In Pursuit of Utopia” is a monthly show graciously hosted by Brett Veinotte, founder of the School Sucks Project. We discuss utopian thoughts and theories from different periods of time, the aim being to underscore their relevance to us today. To no small degree, history is an ever-growing pile-up of utopian ideologies; we live atop the pile, our past being replete with “noble” sacrifices and deadly missteps on the upward journey to human perfection.
In this show, we pour over the history of imagined human perfectibility. What has this notion won us? What has it lost us? How have utopian plots to realize heaven on earth—or to establish perfect, scientific, “rational” states—ended up? All this and more is explored in “In Pursuit of Utopia.”
EPISODE 1: “FROM THE BOTTOM UP”
In this episode, we define our terms, and introduce the concepts of “utopia” and “myth.”
Here, we look at the utopian theories that swept the Old and New Worlds in the 17th and 18th centuries. We explore the Puritanical fathers of colonial America, who hoped to encourage God’s return to earth. We then turn our attention back to Europe, observing the rise of the ideal of a “rational society,” as it was originally posited by Francis Bacon, and covertly attempted by the elusive Illuminati.
This month, Brett and I look at some major tenets of Enlightenment philosophy, and how it suggested a new brand of utopia, just as the western world really began to open up.
With a title like that, what could go wrong? Well, that’s exactly what Brett and I explore in this episode, all about the American Revolution: What it offered, what it delivered, and why those things wound up being very different.
EPISODE 5: “COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY”
France, 1789. Medieval policies send the nation’s poor into a state of bitter starvation. The same Medieval policies give the clergy and the nobility special rights over everybody else: Those who do all the work. Something needed to be done, and something was. Yet, out of the noble cause of liberty, equality, and fraternity, sprang a vicious system of authoritarianism. In the name of the Revolution, anything was permissible. In pursuit of utopia, the ends justified the means.
