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American Longing for Utopia

There was a very interesting piece in the New Yorker this week reviewing two recent books on American Utopian communities. Two of the communities most Americans with some knowledge of history would know would be the Oneida community and the Shaker sect.

It’s interesting what these communities did and didn’t have in common. Both were “Christian” sects in that they believed some variant of the Christian story. Both were utopian and their utopias were related to beliefs about Jesus’ second coming. The Oneida community believed that Jesus had come in 70AD and that we were living in “the millennium” and that their community should reflect the triumph of Jesus over sin. The Shakers were also “millennial” but they imagined an immanent return of Jesus. Both communities were ardently committed to equality of the sexes but while the Shakers were asexual in many ways the Oneida community was polyamorous. Both communities imagined that they were building the kingdom of God in their midst and that their way of life was a precursor of the new creation that was about to come upon the whole world. Both communities are now extent leaving with us artifacts of their ideals, on in silverware and the other in furniture and architecture.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that both of these communities were derivative of the larger Christian narrative. Christianity has within its story a very utopian strain. We believe that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead and that the coming of the kingdom of God will mean that lions will lay down with lambs and all tears will be wiped away.

Many skeptics upon hearing this will scoff and note that the 2000 year non-return of Jesus and the 2000 year no-show of utopia are strong arguments that the Christian story is not true.

I would suggest, however, that utopian longings are deep within the American psyche and that atheist and secular people themselves, who have no narrative justification to long for such a reality themselves can’t let it go. If you are a strict materialist asserting that there is no providential hand guiding history to a better future then the kind of progressivist talk we find in politics and morality should be denounced as heresy to atheist belief. There can be no “better future for us” only a future that I find more pleasing and there is certainly no assurance that a better communal future will arrive. The only assurance we have is that at some point in the distant future the universe will grow cold and all that you love will be gone and forgotten. Your only comfort is that you will grow cold, forget and be forgotten long before that great end arrives, but this isn’t where we go.

Presidential campaigns that strike this nation as a fever every four years are full of both apocalypse and utopia. Each candidate promises that only their coming will bring utopia and warns that their rival will only bring apocalypse. They promise that the destiny is in our hands even though we know that voters in Ohio and Florida hold more power than we do here in California.

While Donald Trump has a sort of throw-back campaign slogan, “Make American Great AGAIN” his less superlative laden opponent tends to be on the side of a progressive liberationist utopia where our science and our knowledge and our freedom and our morality will create a society where each of us as individuals can have a shot at our best life now.

David and the Longing for Utopia Continue reading →