Matthew Hollow (Durham): Pre-1900 Utopian Visions of the “Cashless Society”. From Smithsonian.com’s Past Imperfect blog, Mike Dash on the neverending hunt for utopia: Through centuries of human suffering, one vision has sustained — a belief in a terrestrial arcadia that offered justice and plenty to any explorer capable of finding it. Ian James reviews Existential Utopia: New Perspectives on Utopian Thought. Civilisation is making humanity less intelligent: The simplicity of modern life is making us more stupid, according to a scientific theory which claims humanity may have reached its intellectual and emotional peak as early as 4,000 BC. State Purposes: Terrell Clemmons on utopian creep and the struggle for human rights and freedom. Utopia is a fantasy about a supposedly perfect society; if Distributism is Utopian and Capitalism is not, it is because Capitalism is not only a fantasy, but also a nightmare. The ends of humanity: Socialism is dead, and the transhuman future looms — is there any way to recover a sense of global purpose? George Dvorsky on the 7 best case scenarios for the future of humanity.
