Utopias are difficult to conceive.  We all have criticisms of the world in which we live and while it takes imagination and skill to successfully write a dystopia that captures the ways in which our current world is going awry the initial steps are easier – most of your readers will agree that something is amiss and many readers will delight in the exaggerations of the dystopian version of our world.  But utopias are harder.  Not because we do not all have visions of what a better world might look like, but because we recognize the ways in which one person’s vision of a better world in another person’s vision of a dystopia.   Beyond this stumbling block is the reader’s own immediate and likely constant questioning: this could never work! People do not act in these ways!  Nobody would want to live in that way!  This author’s failure to (properly understand waste management, appreciate early childhood education, endorse all varieties of sexual practice, abolish violence) means I can reject this book out of hand!   It is naïve! Continue reading →

To start, I should like to acknowledge that I am aware of the context from which More constructed his Utopia, and I understand the overwhelming religiosity of the period, and how even more radical a deviation from which would be. With that aside, I would like to call into question the religious principles of More’s Utopia; specifically, where he attributes the successful operation and functionality of Utopia to the society wide belief in a rewarding afterlife upon living dutifully in Utopia. To me this is inherently flawed from the ground up, as I see this as a society based entirely on a selfish motivation for salvation, and though in practice it  is just and equal, the reasons why are perverse, thus i believe it is fully corruptible.

Regarding the corruptibility of Utopia, in a way the society exists teetering on the edge of a cliff, because the predominant motivation for cooperation and duty is salvation (the basic construct for the whole society), and if belief in salvation crumbles even slightly, the entire societal system would likely fall into disarray, and with no precedent for corruption, ultimately destruction. I reach this conclusion by drawing on Book VIII from Plato’s Republic in which he outlines why the Kallipolis will ultimately degrade into a tyranny. The Kallipolis begins to fall not as the result of some great tragedy, rebellion or war; the crux of the decline is a simple miscalculation in the math in child birth and rearing. If such a seemingly insignificant flaw will bring down the whole Kallipolis, then to me, it is logical that the breakdown in the belief of salvation in Utopia will have even greater ramifications and destroy the society even quicker. Therefore, I believe that the required religiosity in More’s Utopia is a fatal flaw and should be removed from any other attempt at Utopia, and replaced by a system of self-worth based in altruism, since anything is possible in Utopia.

I feel as though an altruistic approach to cooperation and duty should replace the religious apparatus in More’s Utopia. In my opinion, More takes too much of a Platonic view that people necessarily need motivation in the form of salvation to be just. However, if a Marxian sense of individual self worth and palpable usefulness were constructed as the motivator for duty and justice in Utopia, I believe the society would be safer from corruption and destruction. I can not say specifically how or in what way such an altruistic vision and sense individual self worth should be achieved or take place, but I do believe it is the solution to the flaw of religious salvation being the motivating factor in More’s Utopia.

However, my belief in a secular Utopia based on Marxian values with platonic organization is confounded by the thesis of a book by John N. Gray entitled, ” Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia,” in which he argues that ideas of utopia are inherently inseparable from religion, particularly Christianity, because of the similarities of their basis. Moreover, he holds that any idea, like Utopia, is inherently a “religion,” and the proliferation and realization of any religious construct will inevitably come with conflict and bloodshed. In an overarching sense, Gray is trying to say the world is a perpetual dystopia of conflicting ideas (which he calls religion), and forms of Utopian thinking are entirely part of the problem. Ultimately, according to Gray, even a secular Utopia, such as I prescribed above, is inherently religious and therefore prone to conflict, resulting in societal deterioration, making my argument moot.

Gray’s book is certainly an interesting piece to read through in your free time and we have a copy available in the library if anyone is interested in looking at it!

As a feminist disability studies scholar, reading Oryx and Crake triggered a tiny bit of outrage about the treatment of disability within the novel. The character of Crake is one of the most interesting in regard to disability studies scholarship. Towards the mid to later part of the novel, when Crake gains admission to the most scientifically elite university in the United States, Watson-Crick, and Jimmy visits him there, we see several troubling things. There is a direct reference to that university as Aspergers U. The university is widely acknowledged as a place where students as a whole lack virtually any social skills. The students who are introduced, are, through Jimmy’s eyes, so robotic in their intensity, that they ultimately become less human, losing the trappings of civilization. In the dining hall, Jimmy observes that “Crake’s fellow students tended to forget about cutlery and eat with their hands, and wipe their mouths on their sleeves. Jimmy wasn’t picky, but this verged on gross” (208-9). This is a moment where we watch Jimmy observe people with incredible intelligence, and yet reduce them to sub/non human because of their table manners. The white colonial gaze is not absent from the world of Oryx and Crake, even if it is arguably functioning as a defense mechanism in this novel. Continue reading →

Perfect happiness can not exist for mankind, whatever the circumstance of their world, because to be perfectly happy in every way and at every moment would deprive life of purpose, deny existence of its joie de vivre. It is challenge of untested waters, the hunger for something more that fuels the innermost part of what makes of human. Thomas Jefferson recognized this primacy of purpose when he penned the phrase “the pursuit of Happiness” into our very Constitution. Note that he did not write that human beings had an equal and unalienable right to happiness, but rather to its pursuit.

Think of the most beautiful piece of music you know. Or, if you prefer, the most moving dance you’ve witnessed. These things can bring us happiness, provided that they end. A static existence in which the song, however stirring, plays on and on and the dancers’ movements, however graceful, never change would quickly become torturous. In the complete absence of stillness and silence,even song and dance lose those qualities which bring happiness to so many. I therefore posit that a city like Omelas, even with the inclusion of a sole, tortured child, cannot exist in any reality with human beings as they are, because while the human soul delights in the pursuit of happiness, it would despair at its realization. Paradoxically, such an absolute realization of happiness would destroy human happiness all together by depriving life of any further meaning. People need a reason to live, and perfect happiness does not need improvement.

So let’s say I wind up in Le Guin’s utopia. Do I walk away?

No. I open the door. No person can be perfectly happy, but every person deserves a chance at happiness. And as long as the door stays shut, no one has a chance. And what is more, I would rather live a painful life with my humanity in tact than to degrade my soul with monstrous happiness. In opening that closet door, I am not just freeing one small child from a miserable existence, I am freeing the entire city. And for that, I make no apology.

The reading for today includes the short story “The Ones Who Walk away from Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin.