Utopian Dreams

I would like to take this opportunity to recommend a book to you. It's called Utopian Dreams and it's by Tobias Jones.

Jones is an Oxford-educated journalist who lives in Parma, and his book is about his experience spending a year travelling and visiting five different communities. It's a book about community, and whether or not anything founded on Idealism can be of value.

What makes this book of interest to me is the direction that Jones takes it. Firstly, he admits that his interest in communities and idealism is driven by his dissatisfaction with the bankrupt existence of postmodernity. As he puts it '[t]he promise of happiness has created an epidemic of depression. It's us who are being consumed, not the objects".

Secondly, despite not being religious himself, Jones comes to the conclusion that the communities that are most successful at challenging the malaise of postmodernity are those which have religion as a foundation. Yet, not just any religion, for Jones is also unimpressed with expressions of New Age religion which are focussed almost exclusively on the self and mirror many of postmodernity's worst traits.

It's a good read, and well worth it for those of you who are interested in culture, community and what the Gospel might have to offer to our society of well-fed and free-time rich drones.

Also, the book taught me that the word 'idiocy' has its roots in the Greek word 'idiotes' which originally meant 'a private person'. The logical conclusion here is that wisdom is found not with the individual but within a community.