Just as modernity has shaped the narratives of progress, population, and prosperity to its own benefit, there is a story of peace that we've been told which deserves some critical analysis and questioning. In a culture where "peace deals" are synonymous with a temporary pause on genocidal bloodshed carried out by an incredibly unbalanced power dynamic, our very notion of what "peace" actually is has become warped by our conditioning to witness and increasingly tolerate unspeakable violence. The question of peace must hold an aspect of social spatiality… peace where? And for whom? A pervasive "Protect your peace" type of neo-spirituality has arisen in modernity's hyper-individualized society. It requires its followers to ignore the very violences that their so-called peace depends on, as well as the conflict that inevitably arises from the unaddressed violences. But there is no peace in existing amongst the comforts of modernity when those comforts are dependent on the extraction and exploitation of other life.

Our realities are shaped by the physical world we inhabit; whether that's the nature that surrounds us, the humans we interact with in community, the food made accessible to us, or the stories that reach us, filled with knowledge our own realities or those far away. But just as much as we absorb these inputs from the outside world to shape our understanding of it, we are also exerting our own inputs into the realities of others. We all contribute to a greater understanding of the physical world which surrounds us, the Topia we exist in. In this lunar cycle, we will examine the different Topias, from the more familiar types found in literature, Dystopia and Utopia, to the more generative and less well-known genre of Thrutopia and Ourtopia. 


Broken down into a literal translation, Utopia means "no place." This Topia is the territory that is often labeled 'off-limits' by an understanding of what is possible, based on what has been possible. It is where the imagination roams when left unbound and free from the limits of realism. Unlike the dystopic stories we question might be playing out in the real world we exist in right now, the utopia is inherently fictional. That being said, it can still serve a functional purpose in world-building. There is incredible power behind the unbound imaginative creative process that occurs when certain limits are removed. New pathways may be revealed for different ways of organizing ourselves into better forms of existence. If there's any room for delusion in Topias, let it be a hopeful delusion which allows us to believe that there is always a better way of being. Join us this week as we wonder with unbound curiosity what utopian ideals we might be able to learn from, comparing lessons from history and literature with our current predicament.

We can benefit from imagining, ideating, and criticizing utopias and dystopias, but what about right now? Utopias are unachievable and dystopias are undesirable, so what worlds should we inhabit and build, especially now and in the near future? In the pursuit of utopia and in the rejection of dystopia, we encounter Thrutopia.





Join us this week as we explore what thrutopia could look like and mean in this stage of modernity and its ongoing collapse.