Clay Robertson

Mrs. Sipin
English 211C
14th April 2015
The Fall of a Perfect World
What does the perfect world look like? This is a tricky question
because it may not be the same for everyone. To many, an ideal world
would be one in which there are no problems to plague humanity. No
disease, war, or hunger just as a start. The question that one must
ultimately ask is how do we as humans advance our society to a point
that this idea becomes reality. There are many theories that answer
that question. One of them is that every country must move to a
socialist system as suggested by Karl Marx. An even more important
question when it comes to this grand idea of a utopian world is will
humanity do next? Once everything is ideal and humans are in the
perfect living conditions what happens next? In a world that is no
longer threatened by plague or famine what shall humans do then? Will
they keep striving for better and for more or will they get lazy and die
off? What if the answer is both? What would happen if the ones
searching for advancement started fighting for things such as mates or
a space to call their own, and the lazy ones spend all their time looking
in a mirror so enamored by themselves that they seemingly forgot the
world around them. It is the purpose of this paper to purpose that

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something to that effect is the only option that would happen in a

utopian society. Utopias cannot exist, and they will fall into dystopia for
a plethora of reasons that will be covered.
Utopia is an important topic in pop culture today and there are
several reasons that this could be occurring. The most prevalent of
these is that humanity may be approaching the closest thing we could
see to a utopian world. Humans are the apex of the food chain we are
technologically advanced. The main problems facing humanity today
are other humans. It is a logical conclusion that the intelligent minds of
this generation see this happening and wonder what is going to come
of it. To fully understand why utopian societies cannot work one must
fully understand what a utopia is. According to a blog of an armature
philosopher Journey Into the Mind of a Philosopher there are two
main sides to the utopian ideal. There is the social aspect, which draws
heavily from the Marxist idea of socialism. This is where everyone has
the same possessions and no one is want of anything that anyone else
has as these things would not exist. This falls short because of the
principle of human nature. Humans want to be on top it is a well-known
fact. Even with this system of all people having the same things there
would still be jealousy amongst people to want to have more. This
would intern create infighting that could lead to collapse.
The second prong of this idea is that of a political aspect. The
biggest threat here is that it can quickly turn to a fascist society. This

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would be similar to the goals of someone such as Hitler. In this society

anyone going against what the government believes would need to be
taken out which is quite a lot of power for one man or a small group of
individuals to hold with no abuse. Now that there is a very rudimentary
idea of what makes a utopian existence one can start to fully
understand all of the holes that this concept may have causing it to
inevitably fail.
The best way to understand both what a utopia is would be to
look to the socialism, and beyond that the father of socialism, Karl
Marx. Marx was a German man who lived in the mid to late 1800s. He
had many ideas on how to create a better society and wrote many
books on the subject. The most famous of these books were The
Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. Both of these books delved
into trying to solve issues such as class and economy. Marx came up
with a version of communism called socialism. Socialism is a concept
that is nice to think about but would never work in practice. Marxs
Critique of the Utopian Socialists by Roger Paden goes into breaking
apart what exactly Marx is saying into several theories so one can draw
their own conclusions on the works.
The first interpretation of Marxs work is that there is no place for
utopian thoughts in a revolutionary mindset. The problem with this is
that a lot of what drives a revolution is the idea of a better life, also
known as utopian ideals. The second is materialist criticism. This is a

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flawed idea because to reach the conclusion Marx stretches the

concepts of capitalism so thin that he is essentially grasping at thin air.
Marx also discussed humanism. Saying that capitalism forced people to
behave in a profit-seeking manor. The only cure for this, in his opinion
was communism where everyone was on the same playing field. This
falls flat on the basic ideals of human nature. Humans want the best
for themselves and so even in a communist society humans would try
to get the upper hand on one another.
There are many examples of utopias that have failed in practice.
One prominent example of this is an experiment done on mice in the
70s. Dr. John Calhoun in collaboration with the National Institute of
Health conducted an experiment in which he built a utopian habitat fit
for generic lab mice to live in. He called this experiment Universe 25
The results of this experiment were quite surprising. As one would
expect, the initial move in experienced some fighting over territory
but after that mice numbers doubled every 60 days. This lasted for
about 250 days until some of the sectors of the enclosure became
crowded. At this point not only did the number of mice plateau, but
some strange developments occurred in the behavior of this mouse
colony. Over the next 300 hundred days mice began congregating in
the middle of the enclosure fighting for mates. The males that were not
chosen grouped up around the edges where they would sporadically
fight one another, doing a lot of damage. Perhaps the most interesting

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behavior was that of a group Calhoun named The Beautiful Ones all
these mice did was eat and groom themselves. At this point the entire
mouse colony began quickly dying until none were left.
Another example was a when a man named Marquis del Rays. He
had the idea of moving a colony of people to La Nouvelle, an island off
of France, after gaining many investors and getting everything in order
Marquis realized that there many things wrong with his utopia that he
could not control. For instance the people wanted it to be sunny and
pleasant all the time but Marquis had no way of controlling the
weather. This upset the colony and thus their disillusion of a perfect
utopia was broken. Nazi Germany is another example of a failed utopia.
When Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power they saw anyone who
was not of Arian decent a problem that must be eliminated which
plunged the would into a major state of dystopia
This brings up an interesting point. To control a mass population
of people how would one do it? Most theorists would say that sedation
is the only option. If one does not realize that they are being sedated
can they really be happy thus creating a paradox in which society may
be working exactly as wanted but it cannot be called a utopia. It also
raises an ethical dilemma. There are many that would say not only is it
unethical to sedate a mass populace without their knowing, but that it
is also dystopiatic.

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This idea is discussed in Vesna Suljics Where Dystopia Becomes

Realtity and Utopia Never Comes The author point to books such as
Brave New World and Island as examples. Using these to show that
by no normal means can societies be utopiatic on their own. The
reading

states

that

happiness

is

only

achieved

through

self-

achievement. Going off that idea if one were to be sedated without

their knowledge they could not achieve true happiness.
Though not a key point, happiness is a big factor in the making of
a utopia, especially if one was to view it from the social aspect. If
everyone is supposed to have the same things while holding their own
role in society for this idea to work they must also be happy about it.
While the governing body may be able to sedate out any jealousy they
would also have to sedate out the happiness the people feel, and as
many text on utopias show the people of these societies would
inevitably figure out what was going on and revolt.
In conclusion utopias can not work and attempts to make them
will only fall into dystopia as seen in many writings such as The Giver
by Louis Lowery. When one individual starts to see what he is missing
by living in the utopian world he comes from he revolts. This too is
what would happen in real life. That is not to say that we as humans
cannot to create a better world but a world perfect to everyone is
simply out of our grasp. As Agnetha Faltskog once said There is a
danger of changing to much in the search of perfection.

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Works Cited
Fisher, Judith L. "Trouble in Paradise: The Twentieth Century Utopian Ideal."
Dec

1983.

Ebsco

Discovery

Services.

March

2015

<eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.odu.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?

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sid=6d77336a-38c6-4e85-becc910441ce4b63%40sessionmgr113&vid=4&hid=117>.
Lowry, Lois. The Giver. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. Print.
Metcaf, Bill. "Utopian Fraud: The Marquis de Rays and La Nouvelle-France." 1 March
2011. Ebsco Discovery Services. 17 March
2015<eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.odu.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?
sid=36601d6f-b840-4971-b24e-faf261a0f2bb
%40sessionmgr112&vid=2&hid=117>.
Moleboi. A Journey into the mind of a Philosopher. 1 April 2013. 17 March 2015
<moleboi.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/does-utopian-thinking-do-more-harm-thangood/>.
"Mouse Utopia Experiment." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM>
Paden, Roger. "Marx's Critque of the Utopian Socialists." 1 Dec 2002. Ebsco Discovery
Services. 17 March 2015
<eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.odu.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=c42dab90edae-4e35-a5b5-c336a10f699e%40sessionmgr113&vid=2&hid=117>.
Suljic, Vesna and A. Serdar Ozturk. "Where Dystopia Becomes Reality and Utopia Never
Comes." 2 june 2013. Ebsco Discovery Services. 17 March 2015
<eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.odu.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=5f8c277229e1-43e7-8267-41ab50d77529%40sessionmgr113&vid=2&hid=117>.

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