Compare And Contrast Essa-AHAHAHAH JUST KIDDING!

Alright, lets look at what we've got here. (When I say we it's the royal one, not the plural one) We've got a how-to on running a monastery and we've got a self governed college campus.

St.Benedict's rules and regulations on the best way to get into heaven isn't really my understanding of a Utopia. I believe that the Utopia bit is supposed to be heaven. According to the documents to get into heaven you've got to forsake the physical world. So...yeah, that's nice and all but if you need to impress on earth in order to get into heaven, does that mean you have to create a structured fake utopia to get to the real utopia?

Here is what I'm going with, utopia is for the benefit for the society/community. The monastery is a tiny utopia that allows for those with in it to benefit in the end by getting into God's bro-circle.

The Grinnell College "self-gov" (oh lord, I want to shoot myself in the face every time I see that) idea is a much less structured 'utopia'. I am hesitant to give it an un-parenthesed 'utopia' because I can't really take the idea that it's all sunshine and rainbows. Seriously, one of the biggest failings they could come up with in the article was that someone spilled something an didn't clean it up and that had potential to break up the whole system. St. Benedict had that somewhat under control but mainly because he had the fear of God and Hell on his side. Grinnell hasn't really got that and while I would love to believe that we can exist without such threats but I doubt masses can.

Looking at the situation, it's really dependent on the students. We're gonna have a bit of a story time.

 I attended summer school in high school because it was the only way for me to get my computer tech. credit while also remaining in orchestra during the school year. I was in a class with people who had failed computer tech. and also didn't want to be there. The work wasn't hard and we got to build things but these people sucked. They were loud, rude, argumentative and refused to do the work. I just sat there and didn't think much of it until the teacher asked ME to reel them in.

No. No NO NONONONO.NOOOOOOO.

I was the good kid but I'm not better than them. I don't get to wave any moral high ground in their face or pretend to be an authority figure because I wasn't texting in class. I don't think it's healthy to control masses through a form of peer pressure because I don't want to be that person to push someone into doing something they don't want. Grinnell sounds like a place where if you spill something you get the stink eye. You can't mess up and there is a force of conformity that makes my skin crawl.

St. Benedict prohibited laughing for crying out loud and I'm still more bothered by a free governing college than his monastery.

Any who, Here is some kickass animation to brighten the mood! (Pst! This post was brought to you by the number 527!)