"It is never easy or simple. But already we see, under the crumbling surface of the conventional world, promising developments: new ways of organizing economic activity (cooperatives, worker-owned companies, nonprofits, trusts), new ways of using low-impact technology to capture solar energy, to sequester carbon dioxide, new ways of building compact, congenial cities that are low (or even self-sufficient) in energy use, low in waste production, high in recycling of almost everything. A vision of sustainability that sometimes shockingly resembles Ecotopia is tremulously coming into existence at the hands of people who never heard of the book."
Ernest Callenbach, shortly before his death in 2012
Click on the image above to read the rest of
his last essay.
One thing we've seen, time and again this semester, that Utopian Communities operate in relationship to the "real world" in which they're founded. They are products of criticism and efforts at improvement.
- We began and ended this course reading a piece of Utopian Fiction, written almost 100 years apart. I'd like to have you reflect on Ecotopia with A Traveler from Altruria in your mind. No, I don't want you to re-read it. The era in which we life has sometimes been called the "second gilded age". Reflect on the criticisms of late 20th century America as revealed in Ecotopia. Do you see any echoes of those made earlier? Are there new critiques as well? If Callenbach is right, what will be the biggest challenges for your generation and the generation of your children? Whether or not through secession, will Ecotopia be necessary for the survival of society? What do you think?
