Time Essay: VOYAGE TO UTOPIA IN THE YEAR 1971

WE were all a little mad that winter," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, recalling the emotional excitement of 1840. "Not a man of us that did not have a plan for some new Utopia in his pocket." As common as a handkerchief and as casually displayed. Today, pockets seem to be empty of anything so inspiring. People are doubtless as distressed about social conditions as they were in 1840, but what has happened to Utopia? Those once myriad visions of ideal societies have all but disappeared, or have been transmogrified into the demonic dreams of...

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