What I should be posting is pictures of beautiful days next to West Virginian rivers, haunted houses, ships in Jamestown, the ocean and good times with old friends, and cute guys in knickers from Williamsburg…but all you get is my philosophy paper, since my evenings are still filled with homework. The rest is yet to come.
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For utopia to work, human nature must be fundamentally changed. The reason utopia has not been actualized is because this change in human nature is either impossible, or hasn’t been discovered/implemented yet. The writings about utopia either change human nature to something different with no connecting link, or think that by changing society (or specific aspects of it), human nature will naturally follow.
Utopia requires an outer and an inner change, a change in human nature. In class we discussed how it is important to change the outside as well as the inside—and at the same time—to create utopia. “Unless you change everything, everything doesn’t change at all.” Outside, the needs are supplied, and inside is changed to it is REALIZED that all the needs are supplied. This realization is the fundamental change in human nature that is still lacking realization today.
In Thomas More’s Utopia, the people seem rather perfect: they still desire, still have fight in them, still crave learning, but don’t have the vices. It is held that greed and stealing and hate in general are all because of private property and cash: “As long as you have private property, and as long as cash money is the measure of all things, it is really not possible for a nation to be governed justly or happily.”
Jameson, in his article about More’s Utopia, comments that “a no-place must be put together out of already existing representations.” From that perspective, human nature is taking all the good that we know and getting rid of the bad. He identifies in Utopia that you need to remove gold, pride, and hierarchy for true human nature to come out and the people to become, well, “utopian.”
Other 16th century utopians reads, such as Rabelais (“The Abbey of Theleme”), threw me off with the satire. Just when I think I understand his view, I realize he was making fun of it (and me, incidentally) all along. I would say that he thought human nature was screwed up, so he wrote it satirically about it to point this out even more strongly. Historically and religiously, the Christian view of human nature would have been fundamental, especially in this time period. The traditional Christian view of human nature is that it is corrupt and in need of a transformation through a work of God.
Montaigne (Of the Cannibals), by contrast, was enamored with the natives, and the new cultures that were discovered during this period of exploration, thinking that he had finally found what human nature was when left to its own devices. In reality, he does not have a full picture of their society—not ever having left France himself—and in just the early stages of discovery. For him, to get to perfect human nature would be to take all England to this “new world” and let them get back to their true selves.
In the 17th century, utopian writing seems very scientifically (Like Francis Bacon’s “New Atlantis”) and dryly (Like James Harrington’s “The commonwealth of Oceana”) written. The utopias seem especially repressive in this time period (Winstanley’s “The Law of Freedom in a Platform” and Margaret Cavendish’s “The Inventory of Judgments Commonwealth”). Human nature is seen as something that needs to be disciplined and brought into order.
The 18th century is found worshipping reason as the answer to their problems. Human nature in Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” is seen as beast-like in the yahoos, and then reason-based and desire-less in the Houyhnhnms, which represent the “utopian” dream: “Their grand maxim is, to cultivate reason.” In Mercier’s “Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred” it just takes time for human nature to naturally choose the good over the bad: “How glorious it is to discover the means of making those private passions subservient to the general good!” So human nature will win out—just give it enough time (or more time). In these utopias they, as good humans making a rational choice, got rid of foreign trade and wealth because it corrupts, and it is as simple as that.
In “Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind,” by Condorcet, “The time will come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their reason.” Human nature will end up good and reasonable. The three things holding back human nature from this is: inequality in wealth, in status, and in education.
In the 19th century, there is the continued glorification of reason, as well as of technology (Etzler) and industry/capitalism (Charles Fourier and Charles Henri de Saint-Simon’s “Sketch of a New Political System,” where he happily spends “twelve millions” on different projects—or to pay off the old system), or the opposite (Marx and Engels’ “Communist Manifesto”).
I enjoyed Robert Owen’s “Book of the New Moral World,” that has a utopia where the desires are not stifled, and it is divided by age (interesting to note that he founded “New Harmony,” a community in Indiana). His solution for human nature was that “the natural and rational classification of society, when adopted, will forever preserve those rights inviolate…calm the evil passions…introduce order and wisdom…into all the affairs of mankind. A new spirit of equity, justice, charity, and kindness would be created.” Order people by age, giving each the best job for them and that age, and human nature will transform into something good and well-working for utopia.
The common thread in all of these readings is that human nature, left on its own, should be good and compliable towards utopian living. The only reason why it is messed up is due to bad socialization. Melford Spiro’s article “Utopia and Its Discontents: the Kibbutz and Its Historical Vicissitudes” brings up the idea that there is problems within the utopian belief in the unlimited power of education, or/and its idea of human nature.
The article studies Kibbutzim in Israel, the largest utopian movement in history: “three generations of communally born and educated members…the oldest kibbutzim have produced four.” This is perfect—we can study their kids, who have been raised in the utopian environment—and see if they become more of this “good person” that utopian thought thinks they should become.
Beginning around 1910, Jews from Russia with the Zionist theology, went to Israel and faced tough times. They found that to survive, they had to bind together. “They believed that human nature, though essentially good, is corrupted by private property, social inequality, and the artificial conventions of urban society.”
By the end of the 1960s it was basically the end of classic kibbutzim. At that point, they were known as the elite of Israel, and very highly respected. But then came two crises: economic and psychological. Economically (money problems), changes were made, averting the end of kibbutzim, but creating a diluted version of the original ideas. Psychologically, they found that the children born and raised in the kibbutz were discontent with the way things were—whereas utopian ideology would have said they would have been a more actualized, complete person.
The author then makes a claim about human nature. Since these children were raised to be collectivists, and they naturally were not—even though everything around them was, and they were taught from the very beginning to be—this then says that individualism is natural to human nature: “that preferences for individual over collective possessions, privacy over togetherness, personal over group interests, and freedom over equality…are human nature.”
This puts a chink in utopian thinking that human nature just has to return to normal. Instead, Melford Spiro points out three things that happened to create something different—collectivism—that lead to the beginning of the kibbutz and utopian living: first, “adolescent rebellion against parents and other authority figures who represented the values of the regnant social order,” second, “an emotionally powerful social experience (or experiences),” and lastly, “a motivationally powerful belief system.”
Around 1910, that generation was up against the European system that cut them out of life. They moved to a new place up against hard situations and experiences where they needed each other to survive, and had their Zionist theology. The following generations did not have these three things: no reason to rebel against their authorities or social order, no communitas (deep community, binding them together) experience, and they never picked up on the Zionist theology. Most of the future generations live there simply because it was “home.”
The two conclusions of the article are that “utopian communes…produce discontents—if not among their founders, then among their succeeding native-born generations,” and “native born members of utopian communes are discontents because their individualist motivational dispositions are stronger than their collectivist dispositions.”
From this, it seems like we can’t get to collectivist until after we have tried individualist and found it didn’t work for us. I think that people are messed up. We are broken from the start and learn how to get worse. You take away all the bad stuff and we will ingeniously find new ways to mess things up. Take a look at suburban projects—parents trying to give their kids everything: gated communities, good educations, lacking nothing—and yet, those kids are just as messed up as anyone else, just like the kids in the kibbutz.
I am all for imagining utopias, dreaming and wishing for better days; I think it is a vital part for learning and growing. But I don’t believe we will ever reach utopia until there is a fundamental change in human nature, something that doesn’t come by simply changing society. You can change everything on the outside to perfect, but you can’t run away from yourself. The inside has to be changed as well.
yep. 
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