[lit-ideas] Re: Another Christian Commonwealth
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:42:22 -0230
Re "the same white suits" to which Robert refers: Would they be of the kind that
Alec Guiness wore in the hilarious old movie *The man in the white suit*? (I
think I got the title right.)
Walter O
Quoting Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>:
> John McCreery writes, of More's /Utopia/, and Stephen Greenblatt's
> analysis of it,
>
> > One can, of course, historicize More, noting that he was a man of his
> > times, trying to reconcile an Epicurean vision of the good life with
> > the still vivid Christianity in which he believed. We might then
> > overcome our cognitive dissonance by dissociating the threat of Hell
> > in an afterlife, whose prototype would be the harshest form of slavery
> > for unbelievers in this life, from the Heaven on Earth that Utopia
> > promises. Alternatively, we might see this as a challenge to some of
> > our own most cherished beliefs, that if only some fair and just set of
> > social arrangements could be made, we could have our Heaven and eat
> > whatever we like as well.
> >
> > That is the challenge I offer here. What mechanisms might make a
> > Utopia without a Hell workable and be scalable enough to work in a
> > world of seven billion-plus people?
>
> I was taught that More's book might well be a satirical demonstration
> that no such society could be instituted because of the internal
> contradictions (intentionally) displayed in his description of it.
> (Years ago, I had to discuss /Utopia/, with a group of 18 and
> 19-year-old students as part of Reed's first-year Humanities course;
> that was not easy: they did not know, nor do I know today, its
> politico-religious background and historical setting in any useful
> depth.) It does strike me though that Greenblatt's analysis is too simple.
>
> The Wiki account makes sense to me, and if correct, would suggest that
> Greenblatt has done some picking and choosing. But I'm no utopian. Would
> we really want seven-billion people wearing the same white suits?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(book)#The_meaning_of_the_work
>
> Robert Paul,
> Erewhon
>
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