The Fifth World:Pseudo-utopian (Feel)
From The Fifth World
Pseudo-utopian fiction occurs more often than fully utopian fiction, because pseudo-utopias appear much more realistic. The Greek root for the word "utopia" involves a bit of a pun on the part of St. Thomas More, the author of the 1516 book that introduced the term, On the Best State of a Republic and on the New Island of Utopia: it can come equally from Εὐτοπεία eutopeía, "good place land," or Οὐτοπεία outopeía, "no place land," so utopia equally means "the good place," and "the place that cannot exist." The impossibility of a true utopia appears often in utopian literature.
Pseudo-utopian fiction appears more commonly, offering perhaps not a perfect vision of the future, but certainly a vastly improved version of it. The Fifth World treats tribal life in terms like those described by Daniel Quinn:
- “The tribal life and no other is the gift of natural selection to humanity. It is to humanity what pack life is to wolves, pod life is to whales, and hive life is to bees. After three or four million years of human evolution, it alone emerged as the social organization that works for people. People like the tribal organization because it works equally well for all members.”
And:
- "Natural selection is a process that separates the workable from the unworkable, not the perfect from the imperfect. Nothing evolution brings forth is perfect, it's just damnably hard to improve upon."
The feral cultures of the Fifth World do not lead perfect lives (that would seem very boring); they simply live in a world where many of the problems we thought intractable and unsolvable no longer exist.
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[edit] Related fiction
[edit] Television
- Star Trek (1966-Present) (Wikipedia) Star Trek presents the standard vision of a pseudo-utopia based in humanism and technological advancement. The Fifth World presents a pseudo-utopia based in relationship in a more-than-human world.
[edit] Literature
- Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin (Wikipedia])
- The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin (Wikipedia)
- Island by Aldous Huxley (Wikipedia)
- Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach (Wikipedia)
- Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias edited by Kim Stanley Robinson (Wikipedia)
- The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk (Wikipedia)
[edit] Themes in common with most pseudo-utopian fiction
- War as we know it has largely disappeared; villages in particular raid one another rather frequently, but raids aim to strike terror (in order to avoid conflict), rather than take lives.
- Disease has all but disappeared; without dense populations and domesticated animals, most diseases die out.
- Poverty, wealth and class do not exist because tribal societies share everything they have; whether they experience feast or famine, they do so as a community.
- Because feral people live with patterns of diet and exercise that humans have evolved with, they live longer and enjoy greater health, while tracking and hunting reunites them with synaesthesia, which in turn trains their senses to become much more acute.
[edit] Themes that defy most pseudo-utopian fiction
- Technology in the Fifth World plays a much more subdued role.
- Humanism does not contribute much to the Fifth World's pseudo-utopia; instead, deep ecology and animism suggest that humanity finds this pseudo-utopia by accepting its role as part of the living world, rather than trying to assert its uniqueness or rulership.
- Plenty of problems still happen in the Fifth World.
- Civilization's legacies, like nuclear power and global warming, continue to have an impact.
- Individuals must still undergo their own Hero's Journey into initiation.
- Each place has its own conflicts, which it plays out in the life of that place, including humans.
- The place of the human community in the living world requires constant mediation and re-negotiation.
[edit] Examples
- Societies exist at a smaller, human scale, so most stories revolve around the interplay of distinct and unique personalities, rather than global events. The Fifth World focuses more on the epic of a particular place, than on sprawling, global tales.
- Technology and science still exist, but attitudes towards them have changed. Rather than defining society, Fifth Worlders see tham as tools. They prize elegance over flashiness.
- While many of the seemingly intractable problems our civilization faces have become irrelevant, many sources of conflict remain.
