Utopia should be this place of impeccability, of manifested ideals. Based on previous argument, where I said that dystopias lack something, then utopia must be this place of completeness, all things in a harmonious gestalt. But what is 'complete', really? Gandhi said that "[t]here is enough for every man's need but not greed". We always desire for something more. And there's another question: after the state of completeness is attained, what next?
Let's answer the latter first. Atwood has this to say:
Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's now way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.
-- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Her view is a morbid one. After we are in paradisum, that's it. The story stops. This is difficult for me to imagine. After all, they always say that the only thing that is constant is change. Or maybe there is another kind of perfectness where it is more dynamic, changing from perfection to perfection? I imagine it to be so because by definition, there is no such thing as 'boring' in a utopia, isn't there? So are we doomed to never reach there?
Moving on: What is 'complete'?
My picture of 'completeness' would be the Oneness that the Hindus are trying to find paths of enlightenment to. And that wouldn't be too far-off -- we can relate spiritual enlightenment here to the utopian state of perfection. This idea of Oneness as the highest state has also pervaded sci-fi. I have encountered a few stories whereby there is a running thread: the highest state of evolution is where we would abandon our physical bodies and spiritually become one single consciousness.
Summing up: Will we ever reach 'completeness' then?
Let's reword 'completeness' as 'fullness' here. In Avatar, Mo'at, Neytiri's mother and the shaman of the Omaticaya, mentioned a metaphor about empty and full cups. I'm borrowing that metaphor here: a cup fully filled is our 'completeness'. To be full, then, the cup has to be emptied first. And you can see how this fits very nicely with what Khalil Gibran said:
The deeper that sorrow carves onto your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
-- Khalil Gibran
And William Blake echoes:
And when this we rightly know
Thro' the World we safely go.
Joy & Woe are woven fine,
A Clothing for the Soul divine;
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine
-- Auguries of Innocence, William Blake
I talked about this before under Dualism Paradox, so read the details there. So the first way to achieve utopia: suffer through dystopia first. Like Pandora's box, Hope tends to come the last, after the evils.
The second way -- and I have already dropped the hints -- is to follow the Hindus. Now, topos in Greek means 'place'. It doesn't mean that we've got to take it literally. Then we can interpret a utopia not as a place but a state instead. The Eastern spirituality seeks inward journey (compared to outward one in Western spirituality). So it's change-your-paradigm thing. Again I invoke William Blake, from the same poem no less:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
-- Auguries of Innocence, William Blake
The journey inward, besides exploring the Self, also includes exploring other Beings. To see the perfections in the imperfections.
Final thought: If you see the Wikipedia entry on utopia, you would find an uncited reference to the humorous coinage of the word 'utopia' (probably factual, albeit uncited, since one of TED speakers mentioned that, too). It goes something like this: the etymology of 'utopia' is from Greek, as I already mentioned. This presumably comes from eu (good) + topos (place). But there is another Greek prefix which in English transliterates to the same spelling: ou (no) + topos (place). It is said that the coiner intentionally keeps the ambiguity as a joke. Good place; no place.
In conclusion: I think it is really your choice to attain 'the good place' or 'the no place'. We can strive towards the 'goodness', not necessarily perfection, or at least not the idealised one, by looking inwards and getting up stronger every time we fall down. Or we can keep it as an ideal, intellectual projection that can never be.
