Name: ユートピア...完璧な世界を求めて｜BBCアイデア (Utopia... The search for a perfect world | BBC Ideas)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T10:54:04.000Z
Duration: 2 min 38 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

It means a belief or interest in a perfect world -

or at least a world designed to be perfect.

The word 'utopia' was coined in 1516 by Sir Thomas More -

writer, saint and opponent of Henry the VIII's marriage plans -

Utopia has been taken by some people at face value

But others point to the fact that the word 'utopia' literally means...

Through the years there has been all sorts of ideas

ecological utopias where humans live in harmony with nature

have a myth of a perfect society in the past,

Communes, music festivals and naturist camps

could all be seen as attempts to create a mini utopia on Earth.

but one of the central qualities of any utopia, paradoxically,

Being a utopianist essentially means being a dreamer.

in his famous hit single and utopian anthem, Imagine,

he was referring to exactly this quality.

Utopianism's main flaw is its obsession with perfection.

This can lead to absurdities like the Soviet Russian belief

that one day all crime would be eradicated

because under true socialism crime would not be necessary.

Or the more sinister belief in fascist ideologies

that racial purity would eliminate all evil from society.

Perhaps this is why much discussion of the topic

is now confined to utopianism's dark side -

a way of describing worlds, real or imaginary,

From George Orwell's 1984 to Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale,

dystopian fiction has become increasingly popular in books,

But interest in utopias isn't going anywhere -

references within books have been on a steady rise since the 1900s

with clear spikes in the 60s and also - perhaps surprisingly -

And who could deny the perfection of the world - at least in microcosm -

and listen to the sound of the waves crashing on a beach.

Or when you first see a blanket of bluebells in the spring.

And without at least striving for a better world, where would we be?

In chains, with rats chewing off our faces,

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