Utopia - by Thomas More

Utopia is an idealistic book. A description of a society abiding by a set of rules that promote collectivism over individualism.

By organizing a group of individuals into an emergent entity, the entity thrives over others and perpetuates itself across time, in a generalized state of well-being.

The rules trump basic instincts of survival which align with individualism.

Socialist nations, when attempted, have failed to live up to socialism’s expectations. It’s not wrong or uncommon to think of socialism as an enlightened form of government, where priority to individualism is dropped in favor of the collective. Given humans’ capacity for rationalism, it must be possible to free ourselves from the vices of individualism, live a more practical, spiritual, collective and frugal life. Right?

History has proven otherwise. As a collective, we struggle when faced with the reality of these ideals. So far, capitalism and liberalism have provided a functioning, stable society. Not without hiccups and lessons learned.

Utopia can be interpreted as a seed of modern socialism. As a rationalist, I find that the country of Utopia practices very interesting.

I found some ideas from the Utopian society to be appealing. Health is considered the ultimate pleasure. Without it, all other pleasures become moot. War and the glory of conquest is detested, and to avoid it, bounties are put on enemy rulers. A clever way of avoiding all-out war. Death is rejected, and any pleasures coming from it, like hunting, is not accepted. The virtuous person’s death is highly celebrated, with the purpose of incentivizing others to follow virtuous paths.

There’s are other ideas that lean into collectivism and totalitarianism which I didn’t agree with. A patriarchal family is incentivized, religion is at the front and center, which include beliefs of punishments in the afterlife. Work is assigned rather than chosen, for the benefit of the collective. Individualism is not promoted.

Published in 1516, it’s incredible how ahead of their time its ideas were around societal structure. Monarchy was the de facto structure back then. Nowadays, we have seen the fruits of these ideas turned into ideology and governments in power. Their evolution and consequences, after years of empiric practice, at the scale of large populations. I can understand the joy of idealism and our capacity to engineer ways of coexisting, but it’s different to write how it should be done vs. living through it.