Like Taylor,
I find myself liking qualities from Both Bellamy and Morris’ futuristic ideas;
however, I seem to slightly enjoy more of Morris’ ideas. The idea I enjoy above
all is that of work. Morris says, “We are not short of wealth, there is a kind
of fear growing up amongst us that we shall one day be short of work. It is a
pleasure which we are afraid of losing, not a pain”(1232). Having this mindset
completely changes everyone’s life. Looking forward to going to work and enjoying
your job makes you appreciate your life a lot more and understand the value of
hard work and the value of doing what you love. Frankly, I think our society
should be more like this. Yes, we are encouraged to do what we love, but I
cannot tell you how many people have told me “So an English degree, how will
you make money?” Yes, I hope to have a rather high salary, but I believe doing
what I love will be more rewarding than money. Aside from my small rant, Morris’
people also have the idea that, “instead of avoiding work, everybody seeks it”
(1325). This would help to have all jobs fulfilled and a very successful, high
functioning society.
Though I
really enjoyed Morris’ ideas, I found myself very intrigued with Bellamy trying
to restore the old system of living in his society with a new way of life. On
page 30, Bellamy explains that this new system would have, “more individual
dignity and freedom, but it would be at the price of general poverty and the
arrest of material progress.” I think that it is good to have a society (much
like our own) that has individual dignity and freedom but poverty should not be
the price to pay for being free. Perhaps Bellamy could find a way to combine
his ideas with Morris, such as the value of money (or lack there of), so people
could have some sort of freedom without living in complete poverty. In
addition, people may realize that being materialistic isn’t necessary to have a
good life, and perhaps they could focus more on the non-materialistic benefits
they are rewarded with as they work.
While
reading both texts I also found that many ideas prevalent in both societies
were similar to ideas I enjoyed from Thomas More’s “Utopia.” One example of
this is the idea of “no money or obvious exchanges” (1088). In our society
today, much of what we do is greatly influenced by money. In both of these
societies, money does not dictate how these people live and enjoy their lives
(which I think is wonderful!!). In
addition to money not having value, there is no buying and selling of goods,
which for the most part takes away classicism. Lastly, as I previously
explained, Morris’ society really appreciates and values their work, just as
the people do in “Utopia.” Perhaps the BEST society could combine ideas from
Bellamy, Morris AND More’s ideal societies.
I am not sure that the ideas of Morris and Bellamy could be combined because they solve the issues of the economic system of the time, but in much different ways. Bellamy proposes an increase in structure as the entire society is one large corporation. Conversely, Morris proposes the elimination of structure all together as no corporations exist at all. I think that our current economic system would be the middle ground between the two. We have some organizations but not one overarching one. I do like the idea that both societies limit inequality by fairly distributing the resources. Our society could learn a lesson from these texts.
ReplyDeleteSomething I've realized recently is that a lot of these Utopian texts we're reading are fairly old. Because of this, they don't have nearly the amount of distractions that we have now. There are many more ways to be lazy now than there were back then, though that's not to say people weren't lazy back then. It would've been far more likely that people were enthusiastic about working when there's just not a ton else to do with spare time. Truly I wish we could have one giant job shuffle and let everyone pick their ideal jobs, but I also wonder how well that would work.
ReplyDelete