We have long since lost our faith in the idea that human beings could achieve hu
man happiness in some future ideal state a state that Thomas More, writing five
centuries ago, tied to a topos, a fixed place, a land, an island, a sovereign st
ate under a wise and benevolent ruler. But while we have lost our faith in utopi
as of all hues, the human aspiration that made this vision so compelling has not
died. Instead it is re-emerging today as a vision focused not on the future but
on the past, not on a future-to-be-created but on an abandoned and undead past
that we could call retrotopia.
