MY LIVES IN UTOPIA
<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Monday, March 31, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel
"A map of the World which does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at..." Oscar Wilde.
VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: In James Hilton´s novel "Lost Horizons" the main character Conway is last "seen" going back to Tibet, trying to reach Shangri-La, the place where he had found love and happiness. The novel closes with someone asking someone else the wistful question: "Do you think he will ever find it?"... meaning, of course: "Do you think We will ever find it?"....
Shangri-La is one of the many Utopias created by man´s imagination, from the fictional island of Utopia conceived by Tomas More in 1516 to the most recent social, religious or political experiments in search of happiness.
This search has adopted many forms:
- The yearning for the natural life, as in the innocence of the American Indians before Columbus´arrival, or as in the Tahiti of Robert Louis Stevenson or Gauguin, or as in the dreams of equality among the good savages of Rousseau.
- The search for the Kingdom of God on Earth, religious Utopias such as in Muslim fundamentalism, in Amish, Quaker or Mormon communities.
- In capitalist Utopias such as the Scandinavian societies, or as in the planned urban communities like Sedona, Reston, La Jolla, all in the US or Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela.
- Ideological Utopias, such as Mao´s China, the Zionist Kibutz Shalom or the Soviet or Hungarian revolutions.
Some Utopias have been small in size, others covering entire countries. Most have failed in fulfilling collective expectations. The Tahitians, upon contact with the English, developed an "Utopia" of their own based on the worst habits of the visitors. Many stopped bathing, became rum addicts, started to steal.
When Cook left back home many islanders insisted in going with him but could not and were left crying in the lagoon. Many kibutzniks quit after resenting the excessive supervision and the hard work,
The flower children communes blossomed by the thousands in the US, only to disappear months or short years later.
Most of them were only held together by the charisma of a leader, often mentally unbalanced, which made stability of the commune very fragile and often led to tragedy.
As an adolescent, I read many Utopias and developed a strong interest in the subject. For some years I accepted the traditional meaning of Utopia as an impossible dream, as a place "which does not exist."
I was happy enough to think that what made Utopia worthwhile as a concept was to live yearning for it, knowing that we would never get there. As in the case of the other famous island in literature, Ithaca, what seemed to be important was the journey itself. But I now realize, as surely many others have or will, that Utopia is not only a spiritual reality that is born within us but is also a very physical reality, a real place.
In his book "Voyages to Utopia" William McCord says that "in Greek, with slight changes in spelling Utopia can either mean "nowhere" or "a good place" ... this means that many of us have probably spent a good portion of our lives in Utopia. This happens to be true in my case since I have felt happy and well adjusted in several "good places" and because those places possessed objectively many of the qualities which its habitants, including me, were looking for.
I certainly grew up in Utopia, the town of Los Teques, near Caracas, a town of some 16,000 people in the 1940-1950 period. The town was almost a mile high and came complete with a train, a municipal band which played twice a week at the main square and a superb high school managed by Salesian priests, among the best teachers in the world.
The town was like a big family, as it usually happens in groups which accomplish great things together, such as baseball teams that win the world series. Even today the "tequenos" of that time are united by very strong bonds of special friendship. When they meet they feel that "points of light flash out," as in the verse of W. H. Auden.
The objective reality of the town had a lot to do with this. The great climate, the luscious vegetation, the wonderful sense of humor that grew wild in young and old alike and the predominant zest for life, all contributed to an overall feeling of well-being. Our family was poor but I did not realize it, as we lived as decorously as the only millionaire in town. After all he only could eat three times a day, like we did.
This model of Utopia as a good place has accompanied me through adulthood and into the threshold of old age. I have lived in several Utopias: Tulsa, Oklahoma; Lafayette, Louisiana; The Hague, Holland and, for the last ten years or so, Sabana del Medio, near Valencia. Only that, this last place, probably one of the most wonderful Utopias of them all, is under siege by social groups which have very different values and manners of living to ours.
Their Utopia is clearly not ours.
Utopias are very much alive, not only in our hearts but as physical realities, in communities of people who share some basic values, where common problems are faced with solidarity and unselfishness.
These Utopias tend to be small, no bigger than 50,000 inhabitants.
Large communities almost inevitably become impersonal and hostile. Some, like Caracas, have gone from being "the subsidiary of Heaven," during the 1940s and 1950s, to being hell on earth today due to a combination of filth, crime and government ineptness.
To be a good candidate for living in Utopia, no money or social status is required. A good humanistic education helps a lot, as well as a good sense of humor and unshakeable self-esteem.
Look out for Utopia ... it could be just around the corner!
Gustavo Coronel is the founder and president of Agrupacion Pro Calidad de Vida (The Pro-Quality of Life Alliance), a Caracas-based organization devoted to fighting corruption and the promotion of civic education in Latin America, primarily Venezuela. A member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), following nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry, Coronel has worked in the oil industry for 28 years in the United States, Holland, Indonesia, Algiers and in Venezuela. He is a Distinguished alumnus of the University of Tulsa (USA) where he was a Trustee from 1987 to 1999. Coronel led the Hydrocarbons Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington DC for 5 years. The author of three books and many articles on Venezuela ("Curbing Corruption in Venezuela." Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 3, July, 1996, pp. 157-163), he is a fellow of Harvard University and a member of the Harvard faculty from 1981 to 1983. In 1998, he was presidential election campaign manager for Henrique Salas Romer and now lives in retirement on the Caribbean island of Margarita where he runs a leading Hotel-Resort. You may contact Gustavo Coronel at email ppcvicep@telcel.net.ve