I was first introduced to the concept of a utopian society three years ago, in
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells where humanity's constant and eventually successful efforts to make life easier brought about a utopia - there being no diseases due to preventive medicine, no reason to work after major agricultural advancements, no fighting because there just isn't any reason to. No politics. No social classes. No discrimination. No need to worry, no need to think, no need to explore. A world so safe, its people cannot identify violence.
H.G. Wells told me about the Eloi. Their world was so perfect, they didn't need to do anything but eat and sleep. And so they devolved. They devolved into a physically fragile people with no sense of curiosity or self-improvement. They were dumb, talking in a beautiful language but using it for the most rudimentary of observations and the most primal expression of emotions.
Expressed in simple English:
What the hell.
If the future is that, might as well start living like the Eloi now.
Eat. Sleep. Make Love. Die. The End.
Utopia. Heh. The irony.
Was reminded of this when I finished reading Watchmen.
[Watchmen Spoiler Alert]
Adrian Veidt engineering his utopia. Killing half of New York to stop World War III. Succeding. Part of me reacted like Rorschach. It's just wrong. It defeats the purpose of stopping the war. But here comes the genius of Veidt. Part of me also reacted like Dr. Manhattan and Nite Owl. He saved more lives than he took. And besides, it's done. Telling the world would render the deaths meaningless.
And yet, is life itself meaningful if not for death?
Utopia. Oh the paradox.
But in this conundrum I take comfort in Wallace Stevens' The Poems of Our Climate:
I
Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations - one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.
II
Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.
III
There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.
Utopia shall never be. Not unless we cease to be human.
