Utopia In Childhood's End

Throughout the book Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, many aspects of human society are exposed and put on center stage to be criticized. In his book, about a futuristic utopia he shows how different events and innovations may threaten to alter our society in ways that may not always benefit humankind. In the book Clarke states his belief that humanity will become “passive sponges-- absorbing but never creating”, (135). There are many qualities of humans that are brought to light in Clarke’s book. Human nature is complex and complicated. In Childhood’s End there is a quote that represents exactly how humans are, “As their material conditions improve, men raise their sights and become discontented with power and possessions that once

In the book Clarke’s example of the way that people are threatened is the Overlords when they make the Earth a utopia. Many people believe that creativity is based on pain. In the utopia made by the Overlords everyone has everything they could imagine so there is no pain which means there is no creativity to create art and write books. People’s ingenuity was vulnerable because the Overlords limited the scope of study on space. The survival of people on Earth with the Overlords was great. Everyone had access to life’s essentials so no one went without everyday necessities. In real life the main factor in threatening human creativity, ingenuity and survival is technology. People in the real world are becoming threatened by our technology. People aren’t as creative because they have less pain. Technology has made it so that people can do many things more easily, therefore since everything is available with a simple touch, there is not as much need to be creative, so there is not as much art. Our decreasing ingenuity is also caused by our technology. Since humans have the technology to do many things for us, humans have slowed down in the creation of new inventions. Our survival is also being threatened because humankind have now found nuclear weapons that could be used to harm millions of