Something is Missing...?

Something that has bothered me since we began reading our utopian works has been the lack of talk or interest in the social life of Utopia. So far it has been praise and work, work and praise...what about personal relationships?

Maybe I find this so problematic because our society puts so much emphasis on being social and having relationships...I'm not sure, but it's a part that is lacking for me. I see that there is religion, there is family, the is marriage, etc but what about friendship or a good relationship with each other? Are our good actions More talks about suppose to be what makes a a good relationship with someone?

St. Benedict made every thing very intrapersonal, More had everything general about the society and important relationships such as husband and wife, but even then there were no feelings mentioned. Well, except, “in the choice of mate, which may cause delight or disgust for the rest of their lives, people are completely careless” because they are not seeing the entire package. What about marrying someone for who they are, not what they look like? (Before people start harping, I do understand that these are different times and marriage practices are much different). Peoples feelings are not really taken into consideration, except for fear or pleasure (which is connected to happiness).

Feelings are personal and identify with the individual which most of the works tend to take away when describing utopia: the removal of individuality. If there was one issue I found in all the works, I find this to be the most irritating. I want to do me, for me. I want to make me, my family, and my friends happy. I want to connect with them, be more for them than a neighbor or “daughter”.

Again, maybe it's because the works are looking more at society, but if they ignore feelings and individuality then they are ignoring a part of society that can lead to corruption. In utopia do people not have these feelings? Do they not desire to be extremely close? I just do not know and this I find frustrating because I want to know what these authors think of the issue.

In other utopian or dystopian novels I have read, the main characters connected with their feelings and individuality and had to leave the “utopian” societies. This may be the reason why I find this to be such an important aspect for me.

Word Count: 411

Thomas More's Utopia

I got really excited about reading Thomas More’s Utopia, because I had read this book before, it became one of the reasons why I wanted to take this class. I love More’s Utopia because I feel like the ideas that he proposes in his Utopia work. I’m not saying that everything in Utopia is great there are some things that are a little on the crazy side( such as advising the sick to end their lives and killing off another group of people and having them fight their battles for them because they believe these other people are inhumane and barbaric). But I think that the solutions that he proposes work because it solves the problems in his society during his time and although many of his solutions might not feel very probable for our time I think that the solutions that he comes up with solve the issues of his time. One of the things that I love about More’s Utopia is that nobody wants for anything because everything is taken care of. Yes, one would have to give up their individuality and possessions  but wouldn’t that be worth it to not have to worry about where your next meal would come from or worrying about how you were going to pay the bills this month? Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a place where no one is jealous of what anyone else has because everyone would have the same thing?  I know slavery isn’t a great idea but I’ll be a brave soul and say that I wouldn’t mind being a slave in More’s Utopia. Not only do you get a chance to return to society but all you do is hard labor which a lot of people in Utopia do anyway and the slaves are taken care of just like all other Utopians(fed, clothed, sheltered) and aren’t treated horribly. I mean, it’s better than death, which would have been a penalty in More’s time. More’s Utopia is a place where other religions are tolerated (except atheism) and everyone helps each other and cares about each other. I think that is great regardless of whether they are doing it for recognition or not. That’s just human nature. As human beings we mostly operate on reward and punishment.  I’m not saying that More’s Utopia is the best or perfect I just think that it works. It functions well as a Utopia. Given that I feel like More's utopia can be best describe through this video. (the words are more important than the claymation).

Blog Post 3 - Catching up on word count

I ended up enjoying Thomas More’s Utopia much more than I thought I would. Whenever reading these different accounts/attempts/ideas about living a better life I tend to look past the laws and rules of the different societies. Whether someone deserves to get the tip of their ear cut off for stealing or their hand chopped off, I do not feel I have the right to make that decision, nor does anybody else. So instead of breaking down all of their dumb little laws and saying which ones I agree with, I just wrote down some of their ideas on life (provided by Hythloday), ideas which seem more like common sense to me, but are surprisingly overlooked by far too many people in the present day, and I’m sure back then as well.

Although I do not really agree that laws should exist for anybody to follow, if you are going to have laws, they need to be based on solid foundation, this foundation is society’s outlook on life. The laws are meant to serve a purpose and are the most superficial aspect of a community. If everybody lived their life by premises which these laws are created in order to serve, then the laws would not need to exist in the first place. Of course the premises or ideas about life are very subjective, which is my main reason why I think that people who do not see things the same way should not have to live their life restricted by laws which serve ideas they do not agree with. If a society thinks that something should be patched up by creating a law to “fix” those who would choose to do otherwise, it would be much more effective to get those people to change their way of thinking to prevent the temptation of doing “wrong” things in the first place. This thought is put forward on page 65, “A wise man would rather escape sickness altogether than have a good cure for it.” I’m sure that people know this would be the more appropriate thing to do, but they believe that changing the thinking of others is just not a feasible task, a statement with which I would probably agree with. Man’s lack of the ability to think critically is what is holding us back from achieving a more uniform base of thought, and therefore the need to patch things up with laws.

If we start our discussion of utopia at the most superficial, subjective layer, the laws, then we will wind up getting nowhere other than circles of disagreement. This is why I feel it is very necessary to start off at the basic meaning of life, one which we can try to formulate as an objective one, and work our way up. This way we will not get into confusing arguments which have no clear basis, everything will build upon itself. I think Thomas More did a relatively good job with this. My favorite quotes from Utopia that I think addressed the meaning of life are these:

P. 61“Your mind draws more joy from recalling the affection and good will of those whom you have benefitted than your body would have drawn pleasure from the things you gave up.”

 P. 61“And so they conclude . . . that all our actions and the virtues exercised within them look toward pleasure and happiness as their ultimate end.”

P. 64“Health is the greatest pleasure of all.”

“Health is the basis and foundation of all the pleasures.”

Ok, so I think health is a pretty objective way of looking at the world, I find that it is a pretty easy subject to discuss which shouldn’t bring about too much objection. Maybe we can all agree that without good health (death looming), everything else is just pretty pointless.

Focusing on health as one of our primary concerns seems to make the issue of women being allowed to fight in wars that shouldn’t exist anyway pretty insignificant. I just think that preventing heart disease and cancer in men and women is more important than who does the dishes and sweeps.

So these days with all of our new medical technology we’re always looking for that next big cure! So all we need to do is donate millions (billions? trillions?) of dollars to spur on that cancer research. If somebody writes a nice big check . . . what a saint! That person is just so kind!!! And all those football players wearing pink all over their jerseys . . . that is just some good stuff!! No doubt about it, that’s going to bring cancer to an end REAL quick. Oh yeah, “save the ta-ta’s!” I cannot even begin to explain how corny, lame, and embarrassing those bumper stickers are.

Sorry for that little rant. But instead of sitting on your computer and ordering a new bumper sticker, maybe people could go jog for a half hour. Or instead of donating money to cancer research, maybe people could buy healthier food and prevent cancer in the first place.

Whoever organizes all these breast cancer awareness events are not heroes at all. If they spent all that time explaining to people a little physics so that they could comprehend the biomechanics of the human body, and why an inch and a half thick pillow strapped to the bottom of our feet does nothing but inhibit our ability to run naturally and pain free-if the spent their time explaining the relationship of shoes to injury, injury to lack of exercise, and lack of exercise to cancer, THEN I’d give them a little more credit. But no, they just want to dress football players up in cute pink ribbons . . . unbelievable.

People are just so lost and scared. They are scared to believe that a billion dollar company like Nike or Adidas has not made one person a better athlete. They have not enabled one person to run injury free, but instead caused people to get knee replacements, hip replacements, and bunion surgery.

I just want to help people, and allow them to see that there are very small changes people could make that would drastically improve their lives. I understand that I could write twenty blog posts like this and I probably would have no noticeable impact on people’s life views, but that is OK-I’m not too worried about it.

One more thing about More’s Utopia, I enjoyed the quote “They are very fond of fools; they think it contemptible to insult them.” I just thought that that was hilarious. I also think that people should humble themselves every morning when they wake up, and remind themselves that they are no better than anyone else in any way that really matters.

Religion and Utopia

In everything we've read so far there is a mention of God and religion. Supposedly religion is one of the reasons that society works so well and the people are happy, historically thats not really the case. Probably the most well known case of religion creating chaos is the Crusades. They were started by a Catholic pope attempting to gain access to Jerusalem which is a very important religious city of a number of religions. Of course other religious groups weren't so happy and fought back. There were a total of nine different excursions in all that lead to countless deaths and untold damage. So how can religion be the driving force behind Utopia?

It is generally assumed that if you aren't religious or even just spiritual you have no morals, you have no  sense of right and wrong and will always do evil things and feel no remorse. Morals and a sense of right and wrong really have no connection to religion in my opinion. Morals are something you learn from your parents and your environment. I agree with Locke's statement that we are all born as clean slates and we are shaped throughout our lives.

Now I'm not totally discouraging the idea of religion creating peace and utopian living. You hear countless stories on the news of harden criminals who become reformed through finding God. It happens. Religion can be a positive force. I just don't think that religion alone can be that positive force. I know plenty of people that go to church everyday but once they leave there they don't "practice what they preach." 

Image source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOwWzXCx7dPVzHL-4UO0UFarB9UF2SIbe2NEtQWf35-CqDh5bScReahwx_yfsBrY0XEIBVrjXDGZ9TJrPwTOWF_5-mew8OzUjkT7_B0s1U2Az3vVlx7kvYUYbiTfkyS7yKR96bcs4RIQe0/s1600/Hqqa8Ax.jpg

Harrumph: A Rant

Note: I expect this may make people angry. I don't mean to give offense, but I've just got to say what I've got to say. Please accept my apologies in advance if this offends your sensibilities. It is not meant to.



In my ideal world, negative connotations to personal realities will be gone.

You know, something of personal irritation to me is the line that we must learn our history or be doomed to repeat it. I'm certainly not for covering up dark history— but does it have to be shoved down our throats all the time? As an English student,  often have the agendas of various groups shoved down my throat. The plight of the African American. The evils of women's work. The hardship of industrial era immigrant workers. We keep educating ourselves and others about the seemingly yawning differences between us, and foster resentment and frustration in individuals that have often suffered very little or no real hardship as a result. Racism, classism and sexism still exists, but can we ever escape it when it is crafted into our very education?

There is a phenomenon happening that they often call counter racism or counter sexism. Which is totally ridiculous. Racism and sexism isn't a one way street. It does not just flow down hill like a river. It follows wherever irrational hatred grows, so much of it presumptuous and fictional.

In my utopia, such differences should be a personal matter. Can we not be proud of our femininity or masculinity without feelings of superiority, inferiority or self conciousness? Can went be comfortable within our own gender without making war on the other? Can we not be interested in our heredity and history without inventing the pains of our ancestors into our present? Can we ever manage to make no assumptions about what a person is or what they think or feel besides what they  do and say?

Can I be a woman without it being assumed that I have to fill or avoid traditional roles? Can I be Caucasian without assumptions being made about my liniage or the behavior of my forefathers? Can I be intelligent, well spoken and educated without people assuming I am a snob, a bitch, or having a predefined set of opinions and political views???? WELL WHY THE HECK NOT, WORLD?

Can we stop obsessing about past pain and difficulties and lay down our apparent need to defend ourselves from each other? Can we just be the people of Earth and MOVE ON ALREADY????

How I Compare: 40%

In the spirit of being a college student, I decided to give myself a test. Chapter 4 of the Rule of St. Benedict is a comprehensive list of ways that monks should live by. I went through the list to see which rules I apply to my daily life (for the greater part, obviously I am going to have some slip-ups) and I found that I exhibit a meager 29 of 72 traits. There are easy ones, like not committing murder or adultery, but other ones are a lot more vague. 

It was quite eye-opening to go through the list and see the things that I do not do in my life, but that I should work harder to. Number 9 is the golden rule of treating others how you wish to be treated yourself. In face-to-face contact I definitely abide by this rule, but when I am engaging in a guilty pleasure of gossiping, I am most definitely going against this rule. In my defense, I do not engage in as harmful talks as others I know do, but I surely need to work on speaking only positively of others. Even if someone has wronged me or made me upset, what am I really going to gain from griping about it? 

Being a stranger to the world's ways, à la #20, would seem to be not only not helpful, but actually a disadvantage in this day and age. So much of our daily lives revolves around knowing what is happening in the world. One needs to be educated about other cultures so they do not offend and can understand customs different than their own. One needs to know basics of world goings on so that one can make an informed decision when time comes to vote. Now that I am 20 years old, I should retire my ways of voting for local officeholders by whoever has the coolest/most unusual name. Yes, I admitted it and you should too. I mean, who really knows about who they are voting for to be on the board of education? 

Number 27: Not to swear. Need I say more?

"But to recognize always that evil is one's own doing, and to impute it to oneself." This is one of the rules that I actually do follow in my daily life and I must admit that I have a problem with it. I seem to follow this rule too closely, and it is at a cost, I must say. First off, in most cases, not everything bad that happens to someone is his/her fault. Certainly that's the case with me. However, I do not recognize that bad things happen to me because of other people or just a random act of fate. I place so much blame on myself that I suffer undue amounts of stress-stress that I would not wish on anyone else. Therefore, I think that St. Benedict would benefit from switching this rule up a bit to account for random happenings and error of others. People can't go around beating themselves up for every little thing that goes wrong in their day! There would simply be no time for any enjoyment in life. 

To wrap things up, I would say that St. Benedict would excommunicate me from his little monastery. Well, that is if I even chose to go there in the first place. Which I wouldn't. Brown wool cloaks don't really tickle my fancy. 

A Map to Utopian Philosophic and Religious Beliefs

This week's presentation presents a rough sketch of how the philosophic and religious beliefs of the Utopians may have connected with each other and with classical efforts.

(This post contains approximately 533 words.)

More's Utopia Still Needs a Bit More

Being honest, I thought that Mr. Thomas More and I were not going to get along very well. Books from his time written that were written about other countries tended to be about one of three things. How to conquer, how to exploit, or how to fix those poor uncivilized heathen savages. It'll be a few more centuries and a jump to different continent before Manifest Destiny and all that awful stuff comes along, but the basic ideas remain mostly unchanged. I was certain that he was going to say that people from other lands need to be educated and corrected.

I was pleasantly surprised early on in my reading. Raphel describes “quite a few customs from which (More's country) might take example in order to correct (their) errors (More, pg 13). Excellent! The outsiders have customs and ideas that the English can learn from!

Despite my joy, I still think that More's Utopia needs some serious improvements. I'm reading his book with modern, jaded eyes, so I think that his once radical ideas are not quite good enough. The people in Utopia aren't suffering, for the most part. Heck, the slaves in this story probably have a better time than some of the more radical monks we've read about. Men and women both learn trades! There's plenty of food and a gardening competition! Yaaaay!

Better than a little bit of cheese and some wine.

 
But, better is still pretty far from perfect. There are slaves. Sure, they're people who probably would have died otherwise, but, there are slaves.

People who are sick and suffering are allowed to end their lives. I don't disagree with that, but I do have problem with the fact that they are encouraged to do so. “Really Bill, you're pretty much a waste of flesh and food now, just kill yourself. It's better for everyone.” I think that's a bit much.
No one has property so there aren't any fights, but no one has privacy either. I don't care if the door is mine or not, but please give me a lock for it. I don't need to own the lock, I just need to have it available, please.

Women are more equal in this Utopia than they were in 16^th century England, sure, but it's still not nearly enough. Women must marry into their husband's households, do all the cooking in addition to their trades, can only accompany their husbands on wars, and are generally subservient. It's better, but that doesn't mean it's good.

More's Utopia also has a few other tricky little areas, like the praise of genocide and how there's overall religious freedom, except for atheists of course. Atheists get nothing. I like this Utopia more than anything else we've seen so far, and I think it comes the closet to providing for it's citizens equally. I still want more than that though. This utopia is certainly better, but it's not good enough for me yet. More equality, less slaves. That's really what me and my modern views are looking for.

( Image taken from feedio.net)

Pack Your Bags?

      I'm going to say it right now so you can stop reading if you hate it: I like Thomas More's Utopia and his utopian vision. I really enjoy the Utopians' outlook on so many things. For instance, academics are an important element of society (great for bookworms like me); politics and private life are not allowed to mix; and priests may not occupy political positions, which prevents corruption.

      There are, of course, bad things. We have the Utopians sowing lots of assassination plots and other interesting forms of skulduggery amongst their enemies; encouraging suicide for medical purposes; committing genocide of the Zapoletes; and giving public honor for virtue.

… But I'm beginning to digress.

      The Utopian society seems so perfect and wonderful, but it's not. When I read this book last semester, I thought it was. Even when I sat down to begin this post ten minutes ago, I thought I was going to write some clever little letter from a Utopian railing against our society or some sort of post about how I'd like to take an extended vacation to Utopia.

      And then I remembered something: a utopia must have two halves, one internal and the other external (hello, Saint Augustine). See, the external world can look all pretty and perfect (Utopia), but the internal world can still be terrible.

...Perhaps I should tell you what the internal world is. It's you, or more specifically, your feelings and your state of being.

      Let me tell about two people I've had the opportunity to meet over the past year. I met one a few months ago. During the course of our conversation, she told me that she gets so depressed that she cuts herself. The second person had some serious anger management issues. Rather than confronting them, he would just lose himself in his addiction: Xanax. They were total strangers, and I was more or less powerless to help them.

      I thought if everyone in society moved to Utopia we would all enjoy life a lot more, but we wouldn't. These two people would still be self-harmers and addicts. They—and we—all look a little bit like this on the inside:

Moving to Utopia wouldn't change a thing.

      We can make the outside world as utopian as we'd like, but without work on the inside it's just a decaying shell.

(Train wreck picture from www.eccchistory.com).

A Funny Thing Happened During Allocated "Procrastination" Time...

I'm going to take a quick step out of my ordinary blogging style (An angel, the Devil, and MJ), and discuss something quickly that I found particularly interesting.

As a frequent online role-player on Dreamwidth, I find myself bombarded by a variety of role-playing games where one can do pretty much anything with their characters that they could possibly want at pretty much any time. There are games for horror, games for sex (not that I would ever join one of those or anything) and the like. I frequent a place called bakerstreet, that is a "meme" community, specializing in short, one-shot game threads for people to play in. There are usually topics one can use from (or use a random generator to get a random number for) and character options to keep your character in the "world" of the meme when tagging (aka: playing) with other people.

I have been playing in a long-running "thread" for the last few weeks in a particular meme, and it wasn't until today that I realized something. This meme is a Dystopia Meme. The word "Dystopia" is so frequently used in fiction for me that I didn't even recognize until now that it relates directly to this class and what we're working on. I don't think that an actual "Utopia" meme has ever appeared in this roleplaying community, perhaps because Utopia would not mean drama, and unless you're a PWP writer without a life, that's no fun at all.

Now, some of the options chosen by the meme's creator, steahl, are very interesting. There is a subject of "Class" as one of the options to be chosen. S/he gives options from "High/Royalty" to "Transitory", with everything in the middle from "alien" to "pariah" to "created". I find the fact that class is such an important issue very interesting in this meme. It reminds me of Plato's "The Republic", and the importance of the class within the city Socrates had created. This sort of a topic is almost never seen in memes, since "class" isn't something most Americans think of. Even in historical or "royal" AUs (that is, Alternate Universes), class doesn't come up, but steahl sees is as an important part of the meme. In #22 of the "Prompts" section, s/he even mentions "the City". An interesting mention, probably relating back to "the Republic".

The next section, the one I just mentioned, is the Prompts section. It's fairly standard fare for a meme, from "mix and mingle" to "SCIENCE" and "Brave New World". They throw in little references to all sorts of different utopian and dystopian books and movies, which, again, I didn't even think to relate to a class on Utopia until just now. There's even a subtle nod to Firefly, which I have always seen as one of the ultimate dystopian stories.

The most important thing in this meme to me is that this is all set in a futuristic setting. Unlike Plato or More, who see Utopia as something that can be achieved now, this meme sets up utopia (or, in this case, dystopia) as something that has to be made in the future.

Just FYI: My thread involves a "created" character living in a futuristic New York that is blotted out by pollution and riddled with crime and drugs while the elite sit on their high towers. In other words: Standard Dystopian fare. What do you think makes this "standard" for Dystopia? Why do you think I failed to notice that this was so intimately related to this class?

What are your thoughts on this? Besides the fact that I am clearly a huge loser.

Also, if you work out which character is mine, DO NOT EVER TELL ME THAT YOU KNOW.

Also, standard disclaimer: I haven't read all of the threads, some of them could very well be NSFW (that is internet speak for Not Safe For Work/School).