I suggest you skip this post unless: you have a lot of time on your hands to read a 6 page essay and you are also interested different ideas on possible structures for society or you have a thing for pondering about the possibility of a near perfect society/world. I wrote this for my final paper in my writing class last summer term. It’s interesting, although I feel it could certainly be better and expanded upon to different ideas such as the internet and the current global economic climate. Oh well, it is what it is, no point in trying to change it now.

Andrew Jorgenson

6 August 2011

Why Utopias Cannot Exist

The idea of utopia, a place where everyone is happy, content, and satisfied with society, is difficult to actually make into a reality.  Perfection within any society is hard to obtain for multiple reasons and variables that are simply not possible to control within any society or person.  Due to these reasonable assumptions which will be further examined, it can be said that a utopia will never exist, because as technology pervades and grows in our societies and as our societies grow philosophically and politically, it inevitably creates more discontent and differing opinions within the human psyche of all people, which certainly has no place in a utopia. If people are given one new thing after another to help improve their lives and experiences, and they are guaranteed to encounter different and new ideas, it will not be possible for anyone to ever entirely accept the status quo and be okay with it. There will always be one more thing that could be seen as improvable; there will always be something that someone else feels ought to be different, because of the increasing amount of philosophies and technologies that infiltrate and continually change the way we perceive and desire everything in our lives.

            The word utopia means “no place” in Latin, and was originally thought of by the legal statesman Sir Thomas More (Vesterman 348). Explained below, his idea of utopia does come off as being almost magical and perfect, to the extent that he never mentions any issues in his society and because no person will ever really believe that his society could actually exist, not necessarily because of the idea of a utopia itself, but because of his own personal specifications of a utopia. However, we should at least ask the question, “could any part of humanity create a society and government that allows everyone to find a great amount of content and agreement within their lives, given certain societal and governmental rules?” Although whimsical it may be, let’s first examine More’s idea of a utopia, “The island of the Utopians extends for two hundred miles at the middle part […] The island has fifty-four cities, all of which are large and magnificent, and absolutely identical in language, traditions, institutions and laws. […] No fewer house hold has fewer than forty men and women, in addition to two bound slaves […]” (349-350).  This all sounds like something that could possibly be implemented, but it’s extremely probable that most people would not be able to move along with their daily lives and not feel like they want something to change in this society. Many people would certainly want to change the rules about having slaves and there being a specific number of people to each home.  The rules would undoubtedly be challenged to some degree by citizens. This is especially true in terms of More’s utopian political forum, “Every thirty families selects for themselves a magistrate annually, the syphogrant […] the chief phylarch is set over every ten syphogrants and their thirty families. In the election of the chief, all the syphogrants swear to choose the man they consider best-qualified.  […] they choose as chief one of the four men whom the populace has nominated” (353). One can already imagine how many people in most societies would object to such policies, as good willed as they are, particularly to the idea of having a group of thirty families selecting their own magistrate.

Although More’s ideas for his utopia were progressive for his time (the early 16^th century) to the 21^st century’s standards and specifically current day Europe and Northern America, his utopia leaves much to be desired. Additionally, this is More’s own vision of a utopia, so we can’t expect a majority of people in most societies to even agree with More’s ideas. More broadly, if anyone were to even come up with a seemingly viable vision for a utopia that a majority of people agree upon, every society with freely thinking people will ultimately leave most citizens discontent in one way or another. This is because there will always be technological and philosophical advancements that arise throughout the growth of any society, where people have the capacity to learn and develop new ideas, often overriding old ones or at least challenging them. Ideas and people clash, and the ugly conflict that subsequently occurs, whether it be verbal or physical, has no place in a utopian society. 

A specific example of clashing ideas is a person in a supposed utopian society coming up with an idea that seems to be extremely beneficial in one way and that he or she believes should be implemented. However, another person could very well perceive an unavoidable major problem with such an idea. Thus, if both people feel that they ought to have their way, for fear that the opposite will most certainly be a bad thing, human nature will undoubtedly create a discontent within these people.  If these two individuals share an argument that can be seen as important and influential to all people, then as these two individuals spread their ideas throughout the supposed “utopian” society, more and more people will certainly choose sides that they want to champion. Then, at the very least, part of society will begin to feel dissatisfaction.  Specifically, they will feel frustration with the current debate and powerless in their effort to obtain what they believe ought to be done.

 A real example of such a development in real society is stem cell research. In America, we have come to compromises on the matter, one compromise being that we can conduct stem cell research, but are limited to only using a specific amount of stem cells each year for research.  The subject still creates many, often heated, disagreements between people, and despite compromises there is still an enumerable amount people who argue over the issue. One side thinks stem cells should be fully studied because of its usefulness in possibly recreating human organs and the other perceives stem cell research as an overall bad thing, because of the fact that human fetus’ are used to harvest stem cells.  Now, put this idea into a utopian society where free thinking people are present.  It is highly unlikely that anyone who is involved with the stem cell debate will just drop it and move on even if a compromise has been made. A society being utopian doesn’t make the people in the society any less human. Essentially the idea of a utopian society is beside the point, because we can assume that if humans with free speech and free will are present in a society then there is no feasible way to remove discontent and dissatisfaction from any society, since no issue will simply be dropped due to inherent nature(s) of all people. However, there lies the possibility of removing a people’s ability to think freely, such as removing philosophy from the society, if that is even possible. If peoples’ differing opinions and philosophies are what prevent a utopia from being possible, is a utopia actually possible through the removing of philosophy and developing ideas from a society?

In the novel Fahrenheit 451, we are described a society where books, writing, and philosophy are banned. The main character, Montag, is a fireman whose job is to burn books, just like all the firemen in his society, but one day he decides to keep a book for himself and challenge the status quo. Here, Montag’s chief, Beatty, attempts to persuade him to give up the idea of not burning books, by saying, “The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we’re the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others.  We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought” (Bradbury 410). Conflicting theory and thought is found in books, and so getting rid of these books it is quite likely that some people will say that ignorance really is bliss, and it’s true that many people are happier not knowing things such as the news broadcasting the tragedies which occur throughout our world.  Truly, if we had no basis to compare our lives or thoughts to, we would never run into ill-content and thus never feel that the status quo is in need of additions or improvements. However, North Korean citizens seem to be deprived of a great amount of information about the rest of the world and they probably aren’t happy having troubles feeding their families. Going against the idea that ignorance is bliss, many of them are still unhappy, so clearly a distinct lack of information and different philosophies isn’t a fix to a large scale problem such as societal discontent. Additionally, in general, the fact people can still question things makes it ever more difficult to create a utopia through human deprivation of information and theories.  Specifically, chief Beatty also says to Montag, “At least once in his career, every fireman gets an itch. What do the books say, he wonders. Oh, to scratch that itch, eh?” (410).  We have stumbled upon basic human curiosity in this statement.  Not even knowing what books are, Montag is definitely curious to know what’s in the books he burns, whether it’s because they are being burned or because it’s simply something he doesn’t know about.  We can certainly (try to) remove philosophy, writing, and theories from society, but even then we cannot remove the curiosity that all people possess and certainly do enjoy and gain from.  Additionally, it can be assumed that most people wouldn’t want to form a utopia based off of ignorance, since most people do enjoy understanding and speculating about their environment, whether it’s good or bad for them. Curiosity will always override the happiness that one would experience through complete blissful ignorance.

      All in all, utopias are not plausible civilizations, even fictionally, so long as they have human philosophy and ideas present within them.  We could remove philosophy and ideas from our societies just as in Fahrenheit 451, but that is more like happiness and contentment through self-deprivation of thoughts and ideas, and even then there will still be sorrow and inquisitiveness still present in a society.  Most people would probably say that they’d rather have the chance to think and ponder about life rather than not actually be aware and be ignorantly happy, that is, of course, if ignorance can even allow someone to be happy.  Rather than striving for a utopian society, it would do more good to make advancements in communication and understanding between people. Have a government that relies on its people more, one that pushes for more public interest in community involvement in governmental decisions, and because of the widespread use of the internet today, this is without a doubt a feasible goal for all of humanity to achieve.  It is within all people’s control to change the way that they act on their own (not including some mental disorders and disabilities) without artificial changes by the government.  Presidents promise change for the better, government laws promise change for the better and new inventions promise change for the better, but most of us are all still dumbfounded by the entire world’s inability to actually make progress towards any society that truly is an improvement.  We’re at the point on a global scale where the means to create a better world appear to be there, but we just don’t seem to know how to do so because of it being such a daunting task. We need useful and possible ideas to be discovered and implemented to get results. There is the simple notion that if someone thinks that they have a good idea that could aid society, then he or she should try to gain some support for such an idea. Subsequently this idea could then become more and more present within the public eye. This would certainly bring any idea into fruition given the means and desire to do so, which at least some people must possess.  If we want to see the change that we desire in the world, then, very simply, we ought to at least attempt to spread and proliferate good ideas, thoughts, or desires when we see them.  We’ve been promised freedom in many parts of the world, but that freedom doesn’t include the government voicing our opinion for us and obviously it shouldn’t be. If we want to reduce our dissatisfaction with any current state of affairs, then we ought to do something about it by our own means through our evermore interconnected society via our technology and our increased awareness of what’s going on in our world because of such technology, not solely the government. 

Works Cited:

Vesterman, William. Great Interdisciplinary Ideas: a Reader for Writers. New York:

Pearson Longman, 2008. Print.