Monthly Archives: March 2017

Hans Holbein the Younger's oil painting of Sir Thomas More, 1527.

In 1516, Thomas More was at the top of his game. He was widely recognised as one of the great intellectuals of Europe; a key adviser to princes and prelates, and an esteemed colleague of the greatest thinkers of the age. That summer, while he was pondering the implications of taking on heavier responsibilities at the court of Henry VIII a decision that eventually cost him his life he visited his old friend Erasmus, and he wrote a little book.

This book coined a word that changed the world: Utopia, or, to give it its full title, The New Island of Utopia. It was an arch little Latin pun: u-topos meant "no place", but sounded the same as eu-topos, a "beautiful place".

Why a new island? Because More's world had just been shaken to its foundations by the discovery of "the New World", a term which had itself only come into use a decade or so before. And the New World suggested the possibility of human societies living in utterly novel ways. People with eyes in the middle of their forehead, perhaps, or with strange rituals and beliefs, or as More supposed people who did not know the gospel of Christ, yet behaved better than the Christians who did.

More's Utopia was not paradise or heaven. It was constructed and built by humans, yet so designed as to bring out the best in us and prevent the worst. It was this combination of wild fantasy, on the one hand, and what we would now call "regulatory design", on the other, that distinguished More's inventive text. The fantasy of a new island from a new world gave him the freedom to think through conventional wisdom, and excoriate the society, values, and customs of the world he lived in where religion corrupts faith, money corrupts politics, self-interest rules everywhere and justice is not to be found.

Sound familiar? Are we condemned to this one narrow and unforgiving path through life, More asked? Or should we re-imagine what our world could be like, if only we could start afresh?

That was Utopia's bold challenge. It might be thought to be the very first science-fiction novel every written, and many that followed in its wake owe Utopia an enormous debt. More's book had effects not just in literature but in the real world, where thousands of communities from that day to this have sought not just to dream utopia but to build it, on some new island of their own: from New Australia in Paraguay, to Utopia in the Northern Territory.

Yet after 500 years, utopia seems further away than ever. Indeed, the whole language of political vision, ambition, and dreaming has become a byword for pointlessness; even for fanaticism. The victims of Pol Pot's utopia can be counted in the millions; that of Karl Marx, some would say, in the tens of millions.

But here in the "new island" of Australia, what is striking is the lack of vision. We seem to be faced by the most crucial and far-reaching of problems: climate change, global inequality, terrorism and authoritarianism as far as the eye can see. Yet our political discourse does not seem up to the task. Politics appears nothing but the pursuit of the narrowest of middle grounds. The 24-hour media cycles encourage the same narrow discussions, the same refusal to think ambitiously or imagine more far-reaching questions. Our country, like the ostrich, has its head in the sand paralysed by fear and consumed by denial.

So what have we lost by refusing to look to the horizon? by refusing to re-imagine our world and, in the process, cast a seriously critical eye on what now counts as received wisdom? This critical imagination seems to have wholly deserted us. The funny thing is scientists now think there is not one universe but an infinite number, constantly popping up like bubbles of gas on the surface of a marsh. But just as scientists are finding the truth in a universe of infinite possibility, our politics seems determined to shut our options down, insisting there is no choice but the world, the society, the economy good grief, even the housing market we happen to have now.

On the 500th anniversary of More's little book, the time has surely come to take some risks. The goal will not be to find a utopia that everyone can agree on. On the contrary,More's imaginary world was designed to place in stark relief the failures and the betrayals of the world as it actually existed. Utopia is u-toposno place. Rather, it is a thought experiment against which to test our beliefs, to challenge the order of things, and to measure our world against our needs and desires. Without it, Australia eu-topos is slipping away, leaving us victims of the future, rather than its architects.

Professor Desmond Manderson is director of the ANU's Centre for Law, Arts and the Humanities. The centre, with the National Library and Radio National's Big Ideas, will host a roundtable at 6pm on March 28 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Utopia's publication. The roundtable will feature Peter Singer, Alexis Wright, Russell Jacoby and Jacqueline Dutton. For tickets, see the National Library's website.

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500 years after Sir Thomas More's Utopia, what have we learned? - The Sydney Morning Herald

Berlinische Galerie/Kai-Annett Becker Paul Scheerbart: Nusi-Pusi, 1912

Walter Benjamin contrasted the well-ventilated utopias of the distinctive German writer and illustrator Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915) with the overheated fantasies of the Surrealists. To bring our culture to a higher level, Scheerbart argued in Glass Architecture (1914), his marvelous utopian novel in the form of an aesthetic manifesto, the heavy Wilhelmine buildings of brick and stone needed to be replaced with glass, which lets in the light of the sun, the moon, and the stars, not merely through a few windows, but through every possible wall, which will be made entirely of glassof colored glass. One of his rhyming aphorisms might be translated: Without a palace of glass/ Life is a pain in the ass.

Scheerbart lived mainly in Berlin, in bohemian chaos and near starvation, according to one biographer. He drank, heavily, with August Strindberg and Edvard Munch, pored over Huysmanss novels with their Symbolist illustrations by Odilon Redon, and wrote copiously, first art criticism and then fiction, poetry, and plays, with little popular success. Often characterized as a fantasy writer prone to hallucinatory visions of inner and outer spacewith early stories set in heavily exoticized Arab landsScheerbart could also bring an odd, Borgesian precision to novels like his 1910 Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention, or to the high-tech schemes of a Chicago-based, glass-obsessed architect in his 1914 novel The Gray Cloth with Ten Percent White: A Ladies Novel (both of which are available in English). Disappointment with how his visionary stories were illustratedby some of the best illustrators of his age, such as Alfred Kubin and Flix Vallottoninspired Scheerbart to take up drawing himself.

In a recent exhibition and accompanying catalog, the Berlinische Galerie has brought some of Scheerbarts most indelible images together with the graphic work of two artists he inspired: the modernist architect Bruno Taut (who built a pineapple-shaped glass dome building in Cologne in Scheerbarts honor) and the little-known outsider artist Paul Goesch (killed by the Nazis in 1940, in their murderous purge of the mentally disabled), whose miniature and colorful architectural visions owe something to Scheerbart.

Scheerbarts drawings, airy nothings composed of dotted ink, are as well-ventilated as his utopian novels. To illustrate his asteroid fantasies, based on early photographs of outer space, Scheerbart perfected a distinctive style of vanishing pointillism. Beyond Neptune, on the other asteroid ring discovered there, he confidently informed Kubin, there are stars that consist solely of masses of air in which the new beings hover about as if in a dream. ScheerbartsJenseits-Galerie(Gallery of the Beyond), a folio of ten masterly lithographs published in Berlin in 1907, purported to depict such new beings, always equipped with a human face. One, evidently distant from the Sun, bristles with frozen stalactites.

Another has a volcano sprouting, like inspiration, from its head.Ein Luft-Bonaparte(An Air-Bonaparte) would seem to be another airy nothing encounteredout there, though its snail-like body and tentacles might suggest a submarine origin instead. Its S-shape and the absence on the sheet of his customary signature S raise the possibility that Scheerbart was modestly depicting himself as a conquering Napoleon of the Beyond.

In his futuristic writings, Scheerbart presciently predicted the rise of China, the formation of the European Union (which he hoped would reduce international conflict), and the nightmare of aerial bombardment, which he thought, mistakenly, would be so terrible that it would put an end to war. (He is rumored to have starved himself to death in protest of World War I.) In Transportable Cities (1909), more hopefully, he imagined lightweight urban clusters that could be packed up and moved, by car, from place to place. At the beginning of culture, man was a nomad, and in the end he will be a nomad once more. Walter Benjamin saw in Paul Klees little sketch of an Angelus Novus the sorrowing Angel of History, facing the horrors of the past, with outstretched wings, and helpless to do anything about them. It is tempting to see Scheerbarts Ein Zukunftskind (A Child of the Future) as an equally alarming vision of the future. With its lobster claws jutting directly from its temples, this hovering creature looks perfectly capable of surviving us all. Scheerbarts signature S looks like its larval form, patiently waiting its own turn on our blighted planet Earth.

Modern Visionaries: Paul Scheerbart, Bruno Taut, Paul Goesch is published by Scheidegger & Spiess and distributed by the University of Chicago Press.

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A Well-Ventilated Utopia - The New York Review of Books

Press Release

Rebecca Haigh of sales and marketing firm Utopia Creations has been on an exciting business trip to Florida where she connected with fellow industry leaders in a fun-filled coaching trip

The American retreat organised for business owners in the sales and marketing industry was an exciting travel opportunity for Miss Haigh of Utopia Creations as a business owner. She was able to connect with some of the most successful CEOs around the world. What's more, the trip provided a chance to meet new professionals with a range of skills. It became a vital networking opportunity for Utopia Creations. Miss Haigh was able to establish new contacts in previously unchartered areas, an essential for any expanding business.

About Utopia Creations: http://www.weareutopia.co.uk

Beyond a good chance to network, business retreats demonstrate why business owners need to keep business moving forward. As Miss Haigh explains, "Going away can be the best remedy for popping the entrepreneurial bubble immersing oneself in the busy-ness of the day to day running of a business can lead to stagnation and a lack of fresh ideas. Sitting and contemplating things can be invaluable. Utopia Creations values any chance to learn and absorb new information, while realising it is crucial to take the time to process new information and integrate it into the business initiative.

Outings can prove a valuable investment in any business. The most obvious things can go amiss if a company's directive is too caught up in its immediate surroundings. Miss Haigh was grateful for the chance to relax and refresh after a busy first quarter in business, as well as to meet people with a different manner of doing things, Variety is the most sure-fire survival tactic in the business world, she noted.

Going abroad can be an exciting learning experience for all professionals in the sales and marketing industry. Utopia Creations feels that many skills can be learned through travel such as time-management, networking and people skills.

Utopia Creations offers regular travel opportunities to their contractors. Even their branding is based on Miss Haigh's own love of travel. Having moved from Brazil, she launched Utopia Creations in Leeds last year. Rebecca Haigh has always believed happy people perform better and for this reason, the company regularly runs fun activities for its employees. Though today's business world is making it increasingly difficult to find a balance between work and life, marketing consultancy Utopia Creations is the exception. From team building activities to nights out and road trips, the company is always looking for new ways to inspire and energise their workers.

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Utopia Creations are passionate about face to face marketing and believe great results are born from personalisation and positivity. Follow them on Twitter @utopiacreation_ and Facebook.

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Utopia Creations travels to Florida - Journalism.co.uk

Swedish Fetishism may include coveting idyllic countrysides, lively urban centers, and universal healthcare. Also: great ski gear.

When New York City shut down lastweek for a blizzard that never came to be, a particularly quirkyhashtag poppedup on Instagram and Twitter feeds across the Eastern seaboard: #hygge, the Danish lifestyle movement fetishizingall things cozy. Yet, according to The Cut and Vogue, #lagom is the Scandinavian trend we need in 2017.

Named after a Swedish concept (roughly translatedas not too much, not too little),the phenomenon is just the latest instance of Americas longstanding fascination with Sweden, known for its attractive, leggy populace, austere design aesthetic, and unusually cheerymusic.

For left-leaning Americans, however, the nations primary appeal stems from its reputation as aprogressive utopia, arguably Scandinavias most successful example ofmixing socialist politics and a capitalist economy.Offeringfree college, universal health care, and a robust social safety net, Swedens egalitarian reputation became anespeciallypoignant fantasyafter the 2016 election. Then, on February 18,Trump opted to defendhis controversial travel ban byvaguely invokinga phantom Swedish terrorist incident, bafflinghis constituents and renewingour fervor for the apparent liberalwonderland.

That night, Leif Pagrotsky, Swedens consul general in New York City and one of the nations top diplomats, was watching the Saturday evening news. The attack was news to Pagrotsky, news to everybody in Sweden. So hespent the rest of his weekend researching whether there was anything to Trumps claims. By Monday, the official Swedish response had been determined: a polite, quizzical note sent to the White House, along the lines of Pardon?

Pagrotskys own response wasmore sardonic. After a Twitter user discovered that the biggest incident of Sweden last night was a horse called Biscuit being rescued from a well, he tweeted,tongue firmly in cheek, Thanks to your prayers #MakeBiscuitDryAgain.

Pagrotsky, adapper 65-year-old, is aNordophilesdream.He hasexceedingly fine manners and exactly the minimalist chic office decor onemight expect from a man whos been called the ambassador of IKEA meatballs.Grinningslyly over a demitasse of strong Swedish coffee, he recalls, I wanted to circulate the news that Biscuit had been rescued, so everyone could sleep well at night.

Though he was amused, Pagrotsky doesnt think Trumpwas firing randomly. The seasoned politician has seen his wee country of 10 million garneran outsized share of U.S. attention, used as a political ball in your ping-pong matchfor decades. Thesame perks that delightprogressive Americans have turned Swedeninto a useful bogeyman for conservatives who fear the creep of socialism.

Back in the 1960s, Eisenhower called Swedens social welfare system a breeding ground for sin, nudity, drunkenness, and suicide. In 2009, when the U.S. government was bailing out major corporations from failure, Bill OReilly wrung his hands over the idea thatwe might morph into Sweden. And Marco Rubio fired shots at Bernie Sanders last year, suggesting hed make a great Swedish president. (Pagrotsky is quick to pointout that Sweden has a king, not a presidentand that The New Yorker is very good at cartoons.)

Despite the toxicity of Trumps Sweden claims, Pagrotsky says hes gratefulthat so many Americans are eager to learn more about his homeland. He fondly recalls that after OReilly insulted Sweden, Jon Stewart sent a crew to the country to uncover its faux horrors. Pagrotsky was interviewed for The Daily Showsegment; hes still recognized by strangers.

Still, Pagrotsky believes our view of Sweden can be rather two-dimensional. We revel in its perennialranking as one of the top 10 nations onthe World Happinessreport, its low unemployment and crime rates, and even its charmingleaders like Pagrotsky himself, who gladly participatein gay pride marchesandkick off their shoes for summervacations.

Yet Sweden isno Shangri-la, and Pagrotsky believes its unwise to focus only on the positive.Days after Trumps impetuous comment, a small riot broke out in one of Stockholms suburbs, which Pagrotsky attributesto general discontent among a poor and disenfranchised immigrant community. A few cars were burned, no one was seriously hurt, but we are not such a dramatic country, he says. These things are upsetting to us.

Eventually, it was revealed that Trumps initial comments were inspired by a largely discredited documentary calledStockholm Syndrome, which had recently been featured on a Fox News segment. It presented a Sweden being torn asunder by open bordersMuslim immigrants robbing, raping, and killing the native population, while draining the countrys finite resources. As incendiary as the film was, Pagrotsky admits that his country struggles with immigration, as well.

In response to a global migration crisis in 2015 (specifically the news of thousands drowning in the Mediterranean), Sweden opened its borders to refugees from some of the worlds most desperate nationsAfghanistan, Syria, and Somalia. But when no other European countries besides Germany followed suit, Sweden was quickly overwhelmed. The borders closed up again, and tiny Sweden experienced a tough reckoning.

It was a very hard decision, says Pagrotsky. You see, our immigration policy is based on compassion, an attempt to alleviate suffering. We do not accept immigrants because we need more workers, or because people need more servants in their homes.

Pagrotsky will not condemn or criticize Trump, at least not to a reporter. He says you can guess his views based on past political alignments (he leans left), but it would be foolish to close doors by spouting off his personal views. Though he likes to promote Swedish values like workplace equality, and sometimes these values can run afoul of U.S. policy, Pagrotsky says hiscountry is far fromperfect; its dangerous to assume that anywhere on Earth is.

My job is to make people understand what we do, and why we do it, he says. Its not to say the rest of the world who does not do it is bad or inferior or stupid. That's not my thing.

When I ask him about a Swede I recently met who claimed that approximately 99.999 percent ofSwedes hate Donald Trump, Pagrotsky grows circumspect. I think, perhaps this is an exaggeration, he says, a light twinkle in the eye. I would guess its more like 90 percent. Then he laughsit turns out histossed-off figure is verifiable.Actually, I read a poll.

Portraits of Leif Pagrotsky by Martin Adolfsson courtesy the Consulate General of Sweden. Top images via Getty (left to right: by Ivan Dmitri/Michael Ochs Archives and Michel Setboun) and Pixabay.

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Liberal America Has A Sweden Fetish - GOOD Magazine