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Imag­ine a flat plain stretch­ing end­less­ly in all direc­tions. A two lane high­way splits it down the mid­dle — a left lane trav­el­ing east and a right lane trav­el­ing west — dis­ap­pear­ing into pin pricks on both hori­zons. Hur­ried motorists speed for­ward in either lane, sin­gle-mind­ed­ly trav­el­ing toward their destinations.

Their tar­gets are oppo­site poles with fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al cli­mates; anti­thet­i­cal par­adis­es where­upon their arrival they will live among peo­ple of iden­ti­cal like­ness. They have nev­er seen these mag­nif­i­cent cities, but they believe that if they con­tin­ue to dri­ve on dogged­ly and with­out flag­ging, they will even­tu­al­ly reach them.

Either lane’s end point is an heav­en­ly utopia to those that choose to trav­el toward it and an infer­nal dystopia to those that trav­el away from it. Left and right, east and west, for­ward and back­ward, black and white, good and evil; the motorists divide the world into two polar­ized real­i­ties utter­ly dis­tinct, sep­a­rate, and seg­re­gate. How­ev­er, rather than remain sep­a­rate and iso­lat­ed, many are sin­cere­ly dumb­found­ed that any­one would think to go oppo­site them and seek to con­vince them to make a U‑turn into their lane.

They shout from their win­dows. They beck­on with insis­tent ges­tures. They try to explain the virtues of turn­ing around, of con­ver­sion, to any­one who will lis­ten. Sel­dom and infre­quent­ly a few souls dis­rupt traf­fic by indeed turn­ing around, there­by infu­ri­at­ing those who must yield or stop for the maneu­ver, “Pick a lane, ass­hole, and stay there!”

Exas­per­at­ed by how many con­tin­ue to go the wrong way, a loud, angry con­tin­gent begin lay­ing on their horns, even stop­ping and get­ting out of their vehi­cles to berate the oppos­ing traf­fic. They scream. They insult. They spew obscen­i­ties and make rude ges­tures. “F — k you, moron! Go ahead, burn in hell if that’s what you want! Why don’t you just use your brain and go the right way!? Come on, real­ly? How hard is it!? You’re going the wrong way, man!?”

Con­ges­tion, col­li­sions, devi­a­tions, and redi­rec­tions are com­mon, slow­ing progress for both sides. Even­tu­al­ly, the fuel begins to run out for some. They stand strand­ed and alone, beg­ging for help and doing any­thing to hitch a ride. Count­less lemons sit by the road­side with plas­tic bags stuffed in their win­dow seams, rustling sober­ly in breeze.

Some fall asleep from exhaus­tion, day­dream from bore­dom, get dis­tract­ed by a radio pun­dit, spilt cof­fee, a greasy ham­burg­er, or their chil­dren scream­ing in the back. Their inat­ten­tion leads to acci­dents, pile-ups, often deaths. Progress trick­les down to a snail’s pace; while a slug­gish stream of angry, dis­con­tent­ed, war­ring fac­tions spit and curse over the divide.

A few souls sit qui­et­ly, legs tucked beneath them, on the yel­low line. Occa­sion­al­ly, they try to medi­ate and calm the con­flict, beg­ging for mutu­al con­ces­sions and ulti­mate­ly com­pro­mise. Of course, this usu­al­ly takes the form of, “Why don’t you just stay here with us, where you don’t have to think, talk, or do any­thing?” Just chill. No more rat race. Take a drag on this. Recline, relax, man.” Mid­dle-dwellers like these are more often than not deaf­ened by the horns, asphyx­i­at­ed by the exhaust, or inad­ver­tent­ly killed by the vehi­cles of the aggres­sive or inat­ten­tive motorists speed­ing by. Where is the safest place between Scyl­la and Charyb­dis? Elysium.

If only they could see them­selves from above, from the vac­u­um of out­er space, they might just real­ize a crush­ing truth: There is nei­ther utopia nor dystopia at either end of the road, because the road is an unend­ing cir­cuit around the earth, the motorists dri­ving the same loop over and over and over again. It’s no won­der that the Greek roots of the word œutopia, ou and topos, mean no and place. Utopia is no place. It does not exist.


There are count­less prob­lems with this anal­o­gy, but for now con­sid­er how these images, these sym­bols, describe our expe­ri­ence and whether those descrip­tions are accu­rate or inac­cu­rate. One may dis­cov­er that left and right, east and west, for­ward and back­ward, black and white, good and evil lose much of their descrip­tive val­ue. I will write a crit­i­cism of this anal­o­gy of via media — above tak­en to its fur­thest con­ceit, its log­i­cal con­clu­sion — and pro­vid­ing instead an alter­na­tive metaphor­i­cal con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion of middling.