Slavery and More

     I have been brought up with the idea of slavery being something that is negative. I look at Thomas More’s Utopia and wonder if I can fathom the idea of slavery being a tool rather than an atrocity. I see that the possibility of people paying off their debt to society as something that I may not want to accept as a necessarily good idea, but there are little options when people transgress against their society.

     For example, we have jails and prisons to rehabilitate people who owe society for a wrong-doing. We have hospitals to rehabilitate people who are ill (specifically mentally ill). We have schools to teach people to conform to societal norms so that people will not fall into the category of transgression. We also have people that are so impoverished that slavery would be a better option than dying of starvation.

      When I take a look at these factors I realize that although I may not necessarily agree with everything that More says, I realize he has thought through a plan for an Utopia and that plan is better than no plan at all. So, before I jump to a conclusion where I view Thomas More’s Utopia in a negative light, from the perspective of how I was raised, I must look deeper into the functions of society so that I can realize some other factors that I did not see before.

      So, instead of the breaking up of families, starvation, torment and the other disparities that come from the institution of slavery, I propose that a work study program be instilled. It would be more beneficial if we could put these people into a career path and allow them to become upstanding citizens of society. We would require a mandatory sentence to rehabilitating education that leads the citizen to become a working unit of society.

     The mandatory sentence would work with people who are doctors who can inspect the citizen’s mental well-being so that the transformation of the individual not only is physical, but psychological as well. This insures that people are working together. It makes a system of education and checks and balances that hold the individual responsible for being the best citizen he or she can be.

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).

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).

Plotting Utopia

It's pretty challenging to try and compare one utopia to another, because they all seem to have such different values, priorities, customs, etc. But when we trace all of these texts back to Plato, we can in fact connect most utopian thinking to two key concepts: happiness and justice.

But what do we mean when we use these terms? And how do these two measures of happiness and justice work together?

To explain this in a visual way, my husband came up with this awesome tool and I am excited to share it with you. (click on the pic to enlarge.)

We sat down and started thinking about where different Utopian texts, communities, and experiments fell and plotted many of them out on these two axes. I've included four on the graph above. I'll briefly explain one of my choices that you may not be familiar with:

Dave Bruno is the man behind the "100 Thing Challenge." You can check out his blog, or read this piece from Time Magazine to learn about his quest to own only 100 items. This strikes me as a highly individual sense of happiness (his quest does not include reducing the possessions of even his immediate family, just himself), but also a highly rule-driven one. So he goes in the top-left corner of my graph.

The two axes represent what I see as the two basic ways to quantify a utopia. Sure, the goal of utopia is happiness (represented on the x-axis), but is it an individual's happiness that is at stake, or are we concerned with the happiness of a larger society? 

And if happiness is to be achieved through justice (represented on the y-axis), how do we define that term? Can each person define her or his own ideas of justice? Or is justice codified in laws for the larger community?

So, what do you think about where I have placed Dave and the other three items on my graph? Would you place them elsewhere? Notice that I have purposefully tried to give you what I see as the four extremes; I have other items that I see as falling in between these four endpoints.

I'd love to see (in class, or here) your own versions of this graph. I think it will be quite helpful for you as you move into your SWOT Analysis and Research Essay writing over the next month. So, you can download your own version of this graph and try it out yourself.

Here is a version optimized for the web.

Here's the printer-friendly version.

Happy plotting!

Raphael Hythloday: Unreliable Narrator for Greater Understanding?

The entire description and interpretation of the island Utopia rests solely on Raphael Hythloday, an experienced sailor who traveled with experienced explorer Amerigo Vespucci on multiple occasions. He is the first (perhaps unwittingly) to circumnavigate the globe, and a sailor who learns from traveling like Ulysses and travels to learn like Plato (10-11). This is certainly all very impressive, and extremely admirable. Certainly, More couldn’t be so lucky to have the Raphael Hythloday tell him about the Utopian island.

That is, until we realize the meaning of his name.

As we learned, his surname Hythloday literally means “nonsense-distributer” or “nonsense-peddler” (7). This, I theorize, tells us all what the Utopian description really is: nonsense. It is awfully convenient that, as Peter Giles admits, “there is no mortal alive today [who] can tell you so much about unknown people and lands” (10). Now, I am not saying (although possible) that Hythloday is fabricating his entire story (for example, he never traveled with Vespucci) but that the specific details of false.

This would certainly explain some rather contradictory and inconceivable notions of the island Utopia to real-life Sir Thomas More. For instance, the fact that lawyers “are excluded entirely” (75) strikes me as extremely odd for More’s vision. More, after all, eventually became the highest and most powerful lawyer in all of England.

Wikipedia.org; "Thomas More"

 “I hate my job.”

Another example involves the unheard of tolerance of religion (except for atheism, which is opening a whole other can of worms). Real-life Thomas More, as Lord Chancellor of England, prosecuted English Protestants under King Henry VIII. Later, in the 1530s, when Henry broke away from the Catholic Church and required all English citizens to recognize the king as Supreme Head of the English Church, More refused, stating that his Catholic faith could not recognize the king as a sort of “new pope.” As a result, More was sentenced to death and was beheaded in 1535.

Here’s the real kicker: the reason that there was religious intolerance in much of human history is the exact same reason that Hythloday says there is religious tolerance in the island Utopia. When a fellow Utopian ignored the law and continued to preach against others, “he was tried on a charge, not of despising their religion, but of creating a public disorder” (85). According to history, if there were a person without your religion preaching against your own faith, then he will endanger the safety of the community and the land.

There are two possibilities here. First, More-the-author may legitimately think lawyers are “a class of men whose trade it is to manipulate cases and multiply quibbles” (75) and that any religious belief (sans atheism) is fine for the communal health of society. Or, as I tend to believe, More-the-author is using satirical language, through the character of “nonsense-peddler,” to show that what he is describing is truly not utopian. After all, wouldn’t you expect Mr. Nonsense-Peddler to fudge the truth, even a little? 

newtheologicalmovement.blogspot.com

Now, what of our traveler’s first name? Certainly, the name reminds us of the Archangel Raphael. This name is Hebrew in meaning, translated as “healing of God.” The angel appears in the biblical Book of Tobit as a guide and extraordinary helper to Tobias, Tobit’s son. Click here to read the (very short) Book of Tobit.

How do we reconcile these two names? On the one hand, “Raphael” shows the help and guidance of God, without which Tobias would have failed his mission; on the other hand, “Hythloday” shows nonsense.

I believe that, if we combine “God’s healing” with “nonsense-peddler,” we see that the fictional sailor speaks satirical utopianism so that we may become “enlightened” by what is good for an alternative society and what is not. It is no accident that the only character to have seen the island Utopia – who the reader entirely trusts with accurate descriptions – is named such a way.