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It turned out to be a highly disciplined, and highly regulated, society...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Sat May 2nd, 2009 at 04:26:30 PM EST
No, I haven't.  Should I?  I suppose Utopia is a rather subjective concept.  But whatever your idea of Utopia is, once you achieve it, ... what comes after?  Is that a dangerous idea?  I think it might be.  

I went to a Catholic school, a place of strict discipline.  The only rules I ever broke were regarding the dress code.  I asked my very intelligent teacher why she was wasting so much energy over my untucked shirt.  What difference did it make how I wore my shirt?  Was a dress code just a way to make us conform?  She said everyone needs something to rebel against, and it is safer to rebel against a dress code than something else.  

It's something to think about...

"Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms." -Dostoevsky

by poemless on Sat May 2nd, 2009 at 04:33:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]
but More's conclusion (rightly or wrongly) seems to be that you needed to control more than the dress code - in fact, you needed to control pretty much everything. Maybe he got it wrong, but the original Utopia is not a hotbed of freedom.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Sat May 2nd, 2009 at 04:39:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I don't think it would be.  I don't think I've ever suggested it would.  

"Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms." -Dostoevsky
by poemless on Sat May 2nd, 2009 at 04:45:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]
BTW, now that I think of it, she was my Russian teacher as well as my English compostition teacher.  

"Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms." -Dostoevsky
by poemless on Sat May 2nd, 2009 at 04:46:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]
If you liked Catholic School, you might find More's Utopia similar.  At least he opposed enclosure of the commons.  And by coining the word and founding the genre he blazed the trail for others.  Perhaps his most valuable contribution was the concept of imagining a different world that could be better according to some criterion.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat May 2nd, 2009 at 08:39:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I actually really did like Catholic School, on the whole.  Even though I was an atheist even then.  I don't know if that says something about me, or something about public school in America.

I suppose the problem is that some people thrive in a highly structured, highly disciplined environment, and some do not.  And the point is, IMO, ensuring people can thrive.

"Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms." -Dostoevsky

by poemless on Mon May 4th, 2009 at 04:54:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Utopia is not a hotbed of freedom

More got that right, it seems.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat May 2nd, 2009 at 04:47:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Wikipedia
Utopia, with the subtitle On the best state of a republic and on the new island of Utopia (Latin: Dē optimō reī pūblicae statű dēque novā īnsulā Ūtopiā), is a 1516 book by Sir Saint Thomas More. The book, written in Latin, is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. The name of the island is derived from the Greek words ou (οὐ), "not", and tópos (τόπος), "place", with the suffix -ía (-ία) that is typical of toponyms; hence Outopía (Οὐτοπία; Latinized as Ūtopia, with stress on the second syllable), "no-place land, non-existing place."

It should be noticed that, in English, Utopia is pronounced exactly as Eutopia (the latter word, in Greek Εὐτοπία [Eutopía], meaning "good place," contains the prefix εὐ- [eu-], "good", with which the οὐ of Utopia has come to be confused in English pronunciation).[1] This something that More himself addresses in an addendum to his book Wherfore not Utopie, but rather rightely my name is Eutopie, a place of felicitie.[2]

One interpretation holds that this suggests that while Utopia might be some sort of perfected society, it is ultimately unreachable.

Despite modern connotations of the word "utopia," it is widely accepted that the society More describes in this work was not actually his own "perfect society." Rather he wished to use the contrast between the imaginary land's unusual political ideas and the chaotic politics of his own day as a platform from which to discuss social issues in Europe.

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Sat May 2nd, 2009 at 11:04:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The best place is no place just like hell are the others
by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Sat May 2nd, 2009 at 11:06:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Is Wyoming Utopia?


Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun May 3rd, 2009 at 04:33:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]
But whatever your idea of Utopia is, once you achieve it, ... what comes after? Is that a dangerous idea? I think it might be.

Shhhh...poemless...have you never heard of "happily ever after?" It's the invisible hand at work again...

by Sassafras on Sun May 3rd, 2009 at 11:43:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
"Happily ever after" is an oxymoron.  Happy or forever, pick one.


"Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms." -Dostoevsky
by poemless on Mon May 4th, 2009 at 10:40:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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