Utopia - The Land of Nowhere

In 1516, Sir Thomas More published his controversial work, Utopia, a book in which More's adventurer,Raphael Hythloday describes an imaginary land that he says he stumbled upon across the Atlantic somewhere in the New World which had just recently been discovered. Utopia is a perfect image of the ideal communistic world. Everyone lives in peace, everyone is equal, and there are a set of simple laws that hold the society together and cause everyone to work together as a community, thus making Utopia one of the richest and most successful countries in the world.

At first sight, Utopia is enticing. There are none of the evils that plague our own world. Everything works together perfectly. Crime is so rare that one may almost count Utopia to be free of it. The system works so well that no one need work more than six hours in the day. They pursue the arts and the sciences in their leisure and everyone has the chance to be educated. Everyone follows the law and go along with the way of things. They are rich, prosperous, learned, and - at least it seems so - happy.

As one goes deeper, there are things that turn one off. For instance, there is no such thing as individualism. At least, it is certainly discouraged. People are meant to be uniform products of the system. Educated and intelligent products perhaps, ‘good’ and ‘moral’ products perhaps, but no more. There is no such thing as private property - everything is shared among everyone. Everything that one produces must be handed over the ‘state’ to be shared out equally among everyone. One relies upon the system for everything. But then, one might say that, so long as the system works, it is well. One might say that through a kind of slavery the people have obtained true freedom. And then, one might say the opposite. That through the obtaining of freedom the people have become unwitting slaves to the system. An excellent system, maybe, but is it enough? Personally, I would throw my lot with the outside world with its grief and joy and risk utter slavery to obtain utter freedom.

To me, the Utopian’s alarming Epicurean philosophy is one of the worst aspects of their society. I have read little about their beliefs as yet, but their religion, or lack thereof, seems to me, to be nothing save a replica of that of the Romans. God(s) who are nothing save an image on the surface. When the cloak of religion is taken away, the starkness of their Epicureanism is truly frightful. Pleasure is their only goal. To follow after pleasure is their sole occupation. Thus their clever system that lessens their labor as much as possible. True, the Utopians follow only after pleasures that do not result in unpleasantness to anyone else. Also true, the Utopians follow only after ‘real’ pleasures. For example, there is no ‘real’ pleasure, according to them, in a piece of gold. One cannot eat it. They do not use money in their trade, so it has no way of giving pleasure. Hoarding treasure for its own sake is not pleasure. There is no wisdom in preferring purple cloth over plain cloth. If they are both equally soft, the one color does not give one pleasure over the other. One might say that there is good sense in the Utopian’s pursuing of ‘real’ pleasures. There is nothing else, with their façade of a religion. But one might say that is the ultimate reason why not. If there is nothing else, than pleasure will have to be enough. But what if it is not?

More seems to realize that such a revolutionary idea must remain nothing save an idea for a good time yet. He says that ‘this thing cannot come to pass until all men are good, and that, I think, will not come about for a good many years.’ The word Utopia means nowhere. But there were some who took the idea and left the last warning. The knowledge that men must be ‘good’ before Utopia can become a reality did not stop ambitious men such as Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. It is very probable that the whole terrible idea of Communism arose from More’s sixteenth century book, and there is little probability that it has left the world any better than it found it. There are plenty of controversial ideas in Utopia, of objectionable statements, of questionable conduct. But the question of whether or not Utopia would be what the world needs will never be answered. For that is the one ultimate flaw in Utopia. It is impossible to achieve.