At the beginning of the film 2001 - A Space Odyssey, made by Kubrick in '68, a
gorilla appears with a shin in his hand which rejoices after having killed abeing of its own species, later throwing the weapon towards the sky which it isturning into a space station. The scene explicitly communicates two widespreadhypotheses on the evolution of humanity: the first, that the use of tools byprimates, the origin of culture, could be related to the killing of other beings;the second, that from the use of those first simple tools, through theirprogressive complexification, machines and space ships would have passed, alinear and obligatory path. The scene from Kubrick's film comes back to mymemory, reading the exultant and not very critical articles on the announcementthat in the United States they would be able to carry out a nuclear fusionwithout radioactive waste and producing more energy than needed to trigger theatomic splitting process ( but it will take thirty years at least for it towork). The tone in which it is spoken suggests that it is the holy grail of thesearch for an energy utopia: the sun finally harnessed by human technology, adream come true, and go with the Strauss waltz...The history of utopias seems to be a little more complex, considering that everystratified society, founded on the exploitation of human groups, ends upproducing hopes of freedom and therefore the desire for a better life that servesas a driving force for resistance and rebellion . Nonetheless, this exclusiveattribution to subaltern groups to produce utopias does not make much sense,since any social group, even the dominant one, produces ideas about the world andhow it works (representation), also including a vision of the future, to berealized or opposed ( ideology). Which is to say, simplifying, that even the richhave their utopias, plans to maintain the status quo or increase their wealth andpower.In the case of Western history, at the beginning of our era, two visions of thefuture opposed each other: the Greek, potentially open to technical development,and the Christian, which promised a happy post-mortem world, the latter beinghegemonic during a good part of the Middle Ages European. However, Christianityalso brought with it a materialistic utopian image, derived from Jewish mythologywhich included the idea of an existence without the hardships of work: theearthly paradise. In this way, at least two utopian "projects" were produced inthe medieval Christian world: the one concerning life after death (the spiritualparadise) and a historical variant, the search for a geographically identifiable"paradisiacal" place. From this, also the heretical idea that that "paradise"could be built on earth (the same idea of the medieval garden enclosed by walls,where naked people bathe together, has this origin). And while the church wastrying to eliminate heresies, especially Cathars, shortly thereafter Columbuswould arrive in America and the myth met with proof of its veracity andpossibility: the indigenous Americans, who inspired the very name utopia, of thework del Moro, edited in 1516.The conquest of the Americas meant a profound restructuring of the cultural andeconomic horizon of Europe, already undermined by the religious schism. And whilefor forty years in Trento the Roman church tried to curb the great crisis,including the refoundation of the inquisition, its control over consciences wasfailing, opening the doors to new ways of thinking: the religious idea ofpostmortem salvation it was slowly replaced by the secular utopia of progress,the promise of a good life for all, to be achieved thanks to the technicaldevelopment that the industrial revolution seemed to ensure indefinitely. Howeverthis promise, precisely because it played on the exploitation of large masses ofsubordinates, failed to repress the powerful vision of a society with egalitarianrelations (the indigenous American world still functioned as a reference), basedmore on the restructuring of social and gender relations than on technicaldevelopment. Charles Fourier's "Phalanstery" comes to mind, described in theTheory of Four Movements, published in 1808, which inspired the creation ofegalitarian agricultural communities, both in Europe and in South America duringthe nineteenth century; but, above all, libertarian socialist thought, inspiredprecisely by this type of utopia and tendentially critical of the value of thetechnical development of society, without necessarily falling into Luddism.There is no doubt that it was the technical utopia that prevailed and the imageof Apollo 11 flying to the moon in 1969 seemed to be its definitive crowning,while North American science fiction proposed colonization scenarios of Mars andthe stars, following Armstrong's indication: "This is one small step for a man,but one giant leap for humanity"... But the leap did not take place and the sameidea of indefinite progress began to limp as early as the fifties of thetwentieth century (think of the "Report on the limits to development" of the Clubof Rome, published in 1972) and the disaster of the Chernobyl atomic power plantin 1986 showed its fragility and danger. However, the crisis of the future didnot touch only the technical utopia and the myth of indefinite progress; even theidea of a palingenetic revolution that would have generated a networked world ofsmall free, autonomous and egalitarian agricultural communities was beginning toleak from all sides, eroded by the exacerbated consumerism that allows industrialcapitalism to regenerate itself.As the Englishman E. M. Forster wrote, at the beginning of the twentieth century,there are already no woods to escape to; and celebrating the example of those whoflee has gone out of fashion (see the dedication of the film Mediterraneo byGabriele Salvatores, 1992), including the idea of autarkic communities, near orfar. It would seem that we just have to salvage the technical utopia, knowingalready that it won't hold up for long; or perhaps follow the example of thosewho organize themselves into urban networks of solidarity, largely virtualcommunities, certainly driven by necessity, but also by a still utopian idea ofmore egalitarian relationships and mutual support. The promised technologicalparadise for everyone is obviously not reachable; but it is also true that few inthe West can already do without technological products, from refrigerators tocell phones. Maybe it's a question of hybridizing the various utopias and seeingif we can live better and without too much exploitation. Meanwhile, the rest ofthe planet is experiencing its ecological and food crises, except for the localbourgeoisies, evidently, and could even end up getting really pissed off!Emmanuel Amodiohttps://www.sicilialibertaria.it/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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