Eve Arthur - Utopia

Last week in my Ancient and Medieval Philosophy class we discussed Thomas More's "Utopia". In this work, More describes his image of a "perfect" world - in which his citizens operate under a communistic society. In More's utopia, crime is a symptom of maleducation, and should not be considered the victim's fault. Stealing should be punished with work, not death; similarly, all crimes should be rectified with the delinquent's participation in an arduous activity that taught some sort of moral lesson. Any religion was tolerated in Utopia, as long as the individual believed in something. No person owned private property, and citizens would "swap" occupations with one another each day. Curiously, no child would be taught their parent's true identity.

At the culmination of the class we were asked to consider our own view of Utopia, and whether it was more important for men to be free or equal. Personally, I would rather let man live free. The sustainable continuation of nature on this planet depends fully on strife. One species will compete with another for survival until this process is no longer necessary. In my version of Utopia, the population of homo sapiens would be at least 5.6 billion less. Humans would revert to a nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and more reverance would be held for the earth. We would no longer produce substances that could not be completely decomposed, reused, and regenerated by the earth, nor would we develop medicines and methods to prevent death. All species suffer disease (and sometimes predation) because it is a natural form of population control. We are the only species that has developed ways to prevent this, and look where it has brought us: overpopulation, starvation, povertyv - earth-mother annihilation.