It’s a Utopia?
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It’s a Utopia?
For many hundreds of years the prophetic vision of the good society slumbered. Until that crucial period in Western history beginning with the Renaissance, when the seed of rational and theoretical thought, made its way from Greece into the soil of Europe and began to sprout.. At this point, two trends of Western civilization were joined: the prophetic version of the good society as a goal of history, and the Greek faith in reason and science. The result was that the idea of utopia was born again, the idea that man was capable of altering himself, and of building a new world populated by a just, rational society of men, a world in which justice, love, and solidarity would be realized. Each era, the Renaissance, the English Revolution, the Age of Enlightenment, and the nineteenth century created its own utopia.
Each generation is a utopia in standards of living; however America is the grand standard of all, the master in luxury, the promise land, and a place of superiority to other countries. The standards of living keep changing and with each generation come new discoveries. To the previous generations and to the population living in this country lets say fifty years ago and still among the living today our modern world is a utopia to them. To us however, the current population or the new generation, it’s something taken for granted, something that is not a utopia but we are aiming at improving our living standards and leaping into the future by using technology. These living standards are explored and illustrated in a novel by Arthur C. Clarke titled, Childhood’s End. In the novel everyone was guaranteed a house, or rather owned one or more, and could travel anywhere around the world within 24 hours. To me this sounds like a utopia, but now if we were the ones living in luxuries as such today would we consider it a utopia? If we took a peek into the future or simply travel into the future and end up in a world as described by Clarke, yes it would be unimaginable, a dream come true. However, if this was the level of technology we reach in fifty years and live to see it would be a thing of the future but certainly not a utopia.
What is a utopia? Does utopia fulfill all of the countries populations dreams, or just their needs and not their wants, or is it true that a utopia is one mans vision come true, because each and every single one of us has a different definition of utopia. To one person a utopia might be a shelter, a warm bed to sleep in and food to nourish him or her, but than on the other hand to another person a utopia might be all of the unimaginable, the unthinkable, and the unattained. To me a utopia is, well a state of happiness, or is it, because if you are happy all the time and you have no struggles and don’t have anything to worry about you grow empty and with no values and the utopist state is your doom, you get bored of it and than what? I’d say that utopia is life. Life has its ups and downs, and I would call those up’s a utopia and when it comes to downs a dystopia, because what really is there in the middle, Life? But than isn’t life a combination of utopia and dystopia, a combination of ups and downs, a wave? What is really life about? In Arthur C. Clarke’ s novel Childhood’s End life is about enjoyment about exploring, about being occupied so that you don’t have time to wonder what life is about.
Who are you to tell me how to live my life, or would it be better to have someone tell you how to live your life? Just like in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 where everyone was brainwashed and pretty much told how to live. Would it be better to switch places with the character of Mildred and just go with the flow or Montag and question, suspect, and uncover the truth? This book is only one persons way of interpreting utopist life, one persons vision, a one sided creation. So many times I wish I was just like one of those guys that party through life, seem all happy, not caring as to how what works and what it does as long as it does its job and is helpful. They are full of money and care about getting drunk, high and laid, seems like a happy life to me why should I be the one questioning everything and caring about so many things, doing something with my life supposedly, but right now I’m getting nowhere fast. I have most of the things some people can only dream about, my friends from Poland can only envy me and dream about coming to America because life here is so much easier, Heelll NO it isn’t. Here life is fast paced, especially in a big city like this one. It’s a concrete jungle, only the strong survive. To live is to explore and question. On the contrary not to explore and question is to be dead. I would rather be dead than question everything and nothing, just simply not know all this, or not have these provoking questions running through my head.
In Fahrenheit 451