It is interesting, and often painful, to hear of what high hopes our ancestors had for us at the beginning of the third millennium. They expected that we should grow in our wealth and our power as a species; and we have. They hoped that we would venture out into space; and we have. They dreamed of what cunning things we might invent, what new arts and sciences we might devise, and many of those things we have invented, and devised. But in all their speculation there lay also a dream of more, that perhaps we might solve the most vexing troubles, that only a few centuries off lay a world without war, without poverty of any kind, without fear or sin or death. That though there may be no paradise beyond this world, perhaps one day we could create one here.

This is, perhaps, the sharpest tragedy of our existence: that we have scoured the globe, and sent our ships out to search among the stars, and there are no utopias to be found. Oh, we have tried to build our own–the little Horais and Cockaignes and Zions of a thousand hopeful dreamers–but they have foundered sooner or later, for the simple reason that all things really in the world are subject to division and change. The current age of exploration and technology has brought with it a new breed of utopian, one whose spirit I cannot help but admire. They are willing to build not just new towns but new worlds, to brave hundreds or thousands of light years, to hazard generations living in what be marginal environments, for the chance to realize their visions. Yet I cannot think of one that has not failed, in most or all of the things it set out to do. We behold, often, a vision before us that seems so vivid, so immanent, that it must necessarily be real; and yet when we go to capture it, in words or in pigment or on a new world, it disappears.

The failures of these utopian colonies is usually quite civilized–there are no deaths, no revolts, no disasters. It simply evolves away from what its founders intended, all the careful tinkering of its architects, and all the resolute will of its governors, unable to stem forces which were unaccounted for in the original designs, or changing circumstances which could never have been forseen. Many of humanity’s most notable colony worlds began as such utopias: Teegarden’s World was founded by socialists seeking to create a truly stateless communist society; Proxima b was originally settled by techno-utopian transhumanists, who dreamed of a teeming Hive beneath the barren rock; Luyten Anchorage was built by Sufi mystics, who wanted a world apart for the contemplation of God. These facts are simple historical curiosities now.

More spectacular failures have occurred–the civil war among the schismatic sects of Kepler-62f, for instance, or the notorious mass cannibalism incident in the commune at Umbriel Station–but typically the failure of a utopia is more subtle. It is not just a failure of politics, a failure of planning, a failure of systems. It is the slippery mismatch of souls which are at variance against the universe, souls which necessarily suffer and strive and dream, but must dwell in a cosmos where not all their suffering can have purpose, where some striving must be in vain, where to be able to imagine a thing is not necessarily for it to be possible to build. I do not advise wholly against utopian dreaming. The instinct that a better way of doing things, even a better world, is possible, must be possible, is a perennial source of renewal and growth, the fierce goad of salvation. But perfection is a process, and not a state. And the perfectibility of mankind is a process that acts on two different problems: the hurts of the world around us, and the hurts of the world within. Many, many utopians have struggled with the latter in vain, mistaking them for the former; and many complacent in their own happy position have supposed all utopians are fools, because they make the same mistake in reverse.

I have been asked often what my utopian world would be like, if I could build one. The short answer is that I would not attempt it. Were I brave or foolish enough to try such a thing, I am afraid the answer is quite boring, and not much in keeping with the spirit of the question. I am only a little schooled in philosophy, and a dabbler in political economy. After all my long years of life, I feel often I understand the world less than ever; if I have gained any wisdom, it is principally a wisdom of my own faults and failures. Were all things possible, I should banish disease and want and death, I think, as most would. But I cannot say how. And beyond that all that comes to mind is that I should like to have tree-lined streets, and the sound of lively conversation from a little way off. And the knowledge that not far away, the friends I lost long ago were waiting and eager to see me; and always would be, and I need never be long parted from them again.

Ichiro Tsuruta 鶴田一郎 (1954 - ).