Dear editor,

The Good Place. Within a day’s drive of Ogle County, you can visit five different examples of utopian communities, all established between 1839 and 1857.

They are the Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Nauvoo, Illinois; the Jansonists of Bishop Hill, Illinois; the Trappist monks of New Melleray Abbey, Dubuque, Iowa; the French Icarians, Corning, Iowa; and the Community of New Harmony, New Harmony, Indiana, established in 1814.

This part of the Midwest was certainly fertile ground for the Utopian experiment. The idea of Utopia, meaning “good place,” originated with Sir Thomas More and his book titled “Utopia” in 1516. In his book he painted a picture of a community that possessed highly desirable qualities in religious, social and political customs.

What is a utopia? It is an intervention of the imagination at a time of transition or crisis that suggests alternative values to the current ideology and offers the possibility of a new kind of society.

Is this such a time? Are we still fertile ground for such an effort? Have we reached a time where enough people are discontent with what they are discontent about? Is the current ideology failing to inspire and influence striving for a better life? Can a utopian imagination lead us to a place where we have not yet been but are willing to go towards?

A utopia is not a dream or a wish of “only if”, but the result of every human act which is directed towards the construction of a more just society. For me this would lead to a society that cherishes liberation for all and the development of a culture that is free of social, economic and political inequality. We would become a freer, more human humankind. I think that is worth working for.

Rev. Ronald D. Larson

Retired clergy, Mt. Morris