Solarpunk is an Evtopia, not a Utopia
Solarpunk is an Evtopia, not a Utopia
Honestly, the categorization of the #solarpunk vision as "Utopic" bothers the hell out of me as a Greek person. The use of utopia as a word has been a linguistic tool against optimism for as long as we've agree to hold onto it. Ουτοπία (utopia) literally translates to "a place that can never exist"...
Utopia (from Ουτοπία) is an impossible Vision of the future, while Evtopia (from Ευτοπία) is the best possible Vision.
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Utopia (from Ουτοπία) is an impossible Vision of the future, while Evtopia (from Ευτοπία) is the best possible Vision.
Interesting. I never heard of Evtopia, and I also did not understand Utopia as necessarily impossible. Could be possible or impossible, depends on context.
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/utopia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia#Etymology_and_history
I also don't think being unreachable is necessarily a bad thing. Consider an 'Ideal'. Although some ideals may never be fully actualized, they are seen as something good and worth pursuing nevertheless.
But mostly, I don't think the opinions of proponents or opponents of this idea are swayed by wether we call it Utopia or Evtopia. If anything, using the more common term makes it more relatable.
that wikipedia article is interesting, because it mentions Ευτοπία
In his original work, [Thomas] More carefully pointed out the similarity of the word to eutopia, meaning “good place”, from Greek: εὖ (“good” or “well”) and τόπος (“place”), which ostensibly would be the more appropriate term for the concept in modern English. The pronunciations of eutopia and utopia in English are identical, which may have given rise to the change in meaning.
Because of the same pronunciations I spelled it Evtopia instead of Eutopia which also seems to be closer to the greek pronounciation.
I do think though, that the term utopia has a tint of pessimism as it can be used to discredit ideas, because they were merely utopian and should be realistic.
I have always understood utopia as a term to describe the idea of a society that is so idealistic that is sounds unlikely to be reached but not necessarily impossible.
The problem with the word Utopia is that most people use it for things that they don't understand and don't care to understand, assuming then that the idea they are rejecting is too unrealistic (too idealistic) to be possible to obtain.
But people fail to understand that the idealistic (or utopian ideas) are important to guides us towards a direction and discover things that we are capable to do that previous seemed impossible, inspired and dedicated by our ideals.