Utopias are an extremely interesting concept and in many cases, writing on potential utopias can serve as a framework for an ideal society. However, in many tales of utopias, human nature is completely abandoned in exchange for an ideal society. In creating a framework for a perfect government, possibility must be considered and when authors abandon the line of pragmatic thinking in exchange for an ideal dream, they are essentially participating in a mental exercise that can only result in futility rather than actual change. When authors are reliant on large scale societal change at the individual level, their utopias are met with an impossible hurdle to overcome. Far more pragmatic are the intentional communities of the Amish, Shakers and other groups that have actually created these intentional societies. In this blog post, I will discuss the various utopias in literature that are impossible pipe dreams, why they fail to contribute anything significant in creating a framework for a good world, and also what authors on utopia should aim for when writing.
Presuppositions of humans is a necessity in any government. While we would like to presume the benevolent nature of humanity, our implementation of multiple laws is highly contrary to this assumption. On balance, even if we believe humans have a tendency towards goodness, a functional society will still implement laws to ensure society is functional. While many of utopias I will examine do not eliminate the usage of laws, they certainly tend to portray individuals as far different from reality.
The origin of the term 'utopia' comes from Sir Thomas More who wrote on his idea of a utopia. However, in his utopia, human nature is abandoned. In an ideal society, there should be no solid reasons for rebellion otherwise implicitly it can be concluded that society has major flaws. The usage of slaves is clearly contrary to any utopia that desires a harmonious society. Across the stream of history, slave rebellions are common as seen in Sparta and more recently, the Americas. To pretend that any utopia could be functional with slaves is simply delusion. More's disregard of human rights doesn't end with slaves. He also creates a society that would have to exist without ambition as nobody can move up the ladder and that people would somehow be self motivated. With perfect equality, the incentive to work breaks down but More fails to address these various issues. The multitude of flaws associated with More's utopia was evident in our class discussion and even worse is that More is unhelpful in creating a framework since a framework must work within the realm of human possibility.
Swift's utopia with the Houyhnhnms appears to be a parody on these impossible utopias that violate human nature with his portrayal of the utopia's denizens as non-human entities, specifically horses. However, even if Swift's commentary is satirical, I think it is still valuable to look over where the horses' perfect society is reliant on an impossibility. All the horses are framed as not knowing evil, inherently benevolent and perfectly rational. These horses are thus able to tolerate inequality as some are born inferior and accept their equivalent role. Since these horses are perfect from the start, everything that might cause the society to deteriorate can always be balanced with the excuse that these horses are perfect. Obviously this type of society cannot accommodate humanity and doesn't create a framework for reliable change. As a result of human nature, many of the reforms that might work for the Houyhnhnms will not work for us, the Yahoos of reality. For example, only discussing problems every four years would prove disastrous in a human society and large problems would result from implementing such changes. A society for Houyhnhnms is not a society for humans.
In all these utopias human nature is bent to such an extent to make the utopias work that feasibility is abandoned. However in any viable framework the only thing that can be modified is society's structure. A caveat to the above arguments is that the idea of human nature being the Achilles' heel of multiple utopias does not necessarily apply to isolated communities that exclude those who do not fit their model. For example, if one has to choose to be a part of a utopia, the choice to participate implicitly means they will match the individuals necessary. For example in the Amish, Zoar, and Shaker communities, the individuals were all fine with a communal system where they didn't need to compete with each other. Individuals who desired to compete and find themselves at the top of a social ladder did not have to participate in these utopias. However as a side effect, these intentional communities are comparatively small to large scale societies like entire governments. In terms of a large scale society, human nature will emerge as a problem if exclusion is not an option thus the above utopias only serve as a framework for a small scale utopia and completely fail for a large scale society. In More's case especially, his intent to create a fully functional society that would theoretically carry a large amount of people is simply an intellectual exercise in futility as there is no practicality for many of his ideas.
Regarding my personal opinions on utopia, I believe there are societal reformations we can implement to approach the state of utopia that these authors all seek. While human nature serves as a barrier in many cases, rather than make structural changes that are reliant on human nature, we can make changes that work around human nature or are flexible in regards to it. For example, laws can be used to address abuses of freedom preventing the idea of freedom from being manipulated by irrational individuals. I think dialogue on a utopia reliant only on societal reforms is far more productive in achieving an ideal government. These utopias would be far more pragmatic and also open the possibility for real reform in stark contrast to those pipe dream utopias that would never see any reform result from their ideas.
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