Utopia is an idea worth clinging to. Otherwise, why get up in the morning?

I never pass this day without remembering how, at the 11th hour of November 11th, 1918, the so-called “war to end all wars” concluded. The naive innocence of the phrase could inspire despair when we reflect on what has actually happened in this world since the first World War, not least in Ireland.

To deepen such feelings of despondency, we need only recall that in the ruins of the first World War lay the seeds that led to the second World War and the nuclear bomb.

It has been said the natural default position of humanity is pessimism, accompanied by its old friend, lethargy. A look at history may explain why. And yet, and yet, people continue to hope.

It was Oscar Wilde who said “a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”

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There is always hope. It is in our DNA.

Yet it is dystopia, another country on which humanity has a habit of landing, that dominates so much of modern literature. It is a place of fear, tyrannical governments, social decline, environmental and other disasters, with people controlled by propaganda and enforced conformity.

Its prevalence is hardly surprising considering what has happened in this world over the past century. More famous examples of such dystopian fiction would be Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

A more recent Irish example would be the Booker-shortlisted novel Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, where he imagines Ireland sliding into totalitarianism. It has been described as “the Irish offspring of The Handmaid’s Tale and Nineteen Eighty Four”. While wary of the author’s vision, I wish him well when the Booker Prize winner is announced on November 26th.

I, however, would be with poet TS Eliot. He said “humankind cannot bear very much reality”. I would extend this to include dystopia, in fiction or otherwise. We need to believe, at least, even in the possibility of utopia.

Otherwise, why get up in the morning?

Utopia, from classical Greek eutopia, meaning “good place”, as “invented” by Sir Thomas More in 1516, who titled his best-known book Utopia.

inaword@irishtimes.com