ABSTRACT
People have a need to experience themselves as part of an unfinished story that defines the past and present state of affairs and projects a future. Such a future should overcome the problems they currently face, should be one they can help to create, and should provide goals and aspirations to guide their everyday lives. Utopias fulfil this function, by questioning the existing social order and offering a dream that wants to be realized (Box 6.2, p. 107). They have inspired heroic efforts to create a better world, but postmodernization calls such grand narratives into question. Fewer people believe in social alternatives; that the world can be a better place; or that there is something preferable to the delights of consumer capitalism. They lack a totalizing perspective and consequently fail to understand themselves (Gare, 2000).
