Country Mouse/City Mouse

I wish I knew what edition of the story this lovely illustration comes from,
but alas, I never wrote it down.
I am a bad example.

Remember the fable about the Country Mouse and the City Mouse? Even though the plot isn't (strictly speaking) relevant to our readings from Morris and Bellamy, it's always what I think of when I read these two stories. Both of them create a communist/socialist utopia, but they go about it in radically different ways. Every time I return to these novels, I'm struck by how similar their values are, and simultaneously how differently those values are realized.

These texts (published in 1888 and 1890) are very much products of their time! The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848 (1850 for the English translation). And there's quite a bit of Darwin to be found in there, too, if you're looking for it; On the Origin of Species was published in 1859.

Karl Marx.
He's hiding Engels in his jacket and won't let him escape.

A couple of you have mentioned that you'd like to see a utopia that combines these two. It would be interesting, wouldn't it? Could we find enough commonality, or are the differences just too great to reconcile?

Love thy neighbor, Hate thyself

While everyone is feeling guilty that they should be brushing up on their Bible readings or going to church more, I am in a whole new world of wonder. Some of the phrases match the ones I hear in the Torah on Yom Kipur (Our day of judgment), but my religious knowledge is more attuned to how to prepare a mean bagel with Lox and Cream Cheese or knowing how to deal with curly hair. Growing up Jewish meant not really understanding communions and confirmations, and just trying to make comparisons with the holidays and traditions I grew up with instead. As I mentioned to Dr. MB, I attempted to learn the basics of the bible for fear of not knowing allusions used on my AP Lit test in high school. I believe I used the Precious Moments children's bible.

Needless to say, my knowledge of bible verses is slim, and unless Laura Ingalls practiced writing the bible verse on her slate in her little house on the prairie, I'm probably not familiar with it. I really liked the way that this was organized. The is the topic I want to discuss and this is how I'm going to explain it. I guess Augustine was set up similarly, and I know I bashed it, but I felt here that the explanations were vital to understanding the topics and subjects presented and that it was written in a pretty clear and easy manner that kept it interesting and not as dry.

There are so many thoughts both positive and negative brewing in my head, but I guess I'll just focus on the things that stood out. I suppose the biggest point to be aware of is that those in a monastery are to live their life for God. This, of course, seems obvious, but I've never realized how demanding that statement is. You live your life for God. Not for you, at all. You should never do anything to make yourself feel better or happier, and you should never be upset with yourself or angry at yourself. In fact you should feel nothing yourself, and you can't even pity yourself if you feel any of these things. You were born merely to serve God and that is all you will do. If you are happy, it is because you have done things to make God happy. Nothing can be for personal gain. Everything comes back to God.

And while we're on the subject of what life is meant to be lived for, it's also key to note that everyone should be fearful of God and Hell. Everyone must accept that God is awesome and almighty and there should be fear in their hearts and minds in order to serve God. You may love God, but you may not think yourself a comrade or equal to God. You must always serve God and respect God. You also must live in constant fear of Hell. You can't just be aware that hell is a bad place, you must constantly fear it every day and it should be your biggest worry. Your life goal should be eternal bliss in Heaven. Everything you do is to earn that eternal glory, but you must also remember that it is easy to fall into the pits of hell. It is so simple to think a bad thought that turns to sin and drives you to hell. There is even a portion of the text that says to never follow your intuition. It basically states that it might seem like a good idea at the time, but that ultimately whatever trial you attempt will end with you in Hell, because any personal idea or plan is apparently unholy and can only result in hellish turmoil.

The other points that seem to get drilled into your head during the reading are obedience and general rule following. Rules of any kind are law. You should follow these rules and respect them above all else. You must also be obedient. You must do everything you are told to no matter what you think of it. This goes for the rulers at your institution or from God himself. It doesn't matter what the command is, you must follow it for God. It is considered insane to follow your heart and instinct. Why should you need to come up with ideas and plans of your own if you have rules and obedient orders to follow?

I could go on and on with the bad and the good, but my notes and the text itself are endless. (The discussion should be filled with content and length too!) But overall, I found the rules fascinating because they were all backed by bible verses that seemed to be the perfect mottos and slogans for installing the rule. Everything also circled back to serving God. So while a rule might not make sense to us in a modern sense, they did all serve a purpose to serving God. A monastery resident would know everything to do, think, say and act without having to ask [which is good because we shouldn't really be talking unless absolutely necessary...I mean a question could provoke an answer which is scandalous] It's perplexing to read something in a Utopia class that is all about living for one thing: God and not for creating a perfect world for ourselves. In this sense, we must serve God and think nothing of ourselves in order to gain that Utopian eternal life, but while you live, you may only serve God, you must respect all others, but you can think nothing and do nothing for yourself. You can live, but you can't live for you.

The Needs of the Many...

"We aren't aiming to make any one group outstandingly happy but to make the whole city so, as far as possible" (Plato, The Republic, IV, 420b).

Is Utopia always a matter of privileging "the needs of the many" over "the needs of the few (or the one)"? Is it always a matter of communities, rather than individuals?

If so, living as we do in a culture that remains firmly focused on individual rights, responsibilities, and fulfillment, can/will Utopia ever really seem attractive to us?

(re-post from 2013)

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Senior year philosophy class is slowly making its way back into my mind although it's hard to pinpoint which school of philosophy belongs to which philosopher. I thought I had read this before, but it turns out I was thinking of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Luckily, The Republic is written differently and is not dry and is amazingly easier to follow than other works by Plato. For those of us who were in British Literature last semester, I imagine I'm not the only one who was reminded of Beelzebub and the other little devils making up their plans for what to do in hell. It was all too easy to picture Socrates and company sitting around in the same way discussing plans for how their city was going to work.

Anyway, I found it especially interesting how a "city" comes into being. This reading made me think of the expression, If you don't like the way it's done, you're welcome to do it yourself. Every day, I know that we all take turns complaining about something, no matter how petty, and talk about how we wish it was different or how we would do something differently. Maybe it's the way a class is graded or how someone conducted an interview. But sometimes it's even larger like how a country is ruled or how a powerful person decides to make a grand decision like go to war or create a new law. Often times, it's so easy for us to disagree or say what we would do instead because we don't actually have that real power to make a change or it's easy to say something when only so few are listening and the situation is purely hypothetical.

So when it comes to the case of creating a utopia, or even just a successful city, it's interesting to see how that plan comes into play. A person might say that we should not have laws because they feel that laws create a lot of pressure for society and restrict peoples' freedom. This all seems well and good until a store gets robbed or a person is murdered and there are no rules against it and no repercussions for doing these things. So then we go back and say, well, maybe laws aren't so bad after all because they protect us. The same trial and error could follow with government, education, guidelines, etc. Plato's writing goes along with this concept as it starts with a single person and the realization that one person cannot do it all, so obviously why not have more than one citizen in this city? So Socrates decides to have a handful of people who each provide different abilities and trades and in turn will use their skills to provide for the other city members. The list of people grows and grows as Socrates and the others realize that so many people are needed to make, share, export and exchange different things. If a person is amazing at a trade, it is better to let them spend all their time practicing and perfecting their trade than to make them juggle several different tricks and trades at a lower quality.

I also was intrigued by the discussion of heroes and leaders that make up a society. There were so many rules and quirks that were necessary to creating the ideal people for general city members to look up to. Heroes had to be tough and unafraid of death and had to be earnest and true. Heroes are designed to show what true justice is and to show humankind that you must be just in order to succeed in both life and the after life. Acting unjust can make you successful in the short-term, but it will catch up with you in the end. Characters in stories also had to act a certain way because young city members may not know how to separate fact and fiction and should only be shown the proper ways to act and values to have in a good society. All of these people, whether real people of the city or people just being talked about or passed around as stories need to be poised both in action and mind and cannot be vicious or graceless because that might give people the wrong idea. I agree with the theory behind this as I do think people are poorly influenced by celebrities who have gone off the rail or criminals who are sensationalized on the news, but I also disagree because I think there is something to be said for learning from mistakes or by learning stories that teach morals and lessons from failures and trials.

Finally, I find the brief discussion of medical necessity interesting. Socrates and the others agree that there is a need for doctors. They also agree that the doctors must be experienced and wise beyond their years, having seen a variety of illnesses and ailments so that nothing comes to them as a surprise. However, they say that these doctors must also have been diseased or injured themselves, because why else would they spend their life caring for the ill if they were not ill themselves? It sounds crazy to us, but if we think about it, a hospital is one of the easiest places to get sick in. We say to avoid them if possible because disease travels and is everywhere and we don't want to make ourselves unnecessarily sick if we don't have to. Maybe doctors should be the same way. You can only treat someone for something you have already been exposed to or had experience with. We also see the ever-popular Utopia-style view on life. Do we treat those with chronic, incurable disease or do we leave them to their fate? In books like The Giver, we learn about "the release" where older people are killed once they reach a certain age or in Utopia where we offer those who can no longer contribute to society an easy way out. Are we being kind by helping people prolong their lives if they are terminal or are we fighting nature? Would these people be more comfortable letting go and accepting their fate? Are we actually being too cruel by letting those live who are mentally ill and have no chance at a normal life?

We all have our own opinions, questions, faiths and morals that we would shape into a city or our own or even a world, but how much of what we want would actually work? Would we eventually run through trial and error and realize that the world we have now is how it should be or is there really a better way?

Welcome to Utopia!

If only it were so easy to bring us all into a better world! But alas, there is no magic word that can do this.

One of the problems with discovering Utopia is that no one can seem to agree on what it is. Some people think that Utopia looks like this:

But to others, Utopia looks more like this:

Over the course of this semester, we will be exploring many different visions of Utopia, and adding a few of our own thoughts into the mix. By the end of the semester, will we be any closer to discovering Utopia? Perhaps not. But we will certainly have learned a lot about our society and ourselves along the way.

Allons-y!

Dr MB