Bad Ideas and Utopian Future

So, not only is this post pushing the time limit but I'm probably not emotionally sound enough to talk about Utopia. No, scratch that because I think it takes a pretty unsound person to think about Utopias. Yaay, My pain from The Perks of Being a Wall Flower will only aid me in this blog post.

My Utopian dream was that education would be interesting. Well, I haven't really been educating the masses but I did teach one of my friends how to better tie her shoes. I learned this new technique about 3 months ago from a video I saw on tumblr...starring Misha Collins. Now, I know that's pretty nerdy but it's really freaking useful. The knot has the ability to untie like a single knot but has the stability of a double knot. It's freaking MAGIC.

I think the term "teaching" should be used liberally because the "student" didn't actually retain it. Does it count if it changed my habits? I say it does because I hope that I will be a part of my own mini utopia.

I HAVE AN IDEA! BRAIN BLAST!

I will share the video here and hope that by sharing with the audience that I kind of have through class I will be, in a way, providing a lesson that is applicable and interesting. (Shh, we'll all pretend that it's helpful information.)

This video adding feature is kick-ass. Here is another video.

TODAY'S ENTRY WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE NUMBER 239!

Hierarchical Benevolence for Plato's Polis

I have just finished Book II of The Republic. Those who want Plato to promote a classless society, or those who wish there to be no political or structural divisions, will be sorely disappointed. While there is no mention of distinction in wealth, Book II tells us that there are clear divisions in society. He introduces us to the role of the Guardians of this polis, this “luxurious city…[the] city with a fever” (373a) and how they relate to the other people within the city.

These days, those who hear the term "hierarchy," I believe, automatically think of an oppressive, rich-controlling-poor, powerful-controlling-weak structure of society.  Here, in Book II, Plato means less this:

comparingeconomicsystems.wikispaces.com

Anyone else see a wedding cake design here? 

(click here to enlarge)

And more this:

Examiner.com

This is how people realistically celebrate.

 

            The Guardians are a lot like a benevolent leader in an organization. Just as the boss depends on the coworkers to keep the company in production, the coworkers depend on the boss to keep the company unified and safe. The Guardians’ role, like the boss’s, “is most important, [requiring] most freedom from other things and the greatest skill and devotion” (374e).

That being said, this privilege of rank for the Guardians does not mean that they have the right to look down on their politically inferior: “Yet surely they must be gentle to their own people and harsh to the enemy. If they aren’t they won’t wait around for others to destroy the city but will do it themselves first” (375c). If the Guardians act as an elitist, cruel group of thugs, then surely the farmer, the builder, the weaver, and the doctors will refuse to care for them. Since Plato established that it is better for the farmer only to farm, the builder only to build, the doctor only to care for the ill and weak, and the guardians only to protect and expand (370a; 374a), then the Guardians will be left alone with only the skills to defend and attack, not the skills to survive.

There is also the issue of educating the Guardians from a young age, which adds an additional layer of dependence on others.

            

Halloweencostumes.com

Our future military in training

            Although this Book does not tell us who exactly will educate the Guardians, we can clearly see that these future soldiers will be taught to learn, at this age of development, the stories of the virtuous gods and the common good for society. “If we want the guardians of our city to think that it’s shameful to be easily provoked into hating one another, we mustn’t allow any stories about gods warring, fighting, or plotting against one another” (378b-c).

paintingselect.com

 Sibling rivalry was a lot tougher back then.

To teach stories about the hateful and jealous gods, bickering and fighting amongst each other, would corrupt the future Guardians’ mindset of society. The Guardians are therefore extremely dependent on their educators – their entire existence in this tier is thanks to these people.

            Classless societies, to Plato, do not cut it. Equality in rank does not mean equality in acceptance and charity. Likewise, a structural hierarchy of rulers and workers, even if based on a skill of a very specific trade, should not bring out an oligarchical or tyrannical rule, where the powerful rules however they want solely because they can. The common good of the polis trumps their personal ambitions.

Let us see how Books III and IV answer and expand on this post, if at all.

The Final Frontier

Star ships. Holo decks. Warp drives. Advanced free health-care. Lack of currency. Saving whales with transporters. Very bad Patrick Stewart lookalikes.

That's what I've always thought of as utopia. The idea that mankind has united in a quest to improve ourselves and others sounds fascinating and full of hope. I always believed that that sort of thing would give mankind something greater than a political agenda to look towards. It would give otherwise mundane jobs meaning and purpose.

Now though, after reading sargent's article, I've realized two things. One: that   man likes to contradict himself, sometimes within the same sentence. Two: utopia, or the idea of it, is a misleading load of ...

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of improving society, but this article stripped me of my star trek given innocence and said, "screw you and your pre-conceived notions". Utopia was always fixed and unchanging. I thought that we're all working towards a life where we better ourselves, but never considered that other people might have alternative ideas. Sure, many of them might be the same, but as the article implied, some people's dreams are radically different have the possibility of being more detrimental than helpful.

It's something that is constantly changing, and is the product of people dreaming and scheming. We'll never really reach utopia, because there will always be somebody that thinks things should be different, as evidenced in season four of star trek: enterprise, where xenophobic people tried to force

"giant freggin laser" - http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Verteron_array

aliens out of earth with a giant lunar laser because they were afraid of becoming a minority. So, if utopia is unreachable, then why study it? It's kind of like the perpetual energy machine: the only thing perpetual about it is man's obsession in finding it. What can the pursuit of something unattainable do to improve ourselves? Can these parodies of our society really let us improve ourselves, or are they just skeptical or naive representations of fantasies and horrors unfulfilled? These questions, I leave to you.

Religion: Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Who is God, and why do we rely upon him so heavily in order to get through our day? There are a lot of answers to this question.  Some would say He is the foundation of their faith; someone to emulate and fear, to challenge them to live their lives morally and spiritually.  Others would say God is the central focal point of their religion.  That’s all good and well, but what is religion exactly? For centuries it has been a means to love, hate, cherish and kill.  A way of dictating how we live, what we say, and how we view others.  From the Crusades to World War II, religion has made us blind to the humanity we all share.

The world would be a much better place if organized religion did not exist.

Fourteen years of Catholic School, and that’s the solution I have come up with. Ironic, isn't it?

I have probably spent the better half of 4 days mauling over the topic for this blog.  My original idea of ridding society of cultural ignorance was decent, but I wanted something that has personally hit home for me.  I sifted through a few thoughts, bounced around some ideas with family and friends, and still wasn't happy with what I had.  Until I came home this evening to my mom watching a movie that made my decision much easier. 

The movie:

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

Wow.

Right then and there I knew that regardless of my upbringing and my education, religion has been the culprit to the missing harmony in our world. 

For those of you who have not seen the movie I so fondly speak of, it is essentially a film about a German boy who happens to befriend a Jewish child living in a concentration camp during World War II.  Many a tear is jerked throughout the film which so gut-wrenchingly portrays the cruelty of the time.

I figure, ever since religion has formed, there have been reasons to hate one another.  People find themselves uncertain and afraid of other religions simply because they don’t have a good understanding of what that other religion is. Really, they are afraid of the unknown.  And how can we achieve a Utopian society this way?

And that is where I get to my point.

People are ignorant.  Plain and simple. I am by no means a cynic, but it really is the truth.  People grow up believing that the religion they practice is the RIGHT religion, and that all other religions, including the people who practice them, should be shunned, feared, and hated.  They don’t know any better. Our narrow-minded society has chosen to ignore the fact that we all believe pretty much the same thing:

That there is some sort of higher being that is greater than us.

Whether you call that being God, Allah or Brahma, we all believe that “he” exists.  It starts to become a problem when people begin to worship this higher being in different, often times very structured and rigorous ways.  The understanding that we all worship with a common purpose has been lost over centuries of fighting over who has the best religion. 

Because of this, religion simply wouldn't work in a Utopian society.  In a utopia, we as a society must strive to create a life for ourselves that improves our civilization in any way possible.  In the grand scheme of things, religion has been the roadblock preventing us from achieving this utopia.  The only way to accomplish this concept is to eliminate organized religion all together.

How would you enforce this concept, you ask? Ideally, I would make all organized religion illegal in a sense.  I would discourage the cult-like behavior that religion has become and encourage independent thinking and discovering one’s own spirituality without the forceful guidance of a religion.  Meditation, strong moral foundations, and personal spirituality would take the place of mindless worship. 

I think it sounds plausible.

I feel like every young person who has grown up in a religious household has experienced a religious existential crisis in some form or another.  You begin to reevaluate why you are going to church every Sunday, why you are a practicing a religion without getting much choice in the matter, and why society has made it okay to ostracize those who practice a different religion than you.

It really makes you think.

Our society would be a much happier, more Utopian, place if religion was disregarded and personal spirituality played a bigger part. 

All I’m saying is: lose religion, not faith.             

My Opinion on an Opinionated Piece

My opinion on Sargent’s article, “The three faces of Utopianism” was that it was not a very good one. For one thing, it was really good that he included definitions for the different kinds of Utopian concepts, but when he continued to talk about them non- stop it kind of became over whelming. Next, while I was reading this article, I felt like Sargent was afraid to tell his audience how he really felt because there were a couple of instances where he would put in what seemed to be his own opinions and then refute them by telling the reader about the flaws in his ideas (almost in a “don’t quote me on this”) kind of way. Next the whole concept about whether or not one should refer to a Utopian society as perfect really bothered me. As someone stated in class, one of his major defenses against using this word to describe a Utopia was that it would make anti- Utopians back off, and I feel like this is not a valid reason. My other issue with the whole perfect controversy was what’s so wrong with calling a Utopian society perfect. It is a world in which all or most of the problems in the current existing society are resolved. So in comparison, wouldn’t the Utopian society be considered perfect? Another issue that I had when I was reading this was I looked at the last sentence of this article and my reaction to the closing of it was “huh?” My group and I were puzzled by this last sentence because we were unsure as to why he would end this article that way. He says: “Utopians do not believe frustration, poverty and privation to be necessary for creativity”. We all agreed that this statement came out of left field. But for me it was the equivalent of that motor-mouthed voice who rambles off the side effects at the end of a medicine commercial.

"Shawty Had Them Apple Bottom Jeans..."

What: Remove brand names and logos from purchased goods

How: Have companies agree to keep their advertisement to billboards, commercials, and ads...not their customers

Why: I feel that when people see the names/brands of items others have, they are more quick to judge them without really thinking about what they are doing. I believe too much worth is put in/on what brand of item people have.

Brands...logos...they are everywhere you look. Even though you say you may not judge someone by what they are wearing (and by wearing, I mean displaying the name of the store or logo of their purchased goods), it sometimes happens unconsciously.

These names and logos on purchased goods give the viewer the feeling they can make judgments about a person right off the bat.

You see someone walk around with a shirt that says Gucci. A symbol on their pant pockets that lets you know they got their bottoms from American Eagle or Apple Bottom. A bag that has TH for Tommy Hilfiger all over it. A phone in a case that has a small circle on the back so the person that sees you knows that the very expensive phone in that very expensive case is an Apple product. 

(Notice how everything has a logo or brand? Even the coffee cup)

Why does our society put so much value on such necessary goods? That bitten apple on that phone increases its value ten fold. And one of the main reasons that phone is bought is because of the products name and logo. There are other, less expensive phones out there that have more capabilities and are less formal...but because everyone else has an iPhone you want it too.

What if our society removed the labels, brand names, and logos from the purchased good? This would remove much of the judgments people make prior to meeting someone, just based on their outer appearance.

I tried to put my plan into action (just for me) and was all set. My pockets were plain, I had no embroidered logos or brand names on my tops, my shoes were non-identifiable, I put a different case on my phone (yes, I have that phone), took a brown paper bagged lunch, etc. I went outside to turn my car on and realized I would have to cover up those as well, so I taped a piece of paper on them. I then made a cup of coffee to go and put in a plain travel mug, and went to grab my backpack for the day. That's when I realized my bag had JanSport Jon it, I was out of time to cover it up. So I left with the name brand on my back pack exposed.

As I got to school, I pulled out the bag in my car that had my laptop in it (a completely different bag) and realized that my bag had all those tiny “TH”'s embroidered on it and that my laptop had VAIO in big silver letters across the front. Later on I bought a water, that had Dasani written on it. No matter how hard I tried, I could not avoid labels and logos. 

Along with not being able to follow my own plan, I found myself still judging those that displayed their labels. Such as the jerk that cut me off on the highway because he had a sporty BMW and I was driving my tiny little Hyundai. He cut me off because he was in a nicer car, a more expensive car, and felt that he had the right to cut off a driver just because of the brand of car he had. While this may have been presumptuous of me, I still thought it...and then chastised myself for jumping to conclusions and judging someone just on the type of car he drives.

Even though this idea is not ground shaking or mind riveting, it is still a problem in our society. The first step in diminishing our prejudices of any kind (not just on what people have) is to acknowledge that there is prejudice, and that you are a culprit.

If you catch yourself making a quick judgment, then that is progress. Baby steps...your not gonna change the world in one day.

"Low" by FloRida

http://bendigofitness.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/human-billboard_thumb.jpg

http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/img-set/BQcDAAAAAwoDanBnAAAABC5vdXQKFkhES3g2dEp5UldhTEJNZXVBM0RMN2cAAAACaWQKAXgAAAAEc2l6ZQ.jpg

http://recognizeyourbrands.com/

A World without Patriarchy

What would a society look like if everyone was equal? To me, I think the biggest paradigm shift towards equality would almost certainly have to begin by eradicating forces of oppression, mainly the Patriarchy system that so many societies govern by. There is not a single day that goes by where forces of this system of oppression limit one’s potential, and to that matter, one's quality of life. During a short politics briefing with political activist Roland Martin, President Barack Obama said it best when he mentioned that; "A society is only as strong as it's most vulnerable citizens".

Uprooting maladaptive thinking such as; the infamous Sexism's, Ageism's, and Racism's of the world would slowly, but surely dissipate into a new society where most people strive towards finding common grounds, not dividing factors. This is an idea of what I consider a "Perfect Utopia". Will society in general ever come to this consensus? I surely hope so. What purposes does one have to follow a power structure that serves to oppress others, especially women? Progress into the future can become stagnant when people refuse use better judgment, especially when it comes to others. Throughout the ages of time, some of the greatest inventors, pioneers, and innovators were women of all nationalities, so in my Utopia there would be none of the; completely discrediting or refusing opportunity to others

 

Everyone as equals will be the governing body within my perfect utopia.

Becoming an Extrovert

The first day of class we discussed multiple ideas on how to make the world a better place. While some ideas were extreme (naming one girl supreme overlord of the world) others were much simpler like smiling at people or getting more involved. Easy right? Let's give it a whirl....


Okay so the first thing you need to know is I'm one of those people that does three things: school, sports, and internet. That is my day, 24/7, 365. If I leave the house after school my friends are shocked and claim divine intervention. So my goals for the past week has been to:

             1.) Make eye contact and smile at people, maybe even say hi to people I actually know.
                   (That last part may be too much to ask but I will try.)
             2.) Go out to at least 1 of the multiple events on campus we are constantly spammed about.

I thought smiling at people would be the easiest part of my goals to accomplish. After years of training myself to avoid eye contact and duck my head whenever walking in crowds or really just in general this actually was the hardest thing for me. Half the time I smiled at people I felt like I was grimacing or making some terrible pyscho killer face....and judging by some of the looks I got I very well may have been.

http://mattasama.deviantart.com/art/Psycho-Clown-332082300

But I persevered and continued on my awkward smiling, eye contact, occasionally talking quest! The elderly people I smiled at always smiled back while people my age often times glared. Towards the end it wasn't so bad and it seemed that more people that I had previously known as acquaintances started having full conversations with me. Success on part one? Maybe. I still tend to duck my head and avoid eye contact in larger groups but hey sometimes you really just don't want to look at people and smile.


Part 2 was a little harder, I'm generally introverted. I don't like going out and doing new things in groups of people I don't know. So what to do when I have to go out? Take the best friend of course, everyone needs a little moral support.

http://www.123rf.com/photo_6643137_moral-support.html

A lecture seemed to be the best first place to visit. We decided to attend a lecture from Toni Ross about a ceramics gallery at hood. We wouldn't have to talk to anyone and could just sit quietly and listen. However we forgot about the gallery show after....we tried to hide at first but then discovered many of the people there were quite interesting. One woman offered us a lot of advice for our first ceramics class and provided us with a lot of new insight on the pieces in the show. We also managed to get one of our classmates to join us for outing #2. YOGA!

http://downdogrock.com/2011/12/22/the-new-yorker-pokes-fun-at-western-yoga/

Now the best friend and I have done yoga before and we learned several things 1.) any day we can touch our toes is a good day 2.) if you fall asleep in class the instructor will shamelessly call you out 3.) the people you don't expect to be better than you can kick your butt without even breaking a sweat while you shake like leaf and fall over interrupting the entire class.  Point is we aren't good and we generally avoid yoga but figured, "hey why not?"

With moral support in tow we headed to the "class room" and quickly discovered new things like if you are smiling and laughing people will talk to you more and people that you had previous assumptions about actually weren't so bad. We talked with several people in the class and actually enjoyed the experience.

I'm not gonna sit here and claim that my two silly little goals changed the world, I know they didn't. But my generally thought was that if i could go out of my way to smile maybe that would make others happy. Maybe if i did things outside my comfort zone enough doing new things wouldn't be so terrifying. "Life begins at the end of your comfort zone" was my general theme. If we all took the time to do things outside our "norm", our comfort zone, maybe we can change the "me" focused world and see it as a "we".

I'm not looking perfection; I'm looking for an internally consistent fantasy

Max Beerbohm (by way of Sargent) says:

                              So this is Utopia,

                                             Is it? Well –

                              I beg your pardon;

                                             I thought it was Hell.

Beerbohm does not appear to have been a fan of utopianism. I admit that I am with Beerbohm on this one and tend to view other people’s utopian ideas with a little suspicion. For example, in today’s Washington Post (Knuckle) there was an article outlining the consequences to Virginia’s plan to sterilize “defective” people under a 1924 law “whose aim was to build a more perfect society.” The plan was based on concepts about eugenics and was the same set of ideas that led to the horrors of Nazi Germany.  One person’s utopia was, in this case, another’s hell. With this in mind, I am conscious that whatever I write in this blog about making the world a better place may well turn out to be someone else’s nightmare. There is no possibility of creating a perfect utopia that will accommodate everyone.

However, Sargent (1994) insists that utopia should not be equated with perfection. To qualify as a utopia, according the Sargent (1994), the author has to intend, and perhaps contemporary readers agree, that creating the utopia proposed would be better than the society they lived in at the time.  I would like to think of utopia as a thought experiment rather than an actual desire to change society into what I would consider to be better.

With this in mind: in my utopia, everyone who worked would be paid exactly $75,000 per year. I’ve heard this is the optimum amount a person needs to be happy with his or her life (Luscombe). I perceive there to be several benefits that would outweigh the negatives to this scheme:

1.      People may enter professions, begin careers or jobs they may not have considered because of the pay available;

2.      The gender pay gap would be eliminated, as would the idea of ‘female professions’ and ‘male dominated industry’; and

3.      The class divide may flatten out and the gap between rich and poor narrow (though it would not be eliminated).

Everyone would not live happily ever after. Perfection was not the goal. But my intent for this radical idea is that it would make a society better than the one we have today.

Works cited:

Knuckle, Frederick. “Va. eugenics victims would receive compensation for sterilization under bill.” Washington Post 30 Jan 2013. Web.

Luscomb, Belinda. “Do We Need $75,000 a Year to Be Happy?” Time Magazine 6 Sep 2010. Web.

Sargent, Lyman Tower. “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited.” Utopian Studies 5.1 (1994): 1-37. Web.

A better world?

In class last Wednesday this guy I sat close to said the perfect utopia would be a world in which primogeniture was abolished. I found this to be quite interesting since the United States is one of the few industrialized countries in the world never to have elected a female leader. Women such as Margaret Thatcher in Britain, Golda Meir in Israel, and Indira Gandhi in India have all proven to be capable leaders in their respective countries. My analysis as to why the United States has yet to elect a female head of state is rooted in what I see as an unwritten rule that continues to plague the thinking of many people of the USA. That rule is conformity with the "good ol' boy" network which is not unlike the old rules of primogeniture. Growing up in a small rural Pennsylvania town, Indiana, PA, I unfortunately have seen this bucolic practice first hand. There has never been a female mayor of that town and both of the state representatives are males and have been in office for more than ten years. Though it would not be a wise move to place women in politics simply to have them there (imagine Snookie being president) it is time to start looking for reasons to explain why more women do not run for political offices at all levels of government.

It is widely accepted that it would be beneficial to giving all women more of a voice by having women take a more active role in politics and not shy away from running for certain offices. A study done by Political Scientist Richard L. Fox of Union College starts with the premise that as women enter law and business occupations more will achieve the status needed to run for higher political offices. He then sought to learn the reasons men and women run for office. He asked the question, “Have you ever thought about running for office?” of men and women in law, business, and education. The results were less than surprising. Men across the board were far more likely to respond that they seriously had considered it while women were more likely to indicate that they never thought about it. A further question was, “Have any of the following individuals ever suggested that you run for office?” with the result that more men replied that people did indeed ask this question of them while few women responded that they had been asked by others.

 

These facts are interesting given that women make up 51% of the population and thus the voting bloc. If all women voted in unison men’s votes would count for nothing in any election. Now clearly not all women think alike, and one of the great things about this country is our diverse range of ideas. Yet women will realize one day that it is they who can change the predominantly male political landscape. Also to be noted I am a man so I do not wish to start pontificating about women’s issues but it seems to me that women are less likely to run because of thousands of years of second class status among all of the world’s nations. This can be hard to overcome but once women start to band together and realize their potential to be in charge they will demand real change. The world will radically change for the better by allowing for another voice to be heard and to help offer solutions to fix the world’s problems.

A World Where People Acknowledged One Another

So many times I have walked down the street or been in a crowded place just to find that everyone I pass is completely immersed into their own lives. Whether they are fixed to their phones, listening to their headphones, playing on their ipad, or are staring down at the ground, no one seems to understand the concept of real social interaction. As technology steadily becomes a bigger part of our normal lives, people are becoming less and less socially exposed to a real person. They rely on the use of technology to keep them connected to the world. Do not get me wrong, I enjoy the technology that is accessible and I think that it can be very beneficial to many people. I also have been guilty of walking down the street texting my friend before class, or checking my email. However, I also think that technology is isolating people in a way that will change the way future generations act in direct human interaction. People are not interacting with one another the way they use to. I think that it has made people seem less friendly and more selfish.
I think it is important for people to keep a face to face connection. You cannot truly know someone until you talk to them personally. I have taken online classes and posted to discussion boards, but it is not the same until you can meet the person face to face. Only then can you put a face to a name. I think that some people would argue that you do not need face to face interaction to stay connected to someone. That may work for some people for a limited time, but for me; I need face to face interaction. I am a people person and enjoy knowing someone based on the natural ways of communication. When you talk to a stranger on the street, even if it is to say hello, it can make that strangers day. Even eye contact and a smile can make all the difference. We are a species that has survived on the influence of others and the role of human interaction, and even in today's modern world we still need that.
I think a simple way to begin this simple act is to do it. Say hello to someone when you pass them on the street. If you are siting on a bus or metro, take time to start a conversation with another person. A lot of times people don't talk to one another because they think they have nothing to say to a complete stranger, but there is always something kind you can say. I think that I may come from a family that is small-town and friendly. So, this might be an easier task for me to understand than others. But it really is not that hard to do. It requires no effort on your part, just say hello. Try to walk down the street without checking your phone. You may make someones day, and it will open your eyes to the world around you. Not only are people missing out on conversations with one another, but they are missing out on the small pieces of life that are happening around them. I recently had a friend that was walking on a road when a severe accident occurred. Unfortunately she could not be a valid witness because she had been texting on her phone during the accident. She saw the aftermath, but not the initial reaction. Had she been enjoying the scenery around her, she may have been able to give helpful information into what occurred.
This would be a hard task to implement. There would have to be some kind of limit to phone, computer, headphone, ect use while walking and riding on the metro, buses, ect. Because these electronics have become such a crutial part of daily life for so many people, it would be equally as difficult to keep people following this limit. It could be issued like the law of tecting while driving. It would be a law, but people would still do it. They would know that doing it could be potentially dangerous, but the reasoning behind it is for the better.