Choose Your Utopia

People have always dreamed of utopias -- ideal places.  Shangri-La  (an artist's vision pictured above) is one such -- a remote valley in the Himalayas where people live for hundreds of years, surrounded by beauty and indulging in every artistic and philosophic pursuit.

The Garden of Eden is one of the earliest -- an earthly paradise where man need not work for his food (is that a fried egg floating in the sky?)  -- a place of innocence where sin is unknown.

The Land of Cockaigne  -- a fantasy from medieval times -- was a place of abundant food and drink and idleness -- the dream world of a hard-worked, always hungry peasantry.

"The Big Rock Candy Mountain,"  -- the dream of a Depression-era hobo, complete with cigarette trees, lakes of stew, and whiskey trickling down the rocks -- is a direct descendant of Cockaigne.

The Heaven of the Bible, with its streets and gold and pearly gate is yet another sort of utopia -- for some. (In Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth, Book II, Twain points out that this sort of Heaven is a lot like an eternal church service  -- and many who pay lip service to the idea of Heaven as a goal manage to avoid the weekly services here on earth.)

 

Utopias have fascinated many a novelist -- from Hilton's Lost Horizon ( in my opinion, a much better book than the films it inspired) telling of the hidden valley of Shangri La . . .

. . . to James Gurney's wonderful land of Dinotopia -- where intelligent dinosaurs and humans coexist. These are wonderfully imagined and gorgeously illustrated children's books that more than a few adults will adore.

In fact, many children's books are set in utopian or near-utopian lands -- Oz and Narnia come to mind.

Here's one of my favorite fantasy lands -- Islandia is a strangely compelling work to me -- I find myself wanting to revisit it now and then just because I love the simplicity of this utopia -- a land of isolated farms when travel by horse or boat is the norm, a land that keeps itself apart from 'progress.' a land where manual labor and handicraft is valued -- as I said, this is a utopia that speaks to me.

What's your idea of a perfect place --your own ideal utopia?