Featured image by Chris Hobcroft. Follow the link for more of this artist’s work.
Utopia is a fleeting thing. We want for a world in which everything is available in abundance with no work. We crave a world in which we can pursue our passions and never worry about finding food, shelter, or any physical need. We desire a world in which there is no sickness, no hatred, no war, no famine, no suffering, and no death.
The word itself is a pun, according to the British Library, when in 1516 Thomas More coined the word from two Greek words “ou” meaning no or not, and “topos” meaning place. Utopia roughly translated, then, means “nowhere,” and is itself satire on the Greek word eu-topos, meaning “good place.”
I love working. I don’t always enjoy my work, but I love to work. It creates a sense of accomplishment, gives me structure, value, and purpose. My work, when done well, benefits not only myself, but my family, friends, and community. With work, I become part of a larger whole, become a piece in the workings of society at large, and through work, I can identify things about myself, my preferences, my likes, dislikes, strengths, and shortcomings. With work, I can make investments in myself, improve my lot in life, and empower myself to be a better worker, communicator, and human being.
Utopians don’t see the world in this way. Utopians have disconnected the idea of prosperity and perfection with hard work and sacrifice. Perfection in and of itself is an impossible goal. Those who believe that they have become perfect beings stop questioning themselves, stop working on themselves, and ultimately are defeated by that hubris.
Ghandi, well regarded for his use of peaceful non-cooperation, held many beliefs. According to the Indira Ghandi National Open University, Ghandi was a believer in the goodness of mankind, and that our evolution from brute to human was both gradual, and marked by self-restraint. One of my favorite pins from Pinterest is his seven dangers to human virtue, listed below.
But the Utopians have inherent problems with these values. And Utopians, with their collectivist and authoritarian cohorts, wish for power, and see that in order to keep the population compliant, they must sever these intentionally. Universal Basic Income is wealth without work. Sexual liberation, the proliferation of pornography, and the disconnect of sex from both love and procreation, are pleasure without conscience. The use of statistics, credentials, and licensing as the basis for belief is Knowledge without character. Utilitarian arguments, eugenics, gain of function research are science without humanity. The idolization of institutions, the love of money, the worship of sex are religion without sacrifice. Government mandates, edicts, and attempts to seize individual liberties are politics without principle. We are engaging in the things that Ghandi warned about.
And much of it is labeled as “for the greater good.” Frontiers in Psychology talks about a number of negative consequences of the COVID lockdowns. Compromised immune systems in the people we aim to protect. Hundreds of millions starving from the disruption to the supply chain. Billions facing financial insecurity. Historically, movements ranging from Eugenics to communism and Nazism operated on the notion of the value of the collective over the individual. Millions and millions of deaths of people who were necessary sacrifices to the collective. And we find ourselves in the US, treading on that same path, confident that our foray into socialism won’t have the same result.
I go to the grocery store and find that there are products routinely out of stock. Chicken, fish, beef, canned goods, cleaning products, things that we regularly use are harder and harder to come by. The production lines and supply chains are broken, limping along as people stay home from work, buoyed by the enhanced unemployment and eviction moratoriums. But this constant disconnect from structure and work is having debilitating effects. People are losing their job skills, they are becoming un-hirable except in many low skill jobs, and they are feeding into the rush of inflation that is hitting the US economy. The demand didn’t wane, but the supply has been unable to keep up.
The ruse of utopia on earth relies on two promises: that you can have something for nothing indefinitely, and that you don’t need to work for anything. Utopia falls victim to hedonism without fail, because people, left to their own devices, often don’t make wise choices. And that hedonism is entropy to initiative, it weighs down the desire to do more because there is no reward, but for the momentary pleasure of engaging in it. Once hedonism becomes the norm, perceptions of self-sacrifice, and delayed gratification evaporate, and eventually the system collapses into authoritarianism as those who have power compel people to work.
Unless we can re-couple the notions of utopia with hard work, we will end up in the same place as every socialist experiment: a destroyed economy with two classes of people, and countless deaths from both the economic collapse, and government compulsion.
A Place 4Politics 