10 examples of UTOPIA and DYSTOPIA

For as long as human beings have existed, we have imagined a different world, a better place our planet could become. This imagination has led many thinkers throughout history to imagine a different civilization, either better or worse, that may be our future. For all this, in this lesson of a Teacher we must talk about two of these two possible futures, explaining what is utopia and dystopia with examples.

It is called Utopia to the idea, idealization, or representation of a perfect civilization, imaginary ideal or impossible to achieve. This utopia is usually a parallel or alternative vision of our current world, in which certain changes lead to a perfect world.

Another reason why the word is used Utopia is to name a world that is considered perfect, but for certain reasons it is almost impossible to put into practice, so the person who proposes it considers it "utopian" since it is not attainable in any way.

Utopia has been very relevant throughout history, with numerous studies on the subject and created texts about utopias in a huge number of topics, such as politics, economics, society or the environment ambient. Even with this, practically no utopian idea has been attempted in real life, due to the

real impossibility of it working.

We must keep in mind that the idea of ​​utopia has been with us for centuries, since the texts of Ancient Greece, but the word itself was invented by the English politician Thomas More, who in his work entitled "Utopia" tried to set the standards for an ideal world for English society.

examples of utopia

To better understand what we mean when we speak of utopia, we must list some examples of this, being key to understanding it. Therefore, some examples of utopias are the following:

• The first idea of ​​a utopia was the Republic of Plato, in which the Greek speaks of a perfect society where everyone seeks an ideal of justice and peace.
• The City of God of Saint Augustine of Hippo is another utopian example. The author spoke of a spiritual world far from the earthly one, in which everyone would be perfect because they were closer to God.
• Thomas More's Utopia, being the work that gives name to the concept. Moro spoke of a perfect society, without private property, in which all people were equal to each other.
• The utopian socialism it is another example of utopia, being the ideas prior to Marx that spoke of a perfect world without inequalities.
• The world peace utopia is one of the most repeated, being the ideal of a world without conflicts or wars.

To continue this lesson on examples of utopia and dystopia, we must talk about dystopias, being a very different element from utopias, since although the former are used to imagine an ideal world, the dystopias are closer to fantasies and fiction.

Dystopia is the opposite of utopia, serving to name a type of evil imaginary world and undesirable, being generally an element of fiction, both literary and cinematographic.

Dystopia poses a world where all the ideals of utopia do not exist and where more extreme ideologies have won and they have changed the world to create something horrible. At the same time, try to be a warning so that people do not carry out actions that in the future may lead to a similar reality. Some of the dangers that dystopias try to warn about are dictatorships, consumerism, dependence on technology, environmental destruction or extreme surveillance.

Dystopias began to matter throughout the 20th century, when the numerous traumatic events suffered by societies led a group of writers to create worlds in which ideologies led to disaster.

examples of dystopia

To understand what we refer to as dystopias, we must comment on some examples, all of which are part of literature and cinema. Some examples of dystopias are the following:

• 1984 by George Orwell: A totalitarian world with extreme vigilance over society, being the origin of the term Big Brother.
• A happy world by Aldous Huxley: It speaks of a world where there is enormous social inequality and humans are created in a technological way.
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: Talk about a world where books are banned.
• metropolis by Fritz Lang: An underground world where they are forbidden to go outside.
• Alphaville: A world where a machine controls people, so they can't even think.
• The Handmaid's Tale: A world where men rule and women only serve to procreate, creating a government system where only men run the world.