Abstract

Design for Micro-Utopias does not advocate a serious quest for a single, monolithic Utopia. Rather, it invites readers to embrace a more tentative, temporary, pluralized and truncated version of Thomas More's famous 1516 novel of the same name. It therefore encourages the proliferation of many 'micro-utopias' rather than one 'Utopia'. This requires a less critical, negative and rational approach. Referencing a wide range of philosophical thinking from Aristotle to the present day, western and eastern spiritual ideals, and scientific, biological and systems theory, John Wood offers remedies for our excessively individualistic, mechanistic and disconnected thinking, and asks whether a metadesign approach might bring about a new mode of governance. This is a daring idea. Ultimately, he reminds us that, if we believe that miracles are impossible, we make them even less attainable. The first step is to make them 'thinkable'.