On the Utopian Mirage

The empty promises of utopianism:

In our very messed-up world the longing for something much better is to be expected, but in a fallen world filled with sinners bent on self above all else, it will never be achieved. Only when Christ comes again will the yearning of human hearts fully and finally be realised. Until then, we must be very wary of utopian dreams and dreamers.

Of course the most obvious example of utopianism in action – and of utterly failed utopianism – is what we witnessed last century as the communist experiments caused the death of millions. In the name of creating a better world, it created hell on earth.

I pulled just two volumes off my shelves which speak to this very thing:

-Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present by Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr Nekrick (Summit Books, 1986).

–Failed Utopias: Methods of Coercion in Communist Regimes by Arch Paddington (Institute For Contemporary Studies, 1988).

And of course the left in general has long looked to utopian schemes and dreams to bring about their better world, be they socialists, radical environmentalists, the various sexual revolutionaries, activist educators, and other woke wonders.

More books from my shelves offer a few great titles to be aware of:

–The Coercive Utopians: Social Deception by America’s Power Players by Rael Jean Isaas and Erich Isaac (Regnery, 1983).

–Utopia: The Perennial Heresy by Thomas Molnar (Sheed and Ward, 1967).

Here I offer a few choice quotes from some of these and other books, arranged alphabetically by author:

“Those of us who study the papers and the parliamentary speeches with proper attention must have by this time a fairly precise idea of the nature of the evil of Socialism. It is a remote Utopian dream impossible of fulfilment and also an overwhelming practical danger that threatens us at every moment.” G. K. Chesterton

“The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world.” G. K. Chesterton

“A permanent possibility of selfishness arises from the mere fact of having a self, and not from any accidents of education or ill-treatment. And the weakness of all Utopias is this, that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motor-car or balloon.” G. K. Chesterton

“Freeways flickering; cell phones chiming a tune
We’re riding to Utopia; road map says we’ll be arriving soon
Captains of the old order clinging to the reins
Assuring us these aches inside are only growing pains
But it’s a long road out of Eden…
Behold the bitten apple, the power of the tools
But all the knowledge in the world is of no use to fools
And it’s a long road out of Eden”
The Eagles

“They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is will shadow
The man that pretends to be.”
T. S. Eliot

“From being a movement aiming for universal freedom, communism turned into a system of universal despotism. That is the logic of utopia.” John Gray

“The great hatred of capitalism in the hearts of the oppressed, ancient and modern, I think, stems not merely from the ensuing vast inequality in wealth, and the often unfair and arbitrary nature of who profits and who suffers, but from the silent acknowledgement that under a free market economy the many victims of the greed of the few are still better off than those under the utopian socialism of the well-intended. It is a hard thing for the poor to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it. Victor Davis Hanson

“God is the leftists’ chief rival. Christian belief, by subjecting all men to divine authority and by asserting in the words ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ that the ideal society does not exist in this life, is the most coherent and potent obstacle to secular utopianism. . . . the Bible angers and frustrates those who believe that the pursuit of a perfect society justifies the quest for absolute power.” Peter Hitchens

“The problem of utopia is that it can only be approached across a sea of blood, and you never arrive.” Peter Hitchens

“Most of the diverse groups we will describe are utopian because they assume that man is perfectible and the evils that exist are the product of a corrupt social system. They believe that an ideal social order can be created in which man’s potentialities can flower freely. They are ‘coercive’ because in their zeal for attaining an ideal order they seek to impose their blueprints in ways that go beyond legitimate persuasion.” Eric and Rael Jean Isaac

“The denial of age in America culminates in the prolongevity movement, which hopes to abolish old age altogether. But the dread of age originates not in the ‘cult of youth’ but in a cult of the self. Not only in its narcissistic indifference to future generations but in its grandiose vision of a technological utopia without old age, the prolongevity movement exemplifies the fantasy of ‘absolute, sadistic power’ which, according to Kohut, so deeply colors the narcissistic outlook. Pathological in its psychological origins and inspiration, superstitious in its faith in medical deliverance, the prolongevity movement expresses in characteristic form the anxieties of a culture that believes it has no future.” Christopher Lasch

“There are also those who delusively if not enthusiastically surrender their liberty for the mastermind’s false promises of human and societal perfectibility. He hooks them with financial bribes in the form of ‘entitlements.’ And he makes incredible claims about indefectible health, safety, educational, and environmental policies, the success of which is to be measured not in the here and now but in the distant future. For these reasons and more, some become fanatics for the cause. They take to the streets and, ironically, demand their own demise as they protest against their own self-determination and for ever more autocracy and authoritarianism. When they vote, they vote to enchain not only their fellow citizens but, unwittingly, themselves. Paradoxically, as the utopia metastasizes and the society ossifies, elections become less relevant. More and more decisions are made by the masterminds and their experts, who substitute their self-serving and dogmatic judgments — which are proclaimed righteous and compassionate — for the the individual’s self-interests and best interests.” Mark Levin

“[U]topia is to the political realm what heresy is to the theological”. Thomas Molnar

“[W]e may describe utopian thought as a belief in an unspoiled beginning and attainable perfection.” Thomas Molnar

“The truth is that society is always unfinished, always in motion, and its key problems can never be solved by social engineering.” Thomas Molnar

“At utopia’s roots there is defiance of God, pride unlimited, a yearning for enormous power and the assumption of divine attributes with a view to manipulating and shaping mankind’s fate. The utopian is not content with pressing men into a mould of his own manufacture; he is not a mere despot, dictator or totalitarian leader holding all temporal and spiritual power. His real vice is, first, the desire to dismantle human individuality through the dissolution of individual conscience and consciousness, and then to replace these with the connectivity and coalesced consciousness. … What the utopian conceives of as the future, fabulous as it may be seen, is, in reality, a nightmare. It could not be otherwise because the utopian, in his speculation, ignores human nature, the rhythm of change, the fact that change involves not only gain but loss as well, The reality of time and the essential freedom of the soul.” Thomas Molnar

“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain.” George Orwell

“If I was the dictator, with my profound understanding of Marx’s real intent, and my universal benevolent compassion, uncontaminated by any proclivity toward darkness or sin, I would bring on the socialist Utopia.” Jordan Peterson

“Moreover, we have seen enough by now to know that technological changes in our modes of communication are even more ideology-laden than changes in our modes of transportation. Introduce the alphabet to a culture and you change its cognitive habits, its social relations, its notions of community, history and religion. Introduce the printing press with movable type, and you do the same. Introduce speed-of-light transmission of images and you make a cultural revolution. Without a vote. Without polemics. Without guerrilla resistance. Here is ideology, pure if not serene. Here is ideology without words, and all the more powerful for their absence. All that is required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress. And in this sense, all Americans are Marxists, for we believe nothing if not that history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement.” Neil Postman

“The contradictory nature of the socialist utopias is one explanation of the violence involved in the attempt to impose them: it takes infinite force to make people do what is impossible.” Roger Scruton

“The reason why camps proved economically profitable had been foreseen as far back as Thomas More, the great-grandfather of socialism, in his Utopia. The labor of the zeks was needed for degrading and particularly heavy work, which no one, under socialism, would wish to perform. For work in remote and primitive localities where it would not be possible to construct housing, schools, hospitals, and stores for many years to come. For work with pick and spade—in the flowering of the twentieth century. For the erection of the great construction projects of socialism, when the economic means for them did not yet exist.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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