The book of Proverbs warns that “where there is no vision, the people perish” (29:18 KJV). But with the wrong vision, they perish even faster. Eutopia or eschatology may even be necessary if our species, protected by moral conscience rather than by animal instinct, is not ultimately to destroy itself—because escalatory human violence has never invented a weapon we did not use, never invented one less powerful than what it replaced, and never ceased to confuse lull with peace. Are those eschatological visions of distributive justice and universal peace nothing more than empty fantasies?
