I have due
Math 2 assignments
History 2 assignments
an essay in English and questions on animal farm
A physics test to study for and a lab. all for tomorrow.
This is my essay so far. I think its crap.
Edit: updated
A utopia is an ideal society; ideal in both the happiness of its inhabitants and in the strength of the society. It is a romantic idea that dates back as far as intermediate religion and Plato’s view of a modified Sparta told in the Republic and is still very relevant in the modern world as seen by the romantic political movements in the last two centuries in socialism and communism. In order for a utopia to succeed, it is necessary for the wide majority of people, in which the utopia is intended to govern, to adopt the philosophies of the creator of the utopia. Not doing this creates a dystopia, which happens in between the start of change in the society until the mass adoption of the creators doctrines, when the society refuses to adopt the doctrines, or to people on the out side of the utopia who do not agree with the doctrines. Thus a utopia and a dystopia are one in the same just differentiating in a point of view. So if a utopia is considered good and a dystopia considered bad, all that is needed to create the good society is have the majority of the people believe in the ideas of the creator. Every utopian society, including the one in Brave New World have had to deal with this problem and there are three main parts to achieving this unified thought.
Controlling irrationality in needed in unifying thought. If being irrational is considered the animalistic part of us and society is an attempt to move away from being animalistic, then the perfect society, a utopia, would have no irrational thought. It is human nature to like consistency and irrationality does not follow any laws or rules. A society in a way is like a machine, built on individual parts all working together. Now imagine if a machine was irrational, if its parts from time to time didn’t follow any laws; the machine would break. The irrational separates us, the rational units us. Consider Milton’s Paradise Lost. What did Satan do wrong? He disagreed with the creator of the utopia, God and why did he disagree? Because of the irrational emotions of vanity and jealousy and because of this heaven becomes separated. Good and happiness are usually associated with each other and while it is true that happiness can be achieved through irrational emotions such as love, it can also easily lead to unhappiness. This is why the governing body of Brave New World feels it necessary to try and remove all emotions not just the irrational ones.
“No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy--to preserve you, so far that it possible, from having no emotions at all” (Huxley, 1998, P. 44). We have determined the removal of irrationality from the individual and thus the society is important but the question becomes how do you remove it? The answer is you don’t remove it, you control it; which gives it laws making it rational. There are two ways of doing this. First, modern science tells us that humans are just bio-chemical organisms and that irrationality - like all actions - is caused by chemical reactions within us. We already use drugs to control disorders, which are irrational and like I preciously stated good and bad are just different perspectives on the doctrines of the creator, so given the right circumstances it would not be out of the realm of imagination to think that a utopian government could declare irrational emotions disorders and fix them with drugs; such as Brave New Worlds soma. Second, the more traditional approach, would be to try and unify experiences and the easiest way of doing this would be to simplify life down to the most common factors. Examples of this would be in Brave New World they have women in common. This removes marriage or exclusiveness and one of the main motivations for love which in turn removes jealousy. It also makes the irrational emotion of lust common for everyone and if its common to everyone, it can’t be irrational. Another example would be in the Republic or in some communist doctrines, in the removal of private property. This makes everyone’s experience the same, making their emotions roughly the same and removes irrational emotions such as greed and envy. Controlling the irrational, the animalistic side and the human or individual side of us, is important in unifying peoples’ ideas with the creators and can be achieved by manipulating or controlling the environment or structure of the society.
Creating a unified experience will unify thought, an important part of that would be to try and diminish social classes. As stated, unified experiences create unified thought.
Focus or having a broad common goal is another way to unify thought. By having a focused community, it forces people into doing actions and having thoughts that would benefit the goal, making their thoughts and experiences similar. A utopia has two such goals built into it by its very definition; security and happiness. The catalyst for a utopia will be one of these with the goal of achieving the other though the first. For example, socialism starts off by trying to achieve a strong state with the hope that achieving a strong state will create happiness. Communism on the other hand, starts of by trying to achieve mass happiness, in the hopes that happiness will create a strong state. Now as an end goal these are great, but happiness and stability can not be the means of achieving themselves in the intermediate term between the creation of the utopia until the perfection of the utopia. The two main means, which become goals in themselves, would be war and religion. War can be used as a excuse and distraction from unhappiness. It is a short term goal. Religion on the other hand creates very distant goals that can never be achieved in a life time. It also answers the problem of death and other unanswerable questions that create irrational thought. Brave New World has a form of religion in their science. They have faith in technology and think that it will deliver them to happiness but they keep it at the fertility cult level - which is to say, the sacrificing of the virgin in hopes of a good crop season, basic level - so that they never let it gain more of a purpose past what is good of the state.
“Once you begin admitting purpose-well you don’t know what the result might be... [People] might lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the human sphere” (Huxley, 1998, P. 177). This points out the problem with using modern religion - mainly Judaism or anything steaming from it - as a focus. If it’s doctrines preach an eternal happiness after death there would be no reason to try and create a state of happiness on earth. Likewise, if it’s doctrines preach eternal unhappiness, such as ancient Greece’s Hades, then the religion would counter its own merits for the society in quelling irrational fears of death. If a utopia, which is perfection, is to be created, no one would want to leave it for another world but at the same time there must be something after death to quell fears and answer unanswerable questions, therefor if religion is to be used in a utopia it should embody reincarnation or non linear time. This also solves the problem of what happens to the religion after the creation of the utopia. If religion is meant to be a means to the creation or perfection of a utopia, the doctrines of what it preaches should be about the perfecting of the utopia, but in perfecting the utopia it makes the religion obsolete. The end of the religion not only reopens the question of death but it would also be a gigantic change for the society which just became perfect. Now change in perfection can only lead to destroying that perfection, because perfection can not become more perfect, so by making the religion non linear you make it eternal. Now we come to war. War, as causality and history have shown us, spawns more war and is by its very nature a cause of unhappiness, which goes against the principles of the utopia. Therefore it should not be used unless necessary. The unfortunate problem is that a utopia will never be perfect as long as there are outside influences that do not believe in the creators doctrines so they must be made to believe and the only way plausible solution is war.
