Is there a problem with Utopia?

I have been called  an 'utopian' several times and I don't think that was meant to be a compliment. Utopia is associated with the ideal, with perfection, with the unrealistic, the inaccessible, but with what is GOOD. So, why wouldn't I reach for the GOOD?

Earlier today I was talking to a friend and she mentioned a heated discussion she had with another friend yesterday about overspending and consuming what we do not need. My friend was trying to be reflective and critical over how much we consume nowadays and how it seems to be turning into an addiction. She was called an 'utopian' for just raising some concerns about that. And, again, I don't think it was a compliment!

So, my question is: what is the problem with utopia? What is the problem with not simply accepting what is given, or the common place?

Utopia can motivate us to question what seems unquestionable! Utopia can move us to approach what seems impossible! Utopia makes us uncomfortable with the status quo! Isn't that GOOD? Isn't utopia a critical ingredient to transformation? To TRANSFORMACY?
      

Welcome to Transformacy!

Who are we? And what do we want?

We are a bunch of ‘transformacists’, or marginal pharmacists from different nationalities and ethnicities, who want to create a dialogical space for all people and ourselves to discuss ideas that fall outside the mainstream or ‘status quo’ of pharmacy practice and pharmaceutical sciences. We are pharmacists who are concerned about the world and want to make a difference in it. We don’t want to look at the world from outside or from above. We want to be part of it, entangle ourselves with what is good and what is bad within it, and take responsibility for making the world a better place. But, what do we mean by making the world a better place? Of course, this answer is still in the process of being developed, and that’s why we are here, creating a space for sharing, learning and teaching.

As a starting point, we would say that we envision a more just, inclusive, open and decolonized world, and we understand that knowledge and power have a lot to do with that. For instance, we should ask: where does the knowledge talked about and produced in pharmacy comes from? What is this knowledge doing to people in the world? To patients? Could this knowledge be harmful to the people that we claim to serve?

These concerns emerge as we realize the big transformation that the practice of pharmacists are going through. Pharmacists are becoming real patient care providers. They claim to be taking responsibilities for the results of drug therapy. This is a major transformation! Now, we cannot hide behind the counter, or blame the prescription or the physician anymore. We have to ‘leave the closet’. Also, now many of us are working directly with sick people, with people who are experiencing illnesses on a daily basis, and we must have a positive impact on their lives. We need to make a difference as a patient care provider!

As we start working with patients, with human beings, many things start playing out in our world. We have to pay attention and act in a manner that consider issues related to morality and ethics, social justice, race, gender, sexual orientation, political ideology, and others. How will those issues, human issues, influence the way we practice and how we prepare future pharmacists? There are so many questions! And this is very exciting to us!

We also want to “bust the binaries” (stealing the term used by Sarah Puotinen & Kandace Creel Falcon in their blog), meaning that we want to challenge the dichotomies we create in life and that are so prevalent in the culture of pharmacy. For example, the binaries objective/subjective, science/practice, mind/body, qualitative/quantitative limit our language, our thoughts and our possibilities to create something different, and hopefully better. We want to look at beyond these dichotomies to what is ‘in between’, above, beyond and before what is commonly accepted as the norm or the normal. We want to be inclusive, non-judgmental, and challenge what is considered normal to feel boundless to think and act in the world.

Even though we don’t like rules too much, we believe that we should be up front about our values and what kind of environment we want to nurture in this blog. We want to hear from people who think different from us and from those who agree with us. And we hope that the conversation will happen in a respectful way. We want to critique and be critiqued, but we also want to laugh, play, have fun, learn, expand our minds and to change ourselves and others. 

Do these ideas and concerns make sense to you? What are you thinking? What keeps your curiosity? How do you want to make a difference in the world? Are you a pharmacist or not a pharmacist? It doesn’t matter. Join us and let’s have some fun!

The transformacists