Trial. Utopias and social reality
The term utopia refers to the idea of a fantastic, perfect society. Mentioning an universe parallel to the world in which one lives, it is important to point out that Utopia can not only be considered in order to raise a place or life with an imaginary vision, but it could also be an optimistic or hopeful form ofobserve the world, and capture things as we would like to be.
Speaking of philosophical currents they understand utopia as the action of a society manifesting as a denial of current reality or objectivity.
Utopia can be considered as the realization of private thoughts beyond limits;Historically it has been related to the ideal of justice that the men of each era had come to understand.
Before, human beings suffered from discomfort, this caused by the imperfections they saw in their environment and especially in their relationship with the society that surrounded them, forcing to imagine a state of grace and fullness where everyone could not only yearnits objectives in a harmonious and equitable way.
That said, it is more than clear that the issue of utopia has been an irresistible issue for most but that all thinkers;From ancient Greece with Plato, which describes his way of his state, his fair state.
It proposes three social classes that are the rulers, the guards and the producers, who would integrate the Republic and exercise idealistic and perfect functions for the preservation of justice.
In this sense, as Utopia can also be considered an optimistic way to conceive how we would like the world and things to be: "I know that the way in which I propose that the country works" is a utopia ". Due to its important idealistic burden, the utopia offers the soil to formulate and design life systems in alternative, more fair, consistent and ethical society.
Therefore, it has been extended to different areas of human life, and there is talk of economic, political, social, religious, educational, technological, and environmentalist or environmental utopias. The most important philosophy book for its utopian content is the Republic of Plato, where it formulates its political thinking and its ideas about how a society should work to achieve perfection.
As such, the term utopia was invented by the English writer and humanist Thomas More or Tomás Moro in Spanish, from the Greek words οὐ (OU), which means ‘no’, and τόπος (tópos), which translates ‘place’, that is: ‘place that does not exist’. Tomás Moro, impressed by the extraordinary narratives of Américo Vespucio on the island of Fernando de Noronha, who was sighted by Europeans in 1503, considered that on that same island a perfect civilization could be built. For Tomás Moro, utopia was a communal, rationally organized society, where houses and property would be collective and not individual property, and people would spend their free time in reading and art, because they would not be sent to war,except in extreme situations;Therefore, this society would live in peace, happiness, justice and in full harmony of interests.
In this sense, Tomás Moro’s utopia also keeps, within its idealistic formulation, a strong critical content message towards the regimes that ruled in Europe during their time.
Distopia, as such, is anti utopia or the opposite, negative face of utopia. While utopia ideals and projects systems and doctrines of perfect, functional ideal societies, the dystopia leads to the consequences of disciplinary utopian approaches, such as Tomás Moro, to undesirable extremes. In this sense, dystopia explores reality to anticipate how certain methods of conducting society could lead to totalitarian, unfair and terrible systems. A dystopian book par excellence is George Orwell’s novel entitled 1984.
When carrying out a social intervention it is very important to know the social reality on which we are going to intervene;Because in this way we will know and understand better that reality, your needs, demands, preferences … etc.;Hence, we have to ask ourselves previous issues of a general nature that provide us with data on the object of our intervention.
Already talking about social reality and giving a concept we refer to a set of multiform actions of many people who behave in certain ways and act with each other and for the others, apart from each other, and some against theothers. Society is therefore a constant activity game due to the influence of endogenous and exogenous factors to itself.
There are 7 fundamental elements that help us operate in a society that are:
- Basic subsystems or fundamental forms: groups (family, group equal, etc.), Communities (the neighborhood) and institutions (the State, school.)
- People or individuals.
- Motivations of social action: ambition, prestigious increases, means to the end, free decision of the will.
- Standards, values, roles, power distribution.
- Social control: praise, punishment, reinforcement, etc.
- Communication system: lack of contacts, circle of worldwide acquaintances,
Change is consumed in human society thanks to the way of being of man;as an unpinal entity and capable of becoming a culturally transformed. On the other hand, point out that the forms of institutionalized lives, such as legal customs stop change and, on the contrary, conflicts accelerate it.
This social change can occur by various factors:
- External to the system: catastrophes, alteration of natural resources. etc. Exogenous impulses also occur due to cultural contact.
- Internal to the system: endogenous stimuli to change are generational succession, differentiations between groups (political, racial), ICTs, urbanization, emigrations, information and the media.
- Intentive changes: planned in advance, voluntarily through social intervention. And here we can differentiate:
- Natural changes: not caused or planned;They suppose processes that cannot be framed in the field of social intervention. (They arise spontaneously).
To understand how we have reached today’s society we have to refer to a series of social changes that have been produced and that have caused significant changes in Western-Democratic societies;mainly in industrial configuration. These changes are:
Demographic concentration in cities;whose consequences are: large waves of internal emigration, desertification of the field, loss of values and ultimately a strong uprooting of our culture.
- Increased social class "media".
- Modernization and increased communications and transport network.
- Progressive increase in ICTs and their application to all areas. Difficulty adapting to them.
- Creation of the Welfare State.
- Increased labor in the services sector to develop the increase in free time and development of leisure society.
- Incorporation of women into the world of work.
- Paso of the family model extensive to nuclear family.
- Birth decrease.
- Descent of infant mortality and increased life expectancy.
The Club of Rome in 1979 called "human lag" or crisis of Western civilization, to the growing social complexity that is being experienced and the delay of our abilities to face them. Broadly the repercussions that these changes have produced are: world economic, social and political imbalances, arms such as the business of the century, ecological destruction, decompensated rhythm of life.
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