Goodbye Utopia, Hello Synetopia

“For, when everyone’s entitled to get as much for himself as he can, all available property, however much there is of it, is bound to fall into the hands of a small minority, which means that everyone else is poor. And wealth will tend to vary in inverse proportion to merit. The rich will be greedy, unscrupulous, and totally useless characters, while the poor will be simple, unassuming people whose daily work is far more profitable to the community than it is to them.”
Utopia, Thomas More (1516)

Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’ heralded a new tradition of seeking the ‘good society’ wherein all is held in common and everyone cooperates to serve their shared interests.

Over the last 500 years, the tradition has moved on in three quite distinct directions. First, there is the retreat from the conventional world to go off elsewhere to build small communal groups with no (or very limited) private ownership, to be sustained by an anarchic sensibility of mutual help without many top-down rules or enforcement. Secondly, there is the sweeping transformation that depends on a charismatic leader or an all-powerful state to act as the communistic overseer of all things common, on the basis that the common good will prevail through the judgement of those in control. Thirdly, there is the experimental development of communitarian arrangements for sharing and cooperation, not as an escape from but to replace prevailing institutions.

The first has long been branded as the tendency to chase after utopian dreams. Attempts at setting up isolated communal groups rarely last more than a few generations and seldom spread their ethos more widely. The second trend is rightly chastised as the harbinger of dystopian nightmares. Relying on a strong leader or unchallengeable party machine, the proclaimed custodianship of common property held in a cult or a totalitarian state invariably degenerates into some form of exploitative appropriation.

By contrast, the third approach recognises the interdependence of existing institutions and seeks to change them through on-going experimentation. Resources and responsibilities are shared out with the help of a variety of democratic methods, and new commons and cooperative forms spread organically through similar sectors and diverse localities. Cooperatives, sustainability networks, digital commons, and other forms of inclusive associations have shown a variety of ways to elevate human relations from self-centred zero-sum contests to sustained mutual respect and collaboration.

By their very nature, groups that rely on on-going deliberations, democratic decision making, and experimental adjustment do not work to any fixed blueprint. But there are certain elements that they cultivate in order to expand and realise their potential. These are elements that make them a cooperative place – or ‘synetopia’. Not all of them consistently succeed in developing or integrating all these elements, but where they do, people involved with them attain higher satisfaction and they achieve their objectives more effectively and on a more sustainable basis.

The nine core elements are summarised in the Synetopia Protocol so that any group, small or big, can check its progress towards a higher state of inclusiveness. Utopia, for better or worse, is not going to be attainable, but where the quests for better forms of human association do converge on an approach that delivers continuous improvement for all, it is where we find synetopia.