The perfect place

Humankind has always been fascinated with the notion of a perfect place. The subject has circulated throughout our literature, our movies, and our philosophy and religion. Of course, the perfect place is Heaven, or Paradise, or Valhalla. But there also has existed the vision of a heaven-on-earth: a remote, undiscovered paradise...isolated from the rest of the world.

Here are a few utopias, well-known or less known:

Arcadia was a region of Greece thought to be the home of Pan. The poet, Virgil, wrote a series of poems which were set in Arcadia, and during the Renaissance the name became synonymous with an idyllic location or paradise.

Atlantis was a legendary culture and island first mentioned by Plato, who said that it lay west of Gibraltar and that it had been destroyed by a natural disaster about 9,000 years before his time. He said that it was near Hyperborea (thought to be Iceland), but others placed it closer to the Cradle of Civilization and, therefore, in the Mediterranean Sea.

Avalon was thought to be a beautiful island in the British Isles, famous for its beautiful apples. It was said to be the place that King Arthur's body was taken to in a boat by his half-sister, Morgan Le Fay. Some believe the word to stem from the Celtic, Annwyn, which was the abode of the fairies, or the netherworld. There is some evidence for this, since "apple" is Aval in Breton and Cornish, and Afal in Welsh--all Celtic dialects.

Brigadoon was an idyllic city from a Lerner and Lowe play in the 1940s. In the play, the city was taken off the earth every two hundred years.

El Dorado was the "lost city of gold" - an idealized society combining facets of Aztec, Mayan, and Incan societies. It was part of a larger tradition involving Cibola, Omoa, and the seven lost cities of gold. Originally, El Dorado (which means "the gilded one") was applied to a legendary chief who would cover himself in gold dust. These cities were sought out by European explorers for almost two centuries.

The Garden of Eden was the idealized first home of Adam and Eve in Abrahamic traditions. Different religions envision it in different ways, but suffice it to say it was a form of heaven on earth, populated by immortals and visited by gods.

Happy Valley was a fictional Abyssinian (Ethiopian) location featured in Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. It is synonymous with an idyllic, peaceful place. Notably, it is a nickname for Utah County--where I attended college.

Shangri-la was described in the novel, Lost Horizon, by the British author James Hilton (1933). In it, Shangri-la is a mysterious valley--ruled in harmony. It was based on a Tibetan Buddhist tradition of a mystical hidden kingdom, Shambhala, hidden in the snow-peaked mountains of the Himalayas.

Neverland was the island featured in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Because of the tendency of children not to age in Neverland, the word is often used to mean eternal youth or escapism.

Wonderland was the setting of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It was only accessible through magical portals and was a fantastic place of talking animals and anthropomorphic cards. The rules of nature do not apply to Wonderland, as all logic is reversed there.

Xanadu was the summer capital of Kublai Khan's empire. Visited by Marco Polo, a poem by Samuel Coleridge made it famous for its opulence.

Of course, there is also contained in our literature the names of perfect societies for the making. Plato spoke of one of these in The Republic, as did Saint Augustine in City of God, and Thomas More in Utopia. These were different, however, in that they were not thought to actually exist - either in fiction or reality. "Zion" is a term for a religious Utopia which either is to be built or has been built; though the name is also given to a city which was taken off the earth in the book of Genesis.

It would seem that mankind does not believe that an ideal society can be created by humanity--only discovered. Which is why, perhaps, these places are often described as occupying an isolated or mystically guarded place ... usually on islands or in valleys.

A common theme about these places is that, of course, the outsider who comes to the valley is welcomed, would like to stay, but finds that they have brought imperfection with them and are forced to leave (such as the Leonardo DiCaprio movie, The Beach). Another theme is that such a perfect place is actually only an obstacle. This was seen in the Odyssey, where some of Odysseus' men and even Odysseus himself squander their time on perfect islands before resuming their journey. But there are other stories as well, more pessimistic, which believe that even the perfect society is actually hiding dark secrets. This is the case of Samuel Butler's novel, Erewhon, as well as a number of sci-fi and fantasy books of the twentieth century (too many to list here).

So it appears there are two encampments on this issue: optimists and pessimists.

I, personally, feel that a perfect society can't exist--so I suppose that puts me in the pessimist encampment. However, I also feel that perfection is over-rated and that there can exist some fairly idyllic places or, lacking that, I believe we can achieve a Nirvana of mind no matter what place we live in. I guess that's what serenity is all about.