Scan barcode
A review by lmbuesking
Utopia by Thomas More
2.0
Did I have this on my "to read" list because of Ever After? 100%
Am I embarrassed by that? ABSOLUTELY NOT.
2.5? 3?
I really didn't know how to rate this one. I value it as something to start conversations on what a "Utopian" society would look like. This book has some compelling ideas and some detestable ones (which is why I get uncomfortable with the stars). My rating is more about how it could spark discussion rather than rating the ideas presented. So my review is just the parts that stood out and got me thinking. Not always positively. Book quotations below.
The parts about poverty were fascinating as it describes a perspective that honestly I thought was a much more modern a take. "...no penalty is great enough to keep people from stealing if they have no other way to make a living." More tackles the broken systems that push people into poverty, give no opportunity for them to escape it, and then punish them (to the point of death) for resorting to stealing in order to survive.
I know there were some radical ideas presented here for the time, but it's hard to ignore the inconsistencies in "the structure of the commonwealth is primarily designed to relieve all the citizens from as much bodily labor as possible, so that they can devote their time to the freedom and cultivation of the mind. For that, they think, constitutes a happy life." And by "all" they do not mean all. Book II hits you hard with racism and colonialism ("The natives are easily assimilated, and that to the advantage of both groups." "The natives who refuse to live under their laws are driven out of the territory the Utopians have marked off for their use; if they resist, the Utopians make war against them." ) and more. I get it was written in the 1500s. Was racism and enslavement and sexism wrong then, too? Yes.
The criticism of the rich was brutal and could be just as easily said today.
More is critical of how the rich use the poor, but simultaneously seems completely comfortable with the enslavement of others he deems "fit" for it.
There were some interesting parts. There were some parts that made me cringe. But yes it's pretty dry. Not one I'll read again. Ever After curiosity sated.
Am I embarrassed by that? ABSOLUTELY NOT.
2.5? 3?
I really didn't know how to rate this one. I value it as something to start conversations on what a "Utopian" society would look like. This book has some compelling ideas and some detestable ones (which is why I get uncomfortable with the stars). My rating is more about how it could spark discussion rather than rating the ideas presented. So my review is just the parts that stood out and got me thinking. Not always positively. Book quotations below.
The parts about poverty were fascinating as it describes a perspective that honestly I thought was a much more modern a take. "...no penalty is great enough to keep people from stealing if they have no other way to make a living." More tackles the broken systems that push people into poverty, give no opportunity for them to escape it, and then punish them (to the point of death) for resorting to stealing in order to survive.
I know there were some radical ideas presented here for the time, but it's hard to ignore the inconsistencies in "the structure of the commonwealth is primarily designed to relieve all the citizens from as much bodily labor as possible, so that they can devote their time to the freedom and cultivation of the mind. For that, they think, constitutes a happy life." And by "all" they do not mean all. Book II hits you hard with racism and colonialism ("The natives are easily assimilated, and that to the advantage of both groups." "The natives who refuse to live under their laws are driven out of the territory the Utopians have marked off for their use; if they resist, the Utopians make war against them." ) and more. I get it was written in the 1500s. Was racism and enslavement and sexism wrong then, too? Yes.
The criticism of the rich was brutal and could be just as easily said today.
"They think up and devise all ways and means, first of keeping (and having no fear of losing) what they have heaped up through underhanded deals, and then of taking advantage of the poor by buying their labor and toil as cheaply as possible. Once the rich have decreed in the name of the public (including the poor) that these schemes must be observed, then they become laws."
More is critical of how the rich use the poor, but simultaneously seems completely comfortable with the enslavement of others he deems "fit" for it.
"I maintain it is clear that at the end of this famine, if you examined the barns of the rich, you would find so much grain that if it had been divided among those swept away by starvation and disease, no one would have noticed any effect at all of the failure of the weather and soil. It would have been easy to provide food if that blessed money, that invention very clearly designed to open the way to what we need to live, were not the only barrier to keep us from it. I have no doubt that the rich also understand this and are not unaware how much better it would be to lack no necessities than to abound in so many superfluities, to be relieved of so many troubles than to be hemmed in by such great wealth."
There were some interesting parts. There were some parts that made me cringe. But yes it's pretty dry. Not one I'll read again. Ever After curiosity sated.