Pressing current issues such as climate change, land use conflicts, biodiversity crises, etc., pose landscape-relevant challenges and corresponding pressure to act for politicians, society, and planners. Since action, in contrast to theory, cannot indefinitely postpone decisions and therefore has a tendency towards the categorical, utopian thinking is (again) in vogue and this thinking provides justifications for quick and categorical decisions that (allegedly) cannot tolerate delay. In practice, this thinking is associated with the risk of closing existing open societies (Karl Popper). In this chapter, forms of closed societies and their principal similarities (and differences) are examined, drawing on the ‘life chances’ concept of Ralf Dahrendorf, especially regarding the interplay of options and ligatures. Dahrendorf’s understanding of ligatures is expanded by a threefold differentiation into the ethical and moral, the internally guided and externally guided, as well as explicit and implicit ligatures. The ligatures mentioned first are suitable for enabling life chances, those mentioned second tend to limit life chances. This finding also affects impacts to landscapes and side effects that are associated with utopian ideas or are associated with them.