Weekly Blog #06: Analyzing Utopia by Sir Thomas More December 2, 2014 by


By Kevin Kallinger

            Utopia, written by Sir Thomas More, revolves around the stories of Raphael Hythloday, a world traveler and philosopher, and his five years in Utopia but begins with More on his way to Antwerp as an ambassador for England and King Henry VII. While there, More spends his free time with his friend Peter Giles, whom introduces Hythloday to More and together the three of them retire to Giles’s house for dinner and conversation. Over the course of the night, More, Giles, and Hythloday talk about politics, philosophy, and share stories, most importantly talking about Hythloday’s trip to Utopia. It’s also important to note that More and Giles were in fact real people but the ideals and characteristics of these characters in the book don’t reflect the views of the actual historical people.

            Right before Hythloday starts to talk about Utopia in great detail, More, Giles, and Hythloday are discussing common property and how something like that could never work Europe. Common property is property that belongs to all members of a community and practiced by the people of Utopia, contrary to private property, which is practiced throughout the world. While discussing common property, More explains that it seems, to him, “that men cannot live conveniently where all things are common.  How can there be any plenty where every man will excuse himself from labour?” This quote shows that More believes that people who have no incentive to work wont and that demand will go up while supply goes down to nothing. More cannot visualize what common property would look like or how it would function in society and believes that “If people come to be pinched with want, and yet cannot dispose of anything as their own, what can follow upon this but perpetual sedition and bloodshed.” Even with More’s reservations about how such a concept would work, Hythloday has seen it work in his time at Utopia and then explains why More has trouble visualizing it, shown in quote above. Hythloday explains that because More and Giles weren’t there to witness it that they have “no notion, or at least no right one, of such a constitution,” to which Giles responds, “You will not easily persuade me,” “that any nation in that new world is better governed than those among us.” Giles then explains that “our” understandings cannot be worse than theirs, showing the ignorant pride Giles has for the western world. Since Hythloday is the only one in the room who has observed and lived with the Utopians, More and Giles don’t understand how ideas such as common property could work in civilized societies. In order to better understand a concept or idea a person needs to see or experience a working model of an idea or concept, otherwise it stays abstract and theoretical in their mind.

            More and Giles both show that they cannot visualize how something like common property would work in society but thankfully Hythloday goes into detail about how agriculture, government, and overall productivity work in Utopia. Hythloday first describes the main city of Utopia, Amaurot, saying none is more “eminent” or “proper” as this city and that the cities are “so like one another.” One important fact that Hythlody mentions is that “Their doors have all two leaves, which, as they are easily opened, so they shut of their own accord; and, there being no property among them, every man may freely enter into any house whatsoever.” Leaving the doors unlocked so that anyone may enter is probably such a foreign concept to More and Giles that the Utopians seem alien to them. Hythloday then explains that the garden is the center of the Utopian’s life and that they take care of them with “great care.” He then says “nothing belonging to the whole town that is both more useful and more pleasant” and that General Utopus created this system focused on agriculture. This is hardly the “perpetual sedition and bloodshed” that More thought of. The focus on agriculture rather than expanding their nation through war and becoming wealthier is how Utopia was able to prosper for so long.

            Since More and Giles never experienced anything like Utopia before, they couldn’t visualize how a concept like common property would work within a society. It’s because their experience in limited to what they’ve seen and they did not experience Utopia like Hythloday did that they fail to grasp the concept and why they believe what they believe. It’s also because they don’t have any other working model to see these ideas in action. General Utopus must have had prior experience or some sort of knowledge in order to implement something like common property and base a civilization around agriculture so the people around them have to rely on each other to survive.

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Evolution of Humans February 20, 2012 by

About 98,000 to 13,000  years ago, anatomically modern Homo Sapiens started to migrate out of Africa and replaced the other hominin populations(basically anything related to humans that were not as advanced as the Homo Sapiens) that have migrated out of Africa. Now these Homo Sapiens were were not evolving all around the world in different places at the same time. In order to evolve, they had to stay in one place for a long time. This got me thinking about how we will evolve in the future. If a species can only evolve if they are grouped together in one area, does that mean we have slowed down the evolutionary process? Or have we just made the process faster on a much larger scale? Since our population is spread out across Earth, does that make it harder for Natural Selection to get rid of the stupid or weaker people?

During my Astronomy class today, I started to think about how we could start space colonies and eventually live on other planets. I know this probably won't happen for a while but I like to think about this kind of stuff. That's when more questions about evolution came to my mind:

  • When we eventually go to other planets and start space colonies, will that speed up the evolutionary process since we will have somewhat isolated groups living on planets?
  • Will this lead to different types of humans like what happened to us?
  • Will we adapt to planets once we live on them for a couple hundred thousand years?

As we become more dependent on machines to help us with everyday activities and as technology becomes better/ easy to use, it is obvious that technology will also evolve as we adapt to new environments. I believe that its is nearly impossible to know exactly what technology will be like 100, 000 years from now. We can only guess what life will be like and what we will look like in the future. Even the people back in 40's and 50's guessed at what life would be like in the future:

Here's a look into what will/ might happen in the future:

What do you think the future will be like? Have we slowed down the evolutionary process by having a world wide population? Or are some groups in different parts of the world already evolving to become a new type of human being? Will living in space change our species for the better?

Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading your your thoughts on this.

-Kev/Gon/ DDL

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