The utopian impulse is amoral, persistent energy that spawns forms regardless of worth.

Evidence

It was not only despair but hope and inspiration—the Hauptstrom—that had gotten people out to the communes, and it was the same Hauptstrom that left behind the stories, the architecture, the art, and the ideas. This electrical current, which Szeemann once described as a “joyfully grasped, albeit pre-Freudian energy unit that doesn’t give a damn whether it is expressed or can be applied in a socially negative, positive, harmful or useful way,” runs throughout history, throwing off new forms each time. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 209

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• QUESTION: Is this Hauptstrom the same faculty Odell elsewhere wants attention redirected toward — and if impulse is amoral and can run to harmful forms, where does the ethical line land?