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
