Utopia; A “perfect” World

Sophie La Nave

Dr. O’Brien

Language and Literature 2

October 14, 2023

Utopia; A “perfect” World

Utopia by Thomas Moore, page 45: “If you permit the young to be viciously brought up and their characters steadily crafted from early years, and then at length punish them for doing as adults what they have been destined for since childhood, what else is this but turning people into thieves and then punishing them for being such?”

When Thomas Moore puts it like that, it seems to feel as though everything has a simple cause and effect. It seems as though the perfect world; a utopia, would be so effortlessly simple. It makes it seem as though we can find a reason, a justification for everything.

 In this case, Moore states that it is the fault of the government under which children have been brought up poorly educated, and driven to steal, that they have in fact become thieves. He earlier stated that people steal mostly out of necessity, which I think we see in our society as well. In a society in which food, healthcare, and other necessities for life are a privilege and not a right, of course people are driven to steal. Of course the society that forces people to steal must also punish them, because the people stolen from also face the consequences of the thief's actions. However, such simplistic ideals cannot directly apply to our society, because our system isn’t built just on the interactions of a few people. Our late stage capitalist society is built on corporations not people; it’s built on people, built on people, built on people. It’s easier for people to steal from corporations because they hoard money. It’s easier to steal from systems rather than people. Moore still believed thieves should be punished, just not as harshly as they often were; not with death. I wonder if Moore would agree with the punishment thieves serve today. In Utopia, Moore explores the idea in which the punishment for thievery should be equal to the action(eg. If you steal a man’s gold, you owe them what you stole), but at the same time, they should be marked a criminal, and live a life of continuous rehabilitation, a life of servitude- with their ear cut off. They can buy back freedom, but it’ll take time to save up, and of course they’ll always have the mark of a criminal. 

In a utopia; a perfect world, everything seems so simple. An action happens with an equal reaction, but we’re too human for a perfect world. Even with a perfect system, as humans, we cannot follow through. We, as imperfect beings, cannot live in a system that serves perfect people. The reason certain idealistic systems of government don’t work is because of our humanity. Our greed causes us to spoil “perfect” systems, and our capacity to only know how we ourselves as individuals think causes us to believe we are unique, special, or exceptions. This thought of our uniqueness allows for us to break rules we assume others will follow, or come up with things we think no one else has thought of. We are, of course, wrong. So, if we break a rule, others probably will too, or already have. We are the downfall to our own existence, but we are also the only thing that keeps us alive. Moore believed in a utopia, but a perfect world isn’t possible. Even if a reaction to a problem is equal to the problem itself, a perfect world wouldn’t have problems, and not everyone will enforce the same rules in the same way. As much as we would all love to live in a perfect world, we cannot live in a non-existent plane. Utopias do not exist(sorry Thomas).