'Utopia' is a positive and constructive program that gives people

Host:
The night was vast and violet, the sky alive with stars trembling over the edge of civilization. A field stretched endlessly, lit only by the embers of a dying campfire, where two figures sat among the crickets and silence. The air smelled of earth, smoke, and questions—the kind that haunt, not heal.

Jack leaned back on his hands, staring upward, his eyes silver in the firelight, as though measuring the distance between the possible and the real. Jeeny sat cross-legged beside him, her hair catching sparks from the flames, her face soft, thoughtful, lit by belief and doubt in equal measure.

Host:
In the distance, a lone windmill creaked, and the horizon held its breath. Then Jeeny spoke, her voice low, steady, filled with the kind of wonder that dares to be serious.

“‘Utopia’ is a positive and constructive program that gives people the opportunity, if you can start all over again, start from scratch and create laws and make decisions, will you be able to build a society that is better than the one we have; will it be chaos or happiness.” — John de Mol, Jr.

Jack:
(chuckling, dryly)
“Utopia, huh? Every time someone says that word, I can already hear the gunfire in the distance.”

Jeeny:
(raising an eyebrow)
“You think dreaming automatically leads to destruction?”

Jack:
“I think starting over is just a polite phrase for burning down. You tear down a broken system, you just end up with a different kind of broken—new laws, new gods, new chains.”

Jeeny:
“Or maybe new chances. Maybe Utopia isn’t about perfect order. Maybe it’s about better questions. The kind that ask not just what’s wrong with the world, but what could love build if we were brave enough to begin again?”

Host:
The fire cracked, throwing light against the dark, dancing in their eyes. Jack’s face was a portrait of skepticism, chiseled by years of realism, while Jeeny’s was all soft conviction, a flicker of hope refusing to die.

Jack:
“You’re talking like idealists don’t have blood on their hands, Jeeny. Every revolution begins with a dream and ends with a dictator.”

Jeeny:
(quietly)
“And every decade that passes without one ends with apathy. Which do you fear more—chaos or silence?”

Jack:
(looking at her, serious now)
“Chaos, because it destroys innocence. Silence—we’ve lived with that for centuries. We know how to survive it.”

Jeeny:
“And yet you call that survival. Isn’t that just endurance? A society that stops dreaming stops evolving. Maybe Utopia isn’t meant to be achieved, Jack. Maybe it’s meant to be pursued—a direction, not a destination.”

Host:
Her words hung in the air, bright and fragile, like ash caught in light. The wind shifted, carrying the smell of rain, the taste of change.

Jack:
“People always say that. But a direction still leads somewhere. You start over, and sure, maybe it’s not about perfection—but humans? We’re greedy for it. We can’t stop fixing what isn’t meant to be fixed. That’s how happiness becomes tyranny.”

Jeeny:
“Then maybe the problem isn’t that we want happiness, Jack. It’s that we keep defining it wrong. We build systems to protect it, but happiness doesn’t live in laws. It lives in people—in how we see and serve each other.”

Jack:
“But people are the most unstable material there is. You can’t build a perfect world on imperfect hearts.”

Jeeny:
“Maybe not a perfect one. But maybe a better one.”

Host:
The fire dimmed, the embers glowing low, like dying suns in a miniature universe. The windmill creaked again, slow, aching, like an old clock reminding them that time never stops turning, no matter how often humanity resets itself.

Jack:
“You ever notice that every Utopia starts the same way? Someone says, ‘Let’s begin again.’ And then, before long, someone else says, ‘You’re doing it wrong.’”

Jeeny:
“Maybe that’s not failure, Jack. Maybe that’s just proof that we’re still alive—still arguing, still caring. A world without disagreement would be a museum, not a home.”

Jack:
(half-smile)
“Then you’d be happy living in a half-finished paradise?”

Jeeny:
“Of course. Because it means we’re still building it.”

Host:
He looked at her, and for a moment, his expression softened—not agreement, not surrender, but a kind of curiosity, the kind that comes when the soul starts to remember something it had forgotten.

Jack:
“Do you really think people could start over without bringing their old ghosts into the new world?”

Jeeny:
(smiling sadly)
“No. But maybe they’d finally learn to make peace with them.”

Host:
The first drops of rain began to fall, hissing softly as they met the coals, cooling what had once been fire. Jeeny lifted her face, eyes closed, welcoming it, while Jack watched her with a kind of quiet reverence.

Jack:
“So your Utopia isn’t built on rules or clean slates, but on acceptance?”

Jeeny:
“On honesty. On the idea that we don’t need to be perfect to be worthy of starting again.”

Jack:
(softly)
“That sounds less like Utopia and more like… forgiveness.”

Jeeny:
(nods)
“Exactly. Forgiveness is the only thing strong enough to rebuild a world without repeating it.”

Host:
The rain deepened, steady, melodic, a cleansing rhythm that wrapped the world in silver calm. The fire was gone, but the light remained, reflected in their eyes—the light of possibility, of imperfection daring to try again.

Jack:
(quietly)
“So maybe the question isn’t whether Utopia brings chaos or happiness…”

Jeeny:
“…but whether we can love each other enough to live inside both.”

Host:
The sky opened, and the rain fell harder, but neither of them moved. They simply sat there, faces lifted, letting the storm baptize them into the only kind of beginning that matters—one born not of escape, but of return.

And as the fire turned to smoke, John de Mol Jr.’s words lingered like rainlight on skin—
that Utopia is not a place,
but a question we keep asking,
again and again,
each time we dare to start over,
not to find perfection,
but to learn whether the human heart can ever build a world
where chaos and happiness
are not enemies,
but neighbors.