No Plan for Utopia

But a better world is necessary

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

William Blake’s Jerusalem

A Facebook friend of mine said to me: If you can show me a practical, workable solution to bring about a Socialist/Communist utopia, I would love to see it sir.

So here is what will be a long article explaining how we might get to a better world, not a perfect one. It’s also interesting to note that the original use of the word utopia was a better world. I haven’t read Thomas Moore’s book that originated the word (or at least a translation from the Latin), but when I went to a talk about utopia the speaker pointed out that all Moore was arguing for was a better world than the one he was experiencing at the time. The idea it means some kind of unattainable perfection came later.

So we can’t have a perfect world because we aren’t perfect, and also because things change and perfect for one time could be extremely wrong at another. A perfect world would adapt and change, rather than the unchanging sterility that people imagine. The idea of a perfect world takes no account of history and how societies change over time. Also, this idea denies…