Utopia is the mother of all neat freaks! Every part of this society is planned, and every possible problem is already covered with a preplanned solution and every person knows and does their job well. They are so organized in their laboring that they only have to work six hours per day (with a 2 hour nap in between) and they still have an abundance of products.
I think that the near perfection of almost every aspect of this Utopia makes it out to be more of a "no place" than of a "good place". And while I do approve of their form of government in which all officials are elected and all precautions are taken to ensure every decision is just, I don't think that this Utopia is somewhere worth living, except maybe to visit. They lack qualities that make a society lively, like unpredictability. All decisions made by utopians have a predictable outcome and a definite path and the decisions they make are for functionality. Although I do find it kind of comical when that two people who are going to get married see each other naked first so that they definitely know if they're going to be attracted to their spouse, and that they compare this to buying a horse.. there is no end to the practicality.
Utopia seems like a great place in Raphael's eyes, but I'm still not totally sure how I feel about it.
I agree that I am not entirely sold on the idea of Utopia. There are parts of the society that I thought were a great idea. However, there were also parts that I thought would be horrible to live with. It would be difficult only putting the good parts of the society in with ours though because of how different our two societies are. Another reason is because one of the only reasons that a good idea in their society works, such as the 6 hour work days, is because of a part that kinda sucks about it, the completely scheduled days.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if our views of Utopia would be different if Raphael hadn't explained it in such detail. If there was some ambiguity, maybe there would be more freedom for people to interpret what a "perfect society" looks like. There is so much detail that there is not a lot of room for interpretation. Raphael also assumes that this is everyone's vision of a "perfect society", which cannot be true.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if our views of Utopia would be different if Raphael hadn't explained it in such detail. If there was some ambiguity, maybe there would be more freedom for people to interpret what a "perfect society" looks like. There is so much detail that there is not a lot of room for interpretation. Raphael also assumes that this is everyone's vision of a "perfect society", which cannot be true.
ReplyDelete