Category talk:Utopian communities


 * "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at."

-Lewis Mumford
 * Was it Epimenides, a Cretan, who said "All Cretans are liars"? What's the term for that?  Because in actual real-definition terms of Utopia as "nowhere", the sentence is a conundrum - conundrum, that's the word, or close to it.  Or is it a paradox?  If Mumford is taken out of his context - the application of utopian theory to social/cultural planning/undettakings (rather ilke engineering using physics...) - and the sentence is taken literally, the world of hte map must contain "nowhere" - more than one in fact.  Well, I guess I come from palces like that (backwoods Bc, where many places/creeks/mountains don't even have names, and likely never will....), but that's only utopia if humans don't move into it.  To me, utopia leads to all kinds of mad stuff like messianism - Jonestown, Guyana, was a utopian community until....well, 'nuff said that it's not even alone in that sort of thing, just more recent and televised.  See postscript below.Skookum1 (talk) 05:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Insolubility, found on Epimenides' page, where there's also Liar paradox. That the map must include nowhere is very John Cage-ish, and makes odd sense.  A map with nowhere on it is kind of like a Moebius strip; but instead of being only one-sided, it's no-sided....Skookum1 (talk) 05:46, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Purpose of Category
Researchers in the history of town-planning, regional planning, social engineering, social movements, the Englightenment, the Progressive Movement, architecture, industry and labor, or literature may all find some benefit into having an index to articles about planned ideal cities, intentional communities, proposed utopias, etc. That is my purpose in creating this category. Dystopos 22:07, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Subcat needed: Category:Former utopian communities
I just added Ruskin, British Columbia, which like Holberg, British Columbia and Hagensborg, British Columbia and various others - Sointula, Webster's Corners...so many in BC, really. Anyway there's no subcat yet for utopian communities that are no longer; "defunct" is what we use for electoral districts in another area, but it seems a bit morbid, and "failed" doesn't take in all possibilities; Ruskin BC like Ruskin Florida (which I also added the cat too), so "former" seems to work. I was also expecting, and maybe there is one, a cat or cats somewhere that took in or crossed over "neo-Fabianist" and "neo-neo-Raphaelite" communal expressions; similarly Finnish and Scandainvian communal experiences are different from those of Mormons, Doukhobors, Mennonites, and other "religious communists" (when strict); in other words there were different "flavorus" of commune, and in teh case of Ruskinite communities it's more like an artsy intelliectual bunch vs the religious hardcore of a truly communist/anarchist commune, or for that matter a Satanic or neo-Celtic one....was, for example, Aleister Crowley's villa a utopian commune? Depends on what you define utopia, and on behalf and in the name of whom....there were a number of British intellectual/socail/artistci movements/groups in BC at one time, particularly on the Island and in the Islands; but rarely formally organized as with the case of others, though most failed because of their rules, or the economic inviability of the location (e.g. Cape Scott, which Danes tried to settle), or all that damn rain and isolation ;-) Anyway it seems odd to see both DeCourcy Island and Ruskin Colony (that link's for the one in Tennessee, but there are a number of places and institutions foudned around him or his teaching...what would a cat be for writers who have founded, accidentally or intentionally, movmenents of this kind or other?).  G'nite.Skookum1 (talk) 05:31, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Postscript:re my comments in reply to the Mumford quote, maybe a "failed" subcat is a good idea for stuff like cult-utoipas like Brother XII and Jonestown; for those that ended ingloriously, rather than for those that just whimpered or faded away or died out. Monasteries and the like should be a subcat here, actually; Platonic theory was built into Benedictine social/monasstic doctrine, when you stop to think about it (Plato being one of the only ancient pagans allowed to be taught by the Church - within the Church/monastery only, for a long while). Some kind of religious utopias cat seems apprproiate for Amish, Hutterites, Puritans, Old Order Doukhobour and Orthodox Mormon and the like, but there were less religious but still religious ones like Hoblerg and Sointula et al. as well; terminology is tricky, I'd say.Skookum1 (talk) 05:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)