Utopia

[MrRegular]

So I was recently perusing in a back alley book store in a nearby college town and amongst several other interesting titles, I stumbled upon a teeny little book called Utopia, by Sir Thomas More.
On occasion I will be shocked to come into contact with some work that mirror so precisely a vein of thought on which I've ruminated. For instance, the Matrix was a surreal experience for me(and for others I've learned) because I had pondered on the possibility of remote conciousness (see http://www.iep.utm.edu/brainvat/). This is true also for Utopia, because for a couple years now I have been reserving ideas for a book that would describe a perfect society. The purpose being to not only present the flaws of my own, but to possibly offer some suggestions for solution.
This is precisely what Sir More has done here, and quite profoundly so.
Seeing as how More pretty much coined the term 'Utopia,' it wouldn't surprise me much if it turns out that I've just been living under a rock on this one, but I'd be interested in hearing what others might have to say about it.

Have you read it? what did you think?
Do you have any ideas that would be helpful to the Utopian society?

[PeterL]

Utopia is among the many utopian works I have read. I thought it was O.K., but things have changed since then, so more recent ideas are better.

[MrRegular]

I don't believe things have changed so drastically. His assertions are broad enough to encompass the human condition. We of the plastic age are not so different as we would like to believe.

Most of the principals that make Utopia are completely adequate if we could just get over our childish egotism and animalistic vices.
To say that is just man, is to say man must do this(rape, pillage, horde, etc) but the very act of becoming aware of these tendencies in ourselves and of their detrimental nature is a call to responsibility for their resolution. This is just as the saying man is flawed is an excuse to remain flawed and to not seek perfection.

[kasie]

Reading Utopia takes on a whole new light if one remembers that More at one time in his youth aspired to become a member of a Religious Order. Then the influence of (Monastic) Rule for the conduct of a godly life becomes evident in the way in which Utopia is constituted.

The instance that most struck me when I read it more years ago than I care to remember was the idea that families would change houses every few years. Even then, as a very young woman with no experience of running a home of my own, it seemed to me that no self-respecting housewife would give up her carefully maintained home to move into another a few streets away, even though all the houses were supposed to be identical and, it was assumed by the rather unworldly More, would have been maintained equally well by the out-going family. Then I realised where this rather strange precept had originated - in some Religious Orders, where stress was laid on the members relinquishing any attachment to worldly objects, monks changed their cells every few years so that they did not become attached even to the position of the cell. The book then made more sense to me, read as More's attempt to impose a Religious-style Rule onto secular life in order to create a 'perfect' Godly society.

[MrRegular]

That is a very interesting insight that I had not considered. Though I don't think that unworldly living is wholly religious in nature. I think that instead it was used by religious societies (Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Jainist, Taoist etc) because of the disassociative effect it has on the psyche. That is; to release one from his egotistical chains by removing all those things that the individual uses to make himself feel superior to others, i.e. clothing and property in general.
Perhaps More came upon the value of immaterialism through religious practice, but I think that he differentiated between the two.

[johnw1]

I found that the most interesting aspect of Utopia was it's ambiguity - More describes this 'perfect' society but I would argue we shouldn't take this as More's perfect society at all. He's careful to distance himself from the idealism of Hythloday. I think it could equally be read as a satire on far flung, unrealisable - even undesirable - idealism.

[MrRegular]

Everyone is always so apt to take a cynical approach to this subject. The first thing that people think when a Utopia is mentioned is 'how can it screw up,' or that its unrealizable. This is like saying the world is incapable of being without dysfunction.
Tell me, should we give up? Should we stop striving for perfection because it is difficult? Idealism is one thing we should charish because without it we become a society of apathetic, lethargic, nihilistic, WoW drones.
More's Utopia offers very little ambiguity, going into detail on most every major aspect necessary for a society to function. The only thing that would be needed would be complete cooperation by the population.
Such a prototypical system may be unlikely, but it is not entirely impossible. This is the way of theory, it is almost never completely correct. The reality would probably come to be some wholly unexpected scenario after practical flaws were found and eleviated. After all the kinks were worked out, it may even be unrecognizable to the original blueprint, but still the effort was there and the product is there and we didn't remain simply a bunch of detractors who are afraid to make decisions.

[dfloyd]

because mankind is imperfect. And when things change, they generally change for the worse. I'll just stick to our imperfect world. Besides, a Utopia would be boring.

[Quark]

Everyone is always so apt to take a cynical approach to this subject.

I don't think anyone is taking a cynical approach to the idea of a Utopia--dfloyd (who posted after you) aside. The point johnw1 was making is that the text is rather complex rhetorically, and it's difficult to say that More agrees with everything Hythloday is saying. In this regard, johnw1 is completely correct. More's Utopia uses paradox, non sequitor, and the conventions of the Renaissance fool to make some pretty sophisticated criticism of England and obliquely suggest reforms. Before one even gets in the story, they already know that More is playing a game with them. Utopia begins with conversations between real people talking about Utopia island, as though it's also real. Yet, the name of the island Utopia translates to "no place." Savvy readers would have picked up on the contradiction here. Much of the rest of the book works like this, too. Hythloday tells us that everyone can travel between cities freely. But, all the cities are identical and you have to work the same jobs everywhere. These little paradoxes "distance" (johnw1's word) readers from Hythloday. They pull our attention from Hythloday's perfect society and move it toward More's cleverness.

As for the idea of whether a perfect society can actually exist, I would remind you that Utopias are fictions or myths. The perfect society is like the perfect spouse or the perfect house. They are more ideas than actual things. They have a purpose, of course, but that purpose is more literary than anything else. I think Northrop Frye gave perhaps the best description of Utopias in The Stubborn Structure. You can get the important pages off Google Books here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=XQMOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA109&dq=stubborn+structure+%22varieties+of+literary%22&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false


Then I realised where this rather strange precept had originated - in some Religious Orders, where stress was laid on the members relinquishing any attachment to worldly objects, monks changed their cells every few years so that they did not become attached even to the position of the cell. The book then made more sense to me, read as More's attempt to impose a Religious-style Rule onto secular life in order to create a 'perfect' Godly society.

Yeah, many Utopian reforms are just reworkings of the Rule of St. Benedict. Again, though, I don't know how sincerely More is advocating these changes.

[Eiseabhal]

I think an interesting an different book for you to read on the idea of a perfect society would be The Green Isle of the Great Deep by a fellow called Neil Gunn.
More gets a good press but he was a very unpleasant fellow and supervised several torturings to death in his own home.