How do we define utopia?

Letters to my nemesis, part one.

This week I’m sharing a collection of emails I’ve exchanged with the author

R. G. Miga

about what makes a society utopian. It started when he sent me an email several months ago, and we’ve been writing back and forth ever since. We loved our exchange so much we decided to publish our emails this week.

Below are our first two emails, then tomorrow he will publish his response for his newsletter

Phasmatopia

. We will spend this week writing back and forth with my letters being published on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and his responses being published on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

It started when I received an email from

R. G. Miga

. The subject line read “Kind regards from your nemesis”

Dear Ms. Griffin,

I hope this email finds you well.

I am writing with some regret: it has recently come to my attention that I am your creative writing nemesis.

Please be assured that this has nothing to do with you personally. You seem like a lovely person, and I very much enjoy the writing that you've shared on your Substack. This is, as they say, just business.

Nevertheless, your whole thesis about utopian fiction is diametrically opposed to my own, and so it seems that—unfortunately—we must be literary opponents.

Here's my contention: while utopian fiction appears to be transformative in some ways, it does nothing to subvert our society's dominant metanarrative—the idea that top-down control of the world is possible at all, let alone sustainable or desirable.

There has been no shortage of utopian imagineering in our culture and politics. People aren't suffering from a lack of brave new worlds to imagine, but from a glut of them. We're experiencing an epidemic of cognitive dissonance, stemming from the expectation—the insistence—that somebody must be in control of things, when all evidence points to the contrary: climate change, cascading health crises, political dysfunction, expanding inequality, increasing nihilism, mass public homicide, etc.

Rather than making people feel better by giving them another world to believe in, it seems like the widening delta between fictional utopias and actual realities is making people miserable. 

The remedy that I propose, and the motivating force behind my fiction, is to imagine a world that remains wild, where top-down control never lasts for long—and people still manage to live well.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. While I'm only just starting out in my own career as an author, I hope that I will someday prove to be a worthy adversary for you. I wish you all the best until then.

Very Sincerely, Your Nemesis,

R. G. Miga

P.S. In all seriousness—I think my work might serve as an interesting foil for yours. If you'd ever like to experiment with a possible collaboration, I'm at your service.

I responded:

Dear, R.G.,

Ha! But why must we be nemeses? If your aim is to “imagine a world that remains wild, where top-down control never lasts for long—and people still manage to live well,” isn’t that your vision for utopia? (And by utopia I mean a “better world.”) Despite your distaste for the utopian genre you seem to be writing one!

I am in no way convinced that a utopia means top-down control—neither are many of the utopian writers I am studying (Plato and More excepted, of course) and I am very interested in learning more about what would achieve your vision. In fact, I am beyond excited to discover how you achieve it in your fiction! Thus, I regret to inform you that you will have to put up with me as your fan, rather than your nemesis! 

I have many ideas, but so far no ideologies. So if your argument centers on contradicting my “top-down approach” I welcome it, and would much prefer to see ourselves as allys on that quest. My next chapter is one attempt in that direction and I'll be curious to know what you think of it, but I am still actively in pursuit of better ones. I fear I haven’t quite “figured out” my vision for utopia and don't imagine it can be attained! I think utopia is better achieved by trial and error and I expect my opinions will change many times over as we learn more about what works and what doesn’t!)

In any case, I am excited to read your ideas and I hope they inspire mine. If you would accept my request for allyship, perhaps one day this correspondence might be used to inspire both our minds, rather than take one of them down. Utopia, in my mind, can only be achieved by ideating together! (Not fighting against the ideas of one another, which in my mind is one of our greatest sources of societal unrest right now!)

Your friend not foe,

Elle

P.S. Thank you for the very entertaining email and discussion and for introducing me to your work! Excited to meet another thinker!

R.G. will publish his response for

Phasmatopia

tomorrow. You’ll be able to find it here.