.
In short, the utopia that, is born of the sensitive imagination of a poet or a
visionary is more useful than the man-made cities which have neither beauty nor
perfection. The cities in which we live are ill-planned. The city fathers who
rule these cities are without any imagination. Our roads are ditches and our
bazaars are loathsome. But the city that Plato envisaged in his Republic (by the
way, just a utopia) would be an ideal city. “But whether there really is
or ever will be such a city on earth" is a matter for serious
thought. This ideal city-state of Plato was not a practical reality and that
goes to prove that all great ideas are impracticable. But that does not detract
from the value of utopias. The entire story of human civilization is indeed a
story of these impracticable things which man has either achieved or striven to
achieve. What was impracticable in 1749, was practicable in 1949. Two hundred
years back Samuel Johnson said,
“A man might say
that before setting out for Italy, he set down to make himself as he had to
cross the Alps. Many people might believe this but it would be untrue to life.”
If Dr. Johnson had been
a utopian, he would have foreseen the possibility of aviation. Today any pilot
can cross the Alps without ‘making wings for himself.’
The utopian is the man
who can rise above our matter-of-fact conception of things. The new Atlantis
which is Bacon’s utopia best illustrates my point of view. “The end of
our foundation,” as he says,
“is the
knowledge of causes and the secret notions of things: and the enlarging of the
bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible.”
Einstein was a utopian
in this sense of the word. He was engaged all the time in ‘enlarging the bounds
of human empire.’ If he were just a practical man he wouldn't go beyond the
limits of thought inherited by him.
The one practical use
of all utopias is the fundamental importance of the problems which figure in
them. The issues with which Plato grappled in his Republic are equally alive
today. Everywhere the commercial magnate or the military dictator is in power.
The thinker is pushed into the background. Plato believed that “until
philosophers are kings, cities will never cease from ill nor the human race.”
There is much truth in the statement. Our world is gradually moving towards a
catastrophe because it is ruled by ‘tradesmen’ and political careerists.
The poor man makes the
best use of utopia. When life becomes a tiresome round of painful chores, he
seeks refuge in the dream cities of ideal perfection. There is no hunger, no
exploitation in these lands of a dream. In the Middle Ages, people thought of their
castles in Spain. But, today, the modern man seeks this land of fabulous wealth
and beauty in the realms of dream. The wise politicians always depend for their
popularity on their power to give more and more utopias to the masses. When the
people are disillusioned by one, they give them another. This is how they Keep
up the game of ‘wait-and-see.’
Some of these utopias
had a considerable influence on the politics of the world. Marx's dream of a
socialistic world was just a dream in the beginning. If Lenin had failed to
give a practical shape to the dream, Marx would have been classified with
Plato, Thomas Moore and other visionaries of this type. Today, half of the
world is being ruled by the ideology of a utopian. Even today, our politicians,
educationists and administrators can learn much from the Republic of Plato. In
short, the map of the world, as Oscar Wilde observed, is incomplete without a
utopia, and human life is an irksome drudgery without the power to manufacture
utopias.