Desperate escape attempts ignore the history of failed utopias
Evidence
Those who fled to the communes took a particularly ahistorical view of time; according to Houriet, the communes were relatively unaware of the history of utopian experiments—maybe even Epicurus’s garden school. But this is perhaps to be expected from anyone desperately seeking a complete break from everything. Houriet writes that those who fled “had no time to assess the historical parallels or to make careful plans for the future…Their flight was desperate.” — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 157
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- QUESTION: Plant for the reader’s method critique: does Odell avoid this same ahistorical error, or does her own mix of sources repeat the pattern?
- XREF: Ties to her bioregionalism/Deep Listening method question — is looking backward itself a form of historical awareness the communes lacked?