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Comparing More's Ideal Society And The Real World

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There are major differences in both the genre of Utopia including Thomas More’s version and the world we live in, and that social life in the real world can never be closed, while a text can claim to be closed. The story goes on and on in this world along with its ever-perpetual changes occurring. With the complexity of the social order along with the issues and facts that comes along, it can never be understood so well. In contrast, an author can single-handedly establish a Utopia and all of its perfection without going into details that can connect to our world. This becomes a problem for us because we only hold an idea of what a Utopia might be like, but when we take these ideas in real life, wouldn’t we have this ideal society by now? Therefore …show more content…

It begins with a man named More whom is an ambassador for King Henry VIII and England. His friend Peter Giles and a traveler known as Raphael Hythloday conversed in the matters of societies from England and then exploring several issues ranging from the situation of economics, harmony, and the moral code of these societies. The author More acts as his own character in the book, although the characters within such as Hythloday and Giles acts as other viewpoints towards their discussion. Hythloday brought up an interesting place to talk about, a New World island of Utopia where an ideal society actually exists. Although what is intriguing is how the last name Hythloday means in the Greek Language is “expert in nonsense,” which made More questioned the idea of Utopia. Nearing the end of the book, that “quite a few of laws and customs Hythloday had described as existing among the Utopians were really absurd” (Thomas More 110). Skeptical about this location, More was still interested in seeing it existing in the societies he has seen. What is interesting here is that this is what people are doing today and the past, to create a Utopia. The aspects and the idea of it is promising, an almost impossible dream-like place that society can work towards. Without an image of this goal in society, what would be the reason to

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The idea of a utopia, a state or place where everything is perfect, is one that has been fantasized and described by many authors in several different ways. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, a perfect society can appear very different to different people. Two books that both attempt to illustrate the idea of a perfect society but with stark contrasts are Anthem by Ayn Rand and The Giver by Lois Lowry. Both encourage the idea of prioritizing one’s community, and duty to said community, over oneself in order to maintain a perfect and peaceful society. However, utopian societies are usually shown to not be as perfect as they seem when analyzed in literature.

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It builds this idea that the west is still the new frontier, still waiting for people to flock and discover whatever wonders await from them. The passage ends with “it is where you just go”, hinting that many people just leave for the west just simply because they want to. Many who move out west have no real motive, they just want to escape whatever problems lie in the east. There is no real objective that anyone wants to achieve when they escape to the west, they just want to start fresh. This contrasts the idea of the self-made man.

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So Equality departed from society, he ran into the Uncharted Forest with his invention. After meeting with the woman he met by the fields near his work place, Liberty-5-3000, the Golden One, they continue deeper into the forest together. Soon they stumbled upon a house from the Unmentionable Times. In the house there was a great quantity of books from the Unmentionable Times. After a few days he discovered the meaning of “I” and ideas of individualism.

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For an utopian society to exist, there needs to be a merging of conformity and individualism in the society. Pure individualism or pure conformity in a society leads to a lopsided and corrupted society; they need to exist in synchrony. In Merry Mount, the people follow an ideology of complete freedom of thought and of individualism. The Puritan’s society shows what happens when everyone conforms and no one expresses their individual beliefs. When the ideologies of conformity and individualism merge it combines into a greater society as a whole, better than either of the individual half’s.

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The book Utopia written by Thomas More in the early 16th century provides an unreliable narrator named Hythlodaeus. Not only does his name translate to “speaker of nonsense” in Greek, but within the book, Utopia, Hythlodaeus forgets the location of this mysterious island, and even then explains that he has forgotten much of his trip. The work is intended to serve as a serious commentary on Europe and England at the time, which can be seen here, “After all, those fine clothes were once worn by a sheep, and they never turned into anything better than a sheep” (658, para. 9). There, More is referencing the demand for wool in England at the time, causing peasants to become evicted from their land, in order to provide adequate room for sheep herding.

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He continues to talk about this new world throughout the entire book, finishes by saying that England should put the Utopian society into practice. Thomas More, in Utopia, presents a view of humans as generally positive. Though, he believes that humans are naturally greedy, untrustworthy, and “so very unpredictable” (More 105). Because of this he believes that they need restrictions in government and consequently less individual freedom. More says that human nature can be altered by the environment.

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He also suggests, unlike many utopian writers, that when looking for candidates to be included in this experiment, they would need to contain certain qualities. “A good ear for music” and an “aptitude for the fine arts” would put less focus on labor and include people that may be inclined to create innovations to become more efficient and advanced as time goes on. He also suggests that the members have “good manners of families” (194). I believe this to relate back to the relationship between the people. If the people are better mannered, this could lead them into living a more harmonious existence while living in the Phalanstery.

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Goodman is the best representative of people who have lost their beliefs in the true, the good and the beautiful things on earth; they would rather submit themselves to the evil sides. Many of us are simply a copy of Goodman Brown, swaying back and forth between truth and wrong. Sometimes we can make a righteous decision but other times we are like Goodman Brown destroyed by our own human nature. At the assembly, Devil, who disguised as an old man, says to Goodman Brown, “Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness.”

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Throughout Utopia, Thomas More’s opinion regarding the relationship between humankind and animals was prevalent through Hythloday’s perspective. Particularly, this correlation was seen in instances surrounding war, and crimes. Although humans were seen as the superior, more intelligent animal, More believed that humans often reverted back to and were considered animals when they gave into their vices (More). For example, in Utopia, Hythloday brought up his view in regards to punishment for crimes.

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Carr intentionally begins by expressing compelling arguments against what he maintains are misguided and ultimately damaging fundamentals of Utopian thinking so as to convince the reader of a Realist stance. Carr, in my opinion is successful in this regard. Carr critiques Utopianism for opting to ignore how the world really is. A prime example of this is the belief that public opinion can be relied on to judge rightly, that man upholds a moral code that is inherently good, and therefore public opinion is good. To claim that every man will possess a moral code identical to one another is a quintessential demonstration of Utopian’s lack of understanding of reality.

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