Listening to Patrick Ness at the Hay Festival I asked myself whether utopian thinking is only for the ‘young adult’ market. True, a modicum of innocence helps if one is considering what kind of world we want to live in, but it takes courage to still insist on the possibility of change when one does so from the vantage point of experience. William Blake knew it, Hermann Hesse explored it in the Glass Bead Game, and now Patrick Ness has taken up the challenge. Impressive!
You are only young once, they say, but doesn’t it go on for a long time? More years that you can bear. (Hilary Mantel)
Ingo Cornils 
Dear Ingo,
I would hope it is not only for the young. As you write, Hesse certainly wasn’t young anymore when he started on the Glass Bead Game. He required his imaginary and intellectual utopian space with the rise of the brown shirts in Nazi Germany. Many people still live under oppression, even if only of a consumerist nature, and to imagine a world free of oppression, a utopia, is the very first basic step to working out how the world could be better.
This is a lovely little blog and I’m looking forward to more thought provoking writings!
Best wishes,
Neale