NATIONAL TURBULENCE AND UTOPIA

As mentioned before, I am reading Erik Reece’s Utopia Drive. If you missed it, here is a link to the page ARTLESS ART, which brings a Shaker sensibility to what we do here at Transparent Drawing.

And also very recently, we have broached the subject of NATIONAL WORDS. So in this spirit of words and utopia, and in the cultural disturbance that characterizes our Nation post election, I was struck by the opening words of the New Harmony Constitution.

New Harmony, if you might not know, was a utopian community established in southern Indiana in around 1830.  Robert Owen, a British industrialist, purchased New Harmony from the Rappites so as to establish his ideal society.

Owen decided that New Harmony needed a constitution.  And so they proceeded to write one up.  And the first words of the constitution I think are relevant in, as I said, our post election turbulence.

OUR PRINCIPALS ARE:

Equality of rights, uninfluenced by sex or condition, in all adults.

Equality of duties, modified by physical and mental conformation.

Cooperative union, in the business and amusement of life.

Community of property.

Freedom of speech and action.

Sincerity in all our proceedings.

Kindness in all our actions.

Courtesy in all our intercourse.

Order in all our arrangements.

Preservation of health.

Acquisition of knowledge.  (p99.)

Again, the words above were written in 1830.  And given our National Turbulence, I find them nearly heartbreaking.  Now of course we are not going to have community of property. Yet the words equality, cooperative, kindness, do summarize the ideals of our Nation. They summarize our national precepts.  And I will say that these words in 1830 had a much greater cultural commonality than these words do now.

So quite possibly in our National Turbulence, the utopic visions of the Shakers and of New Harmony do give us a reference point.  The words can matter.  We can conjure a more just and equitable society.

And certainly the way things look, the next years will be a step back from equality.

ROBERT OWEN’S ARCHITECTURAL VISION

After a bit of research, I was amazed to see the form that Robert Owen gave to his utopic community.  The four walls are reminiscent of La Tourette, among many others of this typology, some of which we have been tracking here.

Is this what utopia looks like?  Apparently, in 1860, this is what it looked like to Robert Owen.

This image is in the public domain.