Utopia does not a perfect world make
We come across certain words during our childhood which are exotic, yet manage to find enough occasional mentions to end up leaving an impression in our minds. We may never use them by the time we reach our teenage, but we seem to understand what they mean, for the words are exotic, but not complex. Consequently, as one grows up, one forgets when one had first heard that word, even though it is not a usual word like an article or a preposition, which would naturally give that feeling.
Utopia is such a word.
Exactly half a millennium has passed, if only counting years, since this treatise was published. The scale of such a time period can easily get to the head, and even more so, when we realise that More’s words were so far ahead of his time. I’m surprised the work wasn’t labelled as being blasphemous!
More narrates the universe of Utopia through the mouth of Raphael, a sailor who claimed to have travelled with Amerigo Vespucci in the latter’s four voyages of 1507, and who was then left by him, along with 23 other men, at Cabo Frio, Brazil, for six months. From there, Raphael began his own journey and ended up reaching Utopia. By mingling his ideas with real-life events, More subtly saved himself from the aforementioned charge as he could (of course, in jest) easily attribute the ideas to (the fictional) Raphael, absolving himself.
More imagines Utopia as a place where all aspects of human society – administration, economy, polity, social cohesion, system of justice, religion, trade and commerce, employment and other such areas – are perfectly planned and perfectly implemented. Rather, optimally may be the better word.
The term “Utopia” conjures up a perfect place in our minds, where everyone is living happily, the needs of all the people are met, and there is no sadness, no misery, no agony. However, this is more a reflection of the kind of world we would ideally want, and not what this book, from where the word takes its genesis, presents.
Utopia is not a perfect world in an absolute sense of the word – it is perfect in the sense that no improvements are possible. Humans aren’t purely rational creatures. Consequently, a certain non-zero percentage of the members of our species will always end up committing crimes or transgressions of various kinds, moral or otherwise, no matter how perfectly we may manage all our other affairs. In fact, this is reflected in the very presence of a criminal justice system in Utopia. A perfect world, but with criminals? What is that!
Another issue at work is our very idea of perfection. Though it is possible to reach a consensus within a group as regards the possibility, or the lack of it, of attaining it, not a lot of us will be able to define what perfection is. We may have our different definitions or assign different meanings to it – some find it in the people around them, some find it in nature; some believe it is one quality whereas others think it is actually a set of many qualities; for some it is the process of being, for some of becoming and so on.
I have only listed this wide range of interpretations for a specific point in time, across many points in space. Just extend it to many points in time and across many points in space and you’ll see the problem. Perfection can’t even be defined.
As a species, our sensibilities, our moralities, our culture, our visions – all these change as we get exposed to new ideas and discoveries. Surely what we think as being a perfect world also changes from time to time. Equal access to technology and to the fruits of scientific progress might be something we list today, if asked to think of a perfect world, but such a thought was a logical impossibility barely a century ago.
The beauty of Utopia, therefore, doesn’t really lie in the world it presents – it has its own flaws which the modern mind would find weird, if not downright comical (for example the custom of allowing, before any marriage, the would-be groom to observe the would-be bride completely naked, accompanied in this tough circumstance by a matron; and then allowing the bride to see the groom accordingly).
What Utopia has given us is an idea – in our quest for perfection, we do not have the luxury of being indifferent to our very own nature. Utopia is administered so well not because its residents are perfect, but because they are disciplined and devoted towards their state and fellow utopians.
They are human, they have their follies. So does Utopia, but then maybe that is the whole point.