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).