Engrish

Engrish

Utopias are an attractive idea but in practice prove to be out of reach.

A utopia can be defined as a kind of “perfect place”, the concept or reality of any particular utopia, however, is completely subjective, i.e. one mans utopia could very well be another’s dystopia. Generally speaking though, most utopias seek psychological, environmental, technological, domestic, political and social “perfection”. Utopia’s thus, by their own definition, are impossible, because a utopia requires humans to stop being human. A utopia seems to require at least some form of political or social oppression to work. Utopia’s leave no room for individual or progressive thinking, or personal gain and self betterment.   In Thomas More’s Utopia there are aspects of the society which, to us, would seem rather dystopian and in the film Pleasantville, directed by Gary Ross the society and values of Pleasantville is attractive to the main character David, but when he finds himself within it, he realizes that in reality it is quite flawed as freedom of choice and creativity is completely limited.

Thomas More’s Utopia is attractive because it preaches equality and fairness in a context that is anything but equal. 16th Century Europe was the time of kings and peasants, More describes European Kings as greedy and war mongering and are mainly concerned with making themselves richer and collecting colonies rather than properly and justly governing their people. Utopia is a place free of greed and vanity because there is no shortage of any goods, there is no need take more than necessary as nothing runs out. These elements of utopia would have been particularly attractive to some philosophers/free thinkers in the 16th century. The idea of equality and abundant resources were attractive then and are still attractive now, but it must be considered that this kind of equality requires people to become drones, the way this society works is that people will be prepared to move...