Margaret Atwood is one of the world’s foremost writers of dystopian literature, who imagined such horrific horrors as a theocracy forcing fertile women to bear children for the rich (“The Handmaid’s Tale”) and a bioengineered virus that capable of exterminating humanity (“Oryx and Crake”).
But she is also a profound optimist and pragmatist. Despite real-life calamities such as the worsening climate crisis and social inequality, Ms. Atwood often dreams of a brighter future. Shortly before she turned 83 last month, she taught an eight-week course, “Practical Utopias,” on Disco, an online learning platform based in Canada.
About 190 students from 40 countries imagined how they could rebuild society after a catastrophic event, such as a pandemic or rising sea levels. Proposals for “real, better housing schemes that could actually work” (and “not sci-fi epics or fantasies,” the syllabus said) include amphibious homes built on stilts, high-end kitchens from food waste, and lowering the voting age to 14 to strengthen democracy.
Ms. Atwood, who taught the class from her home office in Toronto, surprised students by submitting her own vision for a post-apocalyptic community, called Virgule (“from the French word for comma, which indicates a breather,” she said) .
In the interview below, which was conducted via Zoom and email and has been edited, the Professor Utopia gave more details about Virgule and about her class.
Where is Virgule?
Virgule is located in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, Canada, where my grandfather, a country doctor in the early 20th century, once owned an apple farm. So I know what you can grow there and I know about the weather. Blizzards in winter, with lots of snow, although it doesn’t get extremely cold.
How many people would live there?
Virgule is a planned community for 20 families. I moved into a planned community when I was 8, even though the contractor had disappeared with what was left of the money and my father had to finish the inside of the house himself.
What kind of homes would be built there?
I chose Dome Homes, made by blowing up giant balloons and spraying the outside with a liquid compound that cures, because they’re cheap to build and quick too; and because they provide superior insulation, making them inexpensive to heat. While concrete and polystyrene were used in the past, they can now benefit from a new carbon neutral to negative type of cement made from algae.
What would Virgulians eat?
Virgulians don’t eat meat, but they do keep a herd of sheep or goats for the milk and cheese, and a herd of free-range chickens. Cooking would mainly be done on induction, which would keep costs low. Virgulians get allotments for basic fruits and vegetables, with geothermally heated greenhouses. They will have access to Bay of Fundy fish and shellfish – caught locally, as large commercial fishing will be limited and marine parks will increase fish populations.
What would people wear?
I have high hopes for clothing exchanges, garment making and Japanese artistic repairs – also for mushroom leather and algae fabrics. Hemp is very durable and so is linen; a plus is that you can eat the seeds of both.
Tell us more about mushroom leather.
Mushrooms are currently of great importance to many people because you can make building blocks from them, you can make coffins from them, you can make packaging from them, you can make clothes from them, you can make shoes from them. An interesting book is called “Entangled Life” by Merlin Sheldrake.
What about basic needs like sanitation and health care?
Just as former villages housed their preachers, Virgule will house a plumber and an electrician, who will be worshiped as gods. This is a figure of speech, but it’s not much of a joke if you think about it. Virgule also gets a doctor and a nurse practitioner. Everyone takes a first aid course and, starting at the public school level, everyone learns conflict resolution, anger management, and basic carpentry skills.
What happens if someone gets sick?
For more serious conditions, major surgical procedures and the like, a trip to a larger metropolis is necessary. Old people, if possible, will live in their own Granny Domes within the community. The disposal of corpses takes place through a respectful composting process.
What kind of government do you envision?
Virgule is a community, so I expect them to vote. To avoid tyrants, the community is divided in two. Each half reigns for one year. So they will have to legislate while they are the rulers which will benefit them if they are the rules. Does this resemble the Quakers, or possibly the Oneida community? Kind of.
How will gender roles be handled?
Gender preferences are respected, but not fetishised. Will there be marriages? Open question, but I expect it, in one form or another.
The class included several guest speakers, including Dave Eggers and Canadian Senator Yvonne Boyer.
I’m not the sage on stage who knows everything. When you have a mix of people who have been in the world and know different things that are in the world, you learn with a different angle. I am a person with the same questions that everyone has, so everyone learns from everyone. It’s not a one-way street. It’s about a 17-way street.
And the students had different backgrounds.
One of the most amazing things about the group we gathered is that their ages range from 18 to 80. You wouldn’t find that in a regular academic institution. But that’s basically the way our species has worked for a long time: young people learn from older people and from other children. I learned from our fellows and participants because they actually know more than I do.
Something you wish the class had covered in more detail?
No one really wanted to delve into prisons and law enforcement. Why? Those are annoying topics. We like to think that in our practical utopia things will go so well that crime will no longer matter. But if the Disco team decides to do the program again, we might ask for a little more planning, because then there would be some kind of violation or we wouldn’t be human.
