paradise now the story of american utopianism

Indeed, the English statesman Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) had Plato’s Republic in mind when he wrote the book Utopia in 1516. The Greek philosopher Plato (427?-347 BC) postulated a human utopian society in his Republic, where he imagined the ideal Greek city-state, with communal living among the ruling class, perhaps based on the model of the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta. The western idea of utopia originates in the ancient world, where legends of an earthly paradise lost to history, combined with the human desire to create or recreate an ideal society, helped form the utopian idea.

The Shaker, Rappite, and Amana experiments, as well as the Oneida Community and Brook Farm, find their origins in the European Protestant Reformation and the later Enlightenment. The more familiar non-monastic religious communal movements typical in Western society have generally originated from a deliberate attempt among various Christian sects to revive the structure of the primitive Christian community of first-century Jerusalem, which “held all things in common.” This essay explores the origins and development of the Utopian idea and its arrival in the United States before giving examples of 19th-century utopian colonies and some organizations on their ultimate demise. At the same time, the latter may express the idealism of a utilitarian creed to establish human happiness with a belief in a cooperative way of life. Hine, author of California’s Utopian Colonies, “consists of a group of people who are attempting to establish a new social pattern based upon a vision of the ideal society and who have withdrawn themselves from the community at large to embody that vision in experimental form.” These colonies can be composed of either religious or secular members, the former stressing a community life inspired by religion. The definition of a utopian colony, according to Robert V.

While significant differences existed between the various utopian communities or colonies, each society shared a common bond in a vision of communal living in a utopian society. The Shakers alone founded around 20 settlements. Shaker barn, Enfield, New Hampshire by Jack Boucher, 1978.ĭuring the 18th and 19th centuries, hundreds of communal utopian experiments existed in the United States.

Paradise now the story of american utopianism