Scribbling Toward Utopia

Abstract

I first invoke Joan Didion’s essay “Slouching Towards Jerusalem.” Her concern was to move away from the dystopia that parts of the United States had become through drug use and other temptations toward a more utopian state. My attempt uses a number of examples where utopias have been imagined and some where the main lesson is cautionary rather than optimistic. Even Sir Thomas More’s Utopia had its faults while the East German vision of a socialist utopia collapsed into tyranny and farce. My scribbles are modest attempts to promote a just society, a kind of utopia—maybe.