UTOPYC

I left the hotel terrace wondering whether I had done the right thing in coming to Utopyc, for what I was discovering was a world so different that, although on a news level it might make for an important report, on a vital level it was attacking my principles and my ideas in a way I had never suspected could happen. I never imagined that a place apparently so similar to so many places I knew was, deep down, so different.

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I now thought was the logical conclusion of the thought being conveyed to me.

• The total abolition of everything public – he repeated, as if it were such an absolute desire that everything could be contained in his own understanding.

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I cleared my throat. It posed a kind of paradise I couldn’t believe in.

• Justice is much simpler between people who understand that no one exists for the benefit of another. If this perverse emotion cultivated by politicians and favoured by the State disappears, only reason remains as a criterion for attribution and solution, and conflicts are resolved more efficiently and more quickly,” he added.

I took some notes as he stared at me.

We cannot treat human beings as if they were angels – he continued – to deny human nature is perverse and leads only to the abyss. But it is true that when men are deprived of certain advantages over others because of power, they accommodate themselves and act more rationally and less selfishly. On the other hand, if you look at your country, or any other similar country, there are more and more unjust laws that are ordered to be enforced and which the courts do not prevent from being enforced. On the contrary, they punish non-compliance.

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Good question. Our legitimacy is given by our clients, who pay us to watch over the security of their streets, their buildings, their homes. we do not act according to political criteria and we are not manipulated by political interests.

Why not? According to your point of view, the State can use the police in its own interests, but the citizens cannot. Are you putting the State above the people, Mr Dan? Legitimacy, moreover, is given to us by law.

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• Do you know why I hate you?

I looked at the road. I had not expected such an open and forceful Statement. I was struck by his words.

• Because you believe in everything that is going to bring down the best civilisation man has ever created. Because you believe in and are part, more or less consciously, more or less deliberately, of everything that is going to ruin my world. The world we have and the world we have the opportunity to build.

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That’s why I love Utopyc. Because Utopyc has given responsibility back to people. That responsibility fills them, breathes life into them like a divine breath, and they become them again. I don’t know of a single suicide since I’ve been here. Is it a coincidence? No. It is necessary to do away with the State so that people can go back to being who their parents, their grandparents, their great-great-grandparents, their ancestors were, those who created the greatest civilisation known to history and promoted unparalleled progress. I see in Utopyc a new Humanism such as we have not seen since the Renaissance, Gabriel. Yes, yes, I am convinced that this is so.

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• Isn’t capitalism a utopia in itself, Gabriel? -What would the men of 1750 think if they came back to life and saw the unprecedented advances, the life-prolonging medicine, the number of human beings who can live in peace and enjoy a dignified life?

Capitalism is a beautiful white winged horse that, unfortunately, some people insist on bridling and muzzling,”

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I told them that despite what I had seen I was convinced that if the State disappeared there would be violent anarchy.

That’s what they want you to think,” replied Raúl, “but it’s not true. Without the State we wouldn’t go backwards. The civilisational order was not created by the State, nor is it even effective in keeping it in a closed environment, such as a prison. The civilising order was created by people.

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I would have to think about it very carefully. But I feel, like an inner throbbing, that the responsibility demanded of me would make me more complete as a person. As if until now I was only one part of me and had delegated the other to a dark place. I had never thought about it. I had never thought of myself as something that could be so complete. Or as something that was half empty.