Fate & Fabled

In a perfect world, no one would be hungry.

In a perfect world, everyone would have a home.

In a perfect world, there'd be no crime or war.

In a perfect world, I could eat potato chips for every meal and never have to worry about getting all my vitamins!

Well, that's a smaller concern, but I'm glad you know what you want.

This perfect world we're describing is a utopia, a place free from suffering and strife, and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say every religion and myth system in the world imagined a paradise or two.

But in myths, utopias aren't meant for us regular folk.

And in fiction, they're portrayed as impossible.

They're meant to be aspirational.

So Dr. Z and I have aspired to make our own.

First, let's look at some myths to find traits of utopias we love and could do without.

[curious music] Utopias are the everything bagel seasoning of myth devices because they are born out of something everyone everywhere can relate to: the desire for a better existence, even one currently out of our mortal reach.

And because our primate brains are comforted by greenery, utopias have long been described as having beautiful, bountiful gardens.

Remember Utnapishtim from our Gilgamesh episode?

No?

Uh, that's fine.

He was the guy beyond the dark mountain pass who lived in a glittering garden and told Gil how to achieve immortality.

The gods had made him immortal after he saved humanity from the great flood, then transported him to the Garden of the Gods.

It had bushes and foliage covered in precious gems like rubies and lapis lazuli.

The garden was described as a pure and clean place where the wolf snatched not the lamb.

Basically, it was safe and bountiful, everything our distant ancestors dreamed of.

According to some myths, the garden was the site where Enlil split heaven from the earth and created humans to spread across the earth.

Scholars believe the Sumerian Garden of the Gods was the inspiration for the Garden of Eden.

Our species isn't confined to the jungle anymore.

We've spread out to and fallen in love with different environments, adapting our diets, habits, and even our biology to make them habitable.

So what do we think our utopia would look like?

I know you had an idea in mind when you chose Tiamat.

Well, we know I'm obsessed with Tiamat, mother of monsters, but I think that water is the basis of all creation.

There's so many mythologies, if not all of them, right, -that start that way?

-Right.

(Dr. Z) So I think it's really important to have, like, a water-based.

I think that's great.

I think we can put an island on water surrounded by the water of Tiamat because we learned in our Pele and Kamapua'a episode that Hawaii, or some of the islands of Hawaii, are really ecologically diverse, and I think that's important for our utopia because there are so many beings and people who will live there, right?

In some of the myths that we just covered, the plants are made of jewels.

Is that something you want to incorporate?

-Yes.

-Yeah.

(Dr. Z) I love shiny things.

I don't know if I was, like, a crow in a past life or whatever, but yes, the more jewels the better.

I think that why not?

In my perfect paradise, I just wanna be slathered in jewels and have the world surrounded by jewels, and everyone gets to look at the beauty.

I love that.

But in terms of how it looks, do you want everything to be naturally colored?

We talked on Mount Penglai about how everything is white.

I like color.

I don't know about you, I think it's also problematic to make everything white.

So I prefer to stay away from that.

-More colors the better.

-(Dr. McT) Great.

Can we give it extra colors?

-(Dr. Z) Yes, why not?

-Okay.

(Dr. Z) Colors that don't exist from the spectrum that we see them?

(Dr. McT) Mm-hmm.

Extra colors, and also just like everything is more colorful.

So the leaves don't all have to be green, sometimes they can be purple.

-Purple jeweled leaves.

-Yes.

-Into it.

-Amazing.

[Dr. Z giggles] Despite this very early utopia example, "utopia" is a younger word than you might realize, only about 500 years old.

We can trace it back to 1516 when an English lawyer named Thomas More wrote a little book in Latin that described a fictional island and gave it a name with Greek roots meaning no place: Utopia.

He describes everything from the size and layout of the island to its governance structure and its social norms.

Utopia has no private property.

Its citizens are required to work the land, and slavery is actively supported.

So clearly More was the kind of nerd who lacked empathy, but he wasn't trying to imagine a place where everyone would be happy.

In the book, More actually distinguished his concept from "eutopia."

It sounds the same, but it has an extra letter that changes the Greek translation to "good place."

Over time, we dropped that E and realized some harsh truths about perfect societies.

Political scientist Lyman Sargent wrote that it's impossible to make a society that's perfect for everyone because people aren't homogenous and we all want different things.

And then fascist regimes and eugenics movements attempted to forcibly shape their ideal societies at the expense of others, giving utopias a bit of an unsavory reputation.

Because of this bad reputation and the fact that most narratives rely on the type of conflict that wouldn't exist in a perfect world, we don't see many true utopias in fiction.

A society may be presented as one at first, but you can usually be sure that some shady secret is about to be uncovered.

My whole generation was traumatized by "The Lottery."

Remember that Shirley Jackson story where a randomly chosen person gets stoned to death that they made us read in school?

Yeah, good times.

Perhaps we've always known that utopias are too good for us mortals, which could explain why most utopias from folklore, like the Sumerian Garden, were reserved for Gods.

Perfect divine beings need a perfect heavenly home after all.

In Chinese mythology, Mount Penglai is the utopic home base for the eight sometimes drunken immortals, a group of Taoist deities and secular legendary figures throughout China.

This headquarters is found on one of the five mystical islands in the Bohai Sea to China's east.

It also featured jewels growing on plants, but those plants and everything else on the mountain were pure white.

It was never winter, and there were rice bowls and wine glasses that never emptied.

Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of united China in 200s BCE searched for Mount Penglai and its famed elixir of life.

As far as we and every reputable historian know, he was unsuccessful, which is a bummer because this utopia seems amazing, if you ask me.

But that brings up a great point.

We don't have to limit the citizenry of our utopia to divine beings, though, if we don't want to.

So a place full of immortal beings with more power than anyone deserves doesn't sound like a very fun time to me.

So who do you think our utopia should be for?

Who should live there?

Honestly, all-powerful beings and, like, immortals sounds annoying.

I feel like they're kind of, like, conceited.

I just don't want to deal with it.

And I also think that diversity makes the world a better place.

And if our utopia is supposed to be a better place, I want everyone and everything to be included.

So plants, animals, humans, demigods, human-animal-plant hybrids, I don't care, just not the basic big-name gods and deities, I think, is important.

-What do you think though?

-I agree, I want diversity.

I want it to be a very inclusive space.

So I think it should be a place where everyone is allowed to come in.

But we can't have everyone in our utopia, so should there be some sort of test or a journey that they have to go on before they can reach this place in Tiamat's tummy?

[chuckles] I think so, I think it should be selective but not restrictive.

And if we're trying to make a better, more peaceful place, something akin to like a hero's journey, but maybe with a little less loss, like you don't have to sacrifice something terrible except maybe like ego or something that's not gonna help us as much.

(Dr. McT) How about a journey where instead of losing ego and other things, you gain knowledge and perspective and it's a journey of interacting with lots of people who are not like you so you can gain empathy?

-Absolutely.

-Yay.

And all the people in this utopia, do they come from the outside world?

(Dr. Z) I think that it's totally fair for new creatures, new beings, new humans even to be born or made or formed in whatever way our utopia sees best, 'cause in my mind, the utopia itself, our beautiful, brightly colored jeweled island, is also its own being or entity.

-Ooh.

-So if it decides it wants to make some kind of, like, jeweled bird creature, I'm not gonna be mad about it.

I also love the idea of this living island and the deities that oversee it being able to create something if the need arises.

If you need a creature that can sow the fields or something, then they can make a big worm creature that can aerate the ground.

(Dr. Z) I love that, a giant fun worm.

Not a "Dune" one, not a scary one.

-No.

-Nice worm.

A very cute worm.

-Yes, cuteness reigns.

-Yes.

So we have cute worms and people and any sort of being that can learn enough empathy to be a good person, -they can come to our utopia.

-Yes.

(Dr. McT) When mythical utopias were meant for mortals, they were usually eternal resting places for souls after a life well-lived.

Or if they're from a culture like the Norse or Nahua, a death well-died.

And these paradises reflected the dreams of the cultures they came from.

The later Greek myths had Elysium, the place in Hades's realm for heroes and the virtuous.

Hesiod says of Elysium that the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit flourishing not just once or twice, but thrice a year!

Norse warriors who died in battle were carried off to Valhalla by the Valkyries.

And Egyptian souls who passed the feather test were allowed to start their long journey towards A'aru.

Some of these heavenly destinations are only for the cream of the crop, just barely possible for regular people like us to reach.

Like, you can buy a ticket there, but only on a site with hidden fees that makes you enter the same information five whole times!

Honestly, we all remember the disaster with Taylor Swift's Eras Tour.

It might be easier to find the secret to immortality or a time machine so I can perish in a Viking raid than it would be for me to reach utopia as a mortal.

Sometimes people like to tell uplifting stories about a utopia built by and for humans, but it's always in the distant past or future or it's unimaginably far away.

And I know some people don't see this as a downside like I do, but they're bound by the laws of nature.

No magic.

For instance, Russian folklore has tales of the Oponskoye Kingdom, a distant land where peasants live worry-free under a just czar.

Call me spoiled, but I'd want a utopia that has more pizazz than that.

(Dr. Z) And of course, we have to deal with the Sargent problem.

How can we possibly make a world perfect for everyone when they all have different preferences?

To the Greeks, for example, paradise was a place free from hard labor, where, as Homer writes, "men lead an easier life than anywhere else in the world."

However, to the Vikings, who prized their drinking horn as much as their battle ax, Valhalla with its war drills and bottomless mead would seem like a more perfect world.

So we spent this whole season picking deities for the perfect pantheon to oversee our utopia.

And I think it's time to figure out what their roles will be.

How will they actually help our utopia?

Maybe starting with some leadership?

We don't want anarchy in our utopia.

Of course not, and I do think Tiamat brings that matriarchal energy we're looking for, and I think we've unintentionally or intentionally structured our utopia with more strong matriarchal energies in terms of leadership.

And I know I brought up the Morrigan, which seems like a weird choice because she's a trifold goddess, can be three or one, usually associated with war and death and destruction, but I think there's something so beautiful about including a trifold goddess who often also represents Maiden/Mother/Crone and this idea of longevity and being able to sort of predict death.

And I think that even though we're in utopia and we might have some mortals and some immortals being reminded that, like, time is short and that we have to consider that some people don't get to go to the utopia, something maybe Morrigan can help us with.

Yes, I like having the Morrigan here as this threefold character 'cause I think she/they will be really good at mediation.

So the other leader character that I think we can have in this world is Hippolyta.

She's a mortal, she's an Amazon from Greek mythology, and she led the Amazon.

So if she's one of the leaders of this utopia, everyone is going to know they're safe from any sort of outside threats.

They're going to have this kind of triumvirate of strong women deities who can lead with peace.

(Dr. Z) I love that.

And I think it sounds like a good little trio.

Little matriarchal trio.

Okay, so we have a good governance structure-- -Yeah.

-For our utopia, way better than Thomas More's governance structure.

Uh, yes.

And now let's talk about the resources.

Like, what do people have access to on this island?

I think it's really important to consider food.

-Yes.

-Right?

So one of the reasons I picked Idunn as my pantheon choice was that she, in Norse mythology, looks over the apple orchards that keep the Norse gods young and beautiful and immortal.

So with her orchards, with Idunn's orchards, everyone can be healthy, they can be as young as they want.

Laka, the Hawaiian goddess that I chose, she can help Idunn with all of these agricultural feats, and she can also make sure that people never go unappreciated, that everyone is celebrated, and that we don't forget to acknowledge what others have done to make this life easier.

(Dr. Z) Absolutely, and every being is acknowledged, right?

We talked about even the plants themselves, like, having respect for that.

I think choice is so important.

I love this idea of you can choose to eat the immortal apples if you want, but if you don't, that's okay too, like, the island's gonna provide every other thing that you would need.

(Dr. McT) My goal with including Tefnut in the pantheon was that she would be able to control moisture and wind and air so precisely that she could actually give every individual person their own personal weather bubble.

Honestly, I love that.

I'm a big fan of-- there's gonna be books in this utopia, of course; knowledge, obviously, you have to get there.

I just love this idea of being able to cozy up in my little bubble and read a book and then be like, "Oh, hey, Moiya, like, let's go to the beach now," and then I can do something totally different.

And I think it will help with our tenets of diversity in making sure everyone feels comfortable in whatever their space is.

Thank you for bringing up the diversity again because that is kind of the crux of Lyman Sargent's problem with utopias, that there's so much diversity among humans that you can't possibly create a place that they would all like.

We've done a pretty good job of making it adaptable for individual people.

There's individual weather, there's whatever food you want, there's whatever creatures you want.

But how do we really make sure that this is a cohesive, welcoming utopia for everyone?

I think we need to have some people who are dedicated as being the mediators and making sure everyone's mental health is taken care of in whatever capacity, which is the reason I, some of the reasons I chose Vishnu and Jesus.

So in my mind, Vishnu, his role, comes down in avatars in different situations when the dharma is out of balance.

So he's there to make sure if anything feels even slightly out of whack, he can swoop right in and make sure everything's taken care of, which is good, particularly with, we do have essentially, like, two war leaders.

-Yeah, we do.

-Yeah.

So I think we need Vishnu to make sure everything's copacetic.

Vishnu also is big into meditation, and I think that's a great practice to have in utopia.

And I imagine Jesus in our utopia, besides the fact with the bread and the wine constantly because why not?

-Who wouldn't want that?

-Exactly.

In my mind, he serves as the counselor or like the therapist to remind everyone to be nice to one another, to kinda be the sounding board, very wise, of course, you know the New Testament is full of all these different stories of him giving advice, so why not put him there to make sure everyone sort of stays in line, but peacefully, not aggressively.

(Dr. McT) I love that so much, yes.

Why shouldn't our utopia have therapy and meditation and other ways of calming your inner turmoil?

That's beautiful.

I can meditate on my jeweled hippogriff.

And I will be sleeping under the ruby leaves with sapphire grapes -growing on them.

-Why not?

-(Dr. McT) Why not?

-[Dr. Z laughs] [soft music] You might wonder why we'd need something like therapy in a perfect world, but importantly, this is where we deviate from utopias of yore.

We're not aiming for a world of perfection, but one of harmony between the very different people and beings who get to live there.

Discord is a natural part of life for us humans, and our utopia is a place where people have the resources they need to handle what limited conflict there is with grace.

(Dr. McT) So what do you think?

Would you like to live in our utopia?

We certainly hope so.

But just like the utopias of myth, it's not actually meant to be lived in.

It's meant to be a goal, the contrast to our reality that makes us question, is this as good as it gets?

As long as we're imagining and sharing stories, the answer will always be no, it can get better.

But just like this utopia of ours, we're going to have to make it happen ourselves.

[soft music] Accessibility provided by the U.S. Department of Education.

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