The utopian myth. Unleashing violence in the name of peace

Abstract

The following paper will try to capture and to understand one of the most haunting and one of the most obsessive human endeavors undertaken by mankind: the pursuit for happiness! The goal of this study is that of trying to understand the ever recurring dream of Utopias! The only dream that made, and continues to make history. My goal is to investigate the phenomena of utopias, and to analyze all the inner mechanisms that are involved at work in this wild goose chase after the presumably Lost and Found Paradises. I argue that more often than not, utopia comes with a price tag attached to it. Throughout my research, I argue that primarily understood as part of the literary genre, when utopias are surrounded by ideology, they have the tendency to generate and to unleash a form of violence that stretches upon three distinctive yet closely related levels. Such a violence however, is done for the greater good of mankind! That is so to say, there’s no violence at all in the end! I argue that in a world dominated by a self-denied utopianism, all acts of violence are dogmatically justified because all of them are done in the name, and for the sole purpose of attaining the Ever Lasting Peace on earth. Or at least, utopia’s version of what peace ought to look like. The present study describes this paradoxical and quite ambiguous scenario, where the utopian discourse with the help of ideology demonizes the Other, in order to justify its own violent means of attaining the perfect human society. But utopia can also lead to a totally different version of the world, other than the one initially envisioned in the sacred blueprints of the forefathers. As we shall find out, things never go as they were initially planned in the utopian laboratory. While utopia can envision the purest of all heavens, in theory of course, the same utopian impulse can lead humanity to a nightmarish state of existence. Is there a clear line between utopias and dystopias? Can a society clearly differentiate between Heaven and Hell? In this thesis, I will try to see how utopia evolved throughout Western political mythology. I will try to see the connection between utopianism and the first “great debate” in International Relations, and the utopian consequences that are still visible today, in the 21st century. Keywords: utopia, utopianism, ideology, political myth, democratic peace, violence, wilsonianism