Anti-Utopianism (is this even the right term?)

In my last entry, I briefly mentioned my drifting away from Utopian idealism as I became an adult. Right now, I'm working to formulate a theory of anti-Utopian government. In my last blog entry, I said:

• "As a youth, I was definitely a starry-eyed Utopian liberal, but have since seen the error of those ways. A perfect society cannot be created out of inherently-imperfect individuals. Instead, politics is an eternal contest between forces that adapt to each other, and everyone aligns themselves with those forces based on incomplete or false information."

I'm going to try and elaborate on that a bit more here.

Basically, every time someone thinks they have the way to create a perfect society, or return to an idealized previous social state, bad things happen. Much of the mass death of the past 100 years are due to Utopians of various stripes - Fascists, Communists, Nationalists, religious Fundamentalists, etc, etc.

Therefore, the best society is one that acknowledges the impossibility of perfection. Striving for an ideal state/State is worse than pointless, it's dangerous! Better would be something that is adaptable to changing circumstances, because nothing forms in a vacuum. Historically, governments are among the most static human institutions, as they are either based upon the decree of a ruler or a code of written laws. However, corporations, religious groups, and militias are increasingly running circles around government, siphoning resources away from the latter. What can be done?

I've read some pieces that seem to be stepping in the direction I'm looking for, but so far haven't found anyone that's out-and-out blasted Utopian thinking overall. Chuck Marohn and Steve Hilton seem to be going in the right direction, in that both advocate a nimble, responsive, bottom-up approach to governance, especially at the municipal level. However, I'm not sure if either of them are still caught up in the Utopian paradigm of free-market capitalism, i.e. that "the free market will solve problems," or that "government should be more like a private business." Remember Americans: market capitalism is not the natural state humans! It's an invention, just like weekends and banking!

Many historical dystopias arise out of an effort to create utopia. American society today could be argued to be a dystopia, a product of trying to create a capitalist utopia - see Kansas and other states going down the path of privatization, government shrinkage at all costs, etc.

What really got me into thinking about Anti-Utopianism was reading about the origins of Salafist Islam in Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future.

Salafi Islam is supposedly based around emulation of the "devout ancestors" (Salafim). How it was originally formulated as an Islamic response to modernity in the 19th century. The idea was to integrate a few of the "best" elements of "Western Civilization" with Islam's "original/purest" values
It was ultimately co-opted by Wahhabi Islam (the often-violent sect that the Saudis export everywhere), as returning to the "pure original" values came to mean Quranic literalism, wiping out folk beliefs, killing people who disagree with you, etc. If these things sound familiar, it's because it's another Utopian ideal, just like Communism, Fascism, and manifest destiny capitalism!

*Of course, I don't want to be caught stealing from the collective unconscious. So I'm doing research in my recently-copious spare time to see if these ideas really are that original, or whether I'm blinded by the myopia of specialization in only one cluster of intellectual disciplines, rather than being a Renaissance man. Of course, being a Renaissance Man is basically impossible these days, but whatever.

If anyone knows about anyone discussing such an impulse against Utopian idealism please let me know!