A utopia is an ideal place or state of life. The term derives from the Utopia of Thomas More (1516). Visions of ideal communities and ways of living have naturally informed many political platforms, although the conceptions of human nature that they imply are usually highly simplistic. Hence utopianism, or the recommending and criticizing of political action in the light of supposed ideal systems or utopias. Dystopias tend to be more vividly imagined, just as hell is easier to conceive than heaven.