Why are Utopias impossible and Dystopias possible?

To begin with I’d like to talk a little bit about what a Utopia is and also what a Dystopia is. The first one is defined as a place or situation in which everything is perfect, a dream came true, full of happiness, whereas the second one is completely opposed, because everything is unpleasant and controlled, however both are imagined.

While reading V for vendetta I got confused most of times thinking about, whether V was a hero, or not? I thought; Is he good? Is he a villain?  Because he was trying to make justice, and after all he had a point, despite the fact that he became a murder and destroyed parts of the city, some people ruined his life and the life of many others too. And then I thought, well, if he has a point, a conviction that society could improve and be a better place for humans to live in, then he is trying to create a Utopia so he is part of the good ones, but then he started killing people, he started using violence and even worst he started justifying the fact of using violence for good in name of justice. And I completely disagree with this idea because in that moment he became into one more dictator.

But what do I mean with it? Well, from my point of view V was looking for a Utopia and that is something impossible starting from a very specific characteristic in its definition; it is an “imagined” situation. They are not real because they are based on a principle in which everything and everybody is perfect and humans are not perfect, anything is perfect actually. Nevertheless a dystopia is based on the total control of a situation, the perfection is manipulated for a selective group which determines what is good and what is wrong, and we all know that imposing power is way easier, because you don’t have to take into account anybody’s opinion, the leaders just do whatever they want spreading fear.

Another thing that called my attention was the fact that V looked for an anarchist society without the oppression of anybody, he said “Anarchy means “without leaders”; not “without order.” (Moore, pg.195) so in a way he became contradictory because he rejects authorities imposing rules based on their own interest, but at the same time with his revenge he is doing exactly the same because he is considering himself the one in charge of punishing the ones that do not respect his way of thinking.

Totalitarian systems consider that the only way of keeping people under control is through the infliction of fear, since people are considered naturally violent and they may revel against the authorities. But this is a misconception because people are just forced to react violently according to the situations, as we review in classes, the fear inflicted by the power makes you react, and it generates hatred that makes you attack, in other words people are likely to react in a violent way, but indeed people are not predisposed to answer with violence.

All things considered, I conclude first of all that V was not a villain, neither a hero; he was just wrong and lost the point getting blind because of his feeling of revenge. And secondly and answering the question from the title, I do believe that utopias are impossible and dystopias possible because with the will of creating a utopia the only possible end is the creation of a dystopia, because there would be always people that do not think alike, and there would be always someone that considers the need of organizing the society, since there would be also many people that do not know what to do on their own, so the line between kindly organizing the world and heavily imposing the correctness is too thin, because humans are very emotional and everything is subjective, what seems good for someone, may looks not that good for somebody else and nobody can control that. Perhaps if it happens that anybody find the way to control it, the only way possible would be through the use oppression and therefore violence. Finally anybody could argue that the use of violence can be justified in name of the justice, but in the end violence only brings more violence, and for finishing this post I’d like to take Gandhi’s words:

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

Mahatma Gandhi. The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas. 
United States: Ballantine Books, Vintage Books, 2002.

Alan Moore. V for Vendetta. 
USA: Vertigo (DC Comics) , 1989.

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson926/DefinitionCharacteristics.pdf

http://www.sirc.org/publik/foxviolence.html

http://www.alfiekohn.org/miscellaneous/aggression.htm

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/utopia