Utopia: Book 2

This book talked a lot more about Utopia itself than the last one. So this post will have a lot more to talk about. Firstly, page 21-22 talked about the cities of Utopia. The fact that all the cities look and act the same would make the society more equal so nobody felt superior of someone else. Each city sends three representatives to the capital to discuss island-wide policies. This is similar to our Congress which works well in our society. Each city concerns itself with cultivating the land it owns rather than worry about how much land it has. This is good because it would prevent one city from trying to gain more land from another and fight wars. I did disagree with the fact that the houses of Amaurot do not have locks. I would not feel comfortable with some stranger being able to walk freely through my house. The fact that every city has a system of administrators making the community decisions is a great way to keep order but prevent tyrannical rule. As for the fact that every citizen has a job to do and that nobody is allowed to be lazy seems too harsh to me. I agree with the concept in theory, but I believe that nobody should be forced to work. The Utopian day is divided into 24 hours with 6 dedicated to working and 8 devoted to sleeping. This is a great idea because it leaves a lot of free time to do whatever except for debauchery and idleness. The Utopians focus on constant upkeep of the things they build. This is contrasting to the Europeans who build, wait for it to deteriorate, then rebuild. The Utopian way is much more efficient and requires less resources. I did disagree with the concept of family limiting. I feel that families should be as large or as small as they want. These were just some of the concepts that I found interesting during my reading. Feel free to criticize them.

Utopia: Part 1

This is my summary for Thomas More's view on the perfect society. I was not 100% sure how I was suppose to do this so I will just discuss what I wrote in my notes. The first concept of the first society that I found was apparent on the first page. Thomas more lived in the monarchy time period so he believes that the perfect society is a monarchy. I disagreed with this concept because we know today that societies work better when the people have the say in their government. Second, on page 10, this concept came from the character Hythoday, but because Thomas More created this character I still counted his ideas as Thomas More's. His solution to stop crime would be to not punish thievery with death, but rather have the thief return the item to the person and then be forced to work for the rest of his life. I agreed with this concept because to me it seems this would eliminate crime, not the criminals. Finally, on page 18, Thomas More presents his finally idea for Book 1. He believes that a society can never be ideal until private property is abolished and communal should be established. I disagreed with this because it sounded a lot like communism which history shows does not work. Like I said this is what I took notes over. I was not sure what else to write about.