I just finished reading Thomas More’s 1516 book- Utopia.

The book describes an interaction between More and some others in Antwerp, Belgium, where he meets a man who had supposedly traveled to the island of utopia, somewhere in the new world. The work is divided into 2 books, the first detailing a discussion between the men on the problems facing European society, and the second is the travelers account of how the society of Utopia is organized.

As I was reading through, I was taken back a bit because, having read a biography of More’s life, I had known him to be a wise man, with high integrity. My initial assumption about the work was that it was prescriptive of the way a society ought to work. However, I found the description of utopian society implausible. Imagining a society where all the institutions are based on rational thought, the laws are just and balanced, and the people behave well because it’s the right thing to do is…..well outside the lived experience of history. If it’s possible, we haven’t seen it yet. I thought that someone like More, who would have been well aware of humanity’s issues would have understood this. As such, why would he write a prescription based on something unattainable? But reading through some more (pun kind of intended) I realized the author wasn’t prescribing an ideal society, he was in fact writing satire.

I started asking myself how I biffed it so badly here? Why didn’t I recognize it as satire? I realized that the modern version of satire is probably much more sarcastic. I regularly catch stuff from the Babylon Bee and the humor is in-your-face. The definition of satire is the use of 1) humor, 2) irony, 3) exaggeration, 4) or ridicule, to expose and criticize stupidity or vices. With so many current satire outlets: the Babylon Bee… or any number of late night talk show hosts, the humor is extremely sarcastic. More uses the description of Utopia as a contrast to show how contemporary European obsessions with money and power had debased life and society and caused a whole series of issues downstream.  

But I don’t think he meant Utopia to prescribe what should be, he used it to expose what had gone wrong. It was more subtle than the satire I had experienced, so I hadn’t recognize it.

Of course, as I’ve heard several satirists say (Andrew Doyle, who runs the Titania McGrath twitter account, and the guys on the Babylon Bee) , satire today is tough since the people they’re trying to satirize are often so looney, that it’s nearly impossible to keep ahead of the outlandish things those they are trying to satirize actually do.  

One of the things the book does criticize is the competitiveness of European culture. There is a podcast I listen to regularly, Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying’s Dark Horse podcast. They are both evolutionary biologists, famous for being driven out of Evergreen College after Weinstein refused to participate in some of the college’s woke exercises.

They have both mentioned that life doesn’t exist without competition. Of course there is collaboration in life too, but the idea of natural selection is based on differing iterations competing for supremacy, and nature selecting for the one that is fittest. This is how organism’s adapt and improvements are made.

Economic markets work in the same way.  

It made me think of a documentary I was watching a few years back about a tribal society in Africa. (I can’t remember exactly where, but it was sub-Saharan, if that helps.) But the narrator was speaking highly of how the society allowed this one family to be the metal-smiths. That society had chosen to restrict others from infringing on the smith family’s livelihood. This was touted as a great example of cooperation and coming together to protect each other. But the problem I saw was that the metal working was exceptionally retarded- stuck in technology from 1000 years ago. Maybe if other smiths could have been allowed to operate, it would have forced technologies forward. That comes at the trade-off of security, but the flip side is innovation occurs when you are trying to get ahead.

That’s one example of how collaboration and cooperation can be used to hinder progress if something so basic about humans, the societies they live in, and life itself, isn’t understood.

This is why it struck me that someone of More’s wisdom wouldn’t be so dull as to prescribe the impossible for society.

But we’ve seen just such hair-brained schemes play out through history. I recognize that in More’s age- an age of discovery and an increase of science, it was probably natural to imagine that if only humanity could learn to apply technology and science to the problems of society, those problems would eventually be overcome. In an age where so many were uneducated, it would be reasonable to assume that if we could just educate everyone and teach them all enough philosophy and enlightened values, then men would overcome their brute desires and rise up to a new level of collective consciousness.  

But we now live in an age where nearly everyone has been given the opportunity for free education, and, as the neo-marxists from the 1920’s and 30’s figured out… the damn masses just weren’t rising up to throw off their oppression. They were too stupidly happy with their increasing amount of stuff. Apparently there was something more going on in humans than just lack of opportunity.  

The reason I read these books is because I want to understand things. Proverbs says get understanding above all. You can’t solve human problems if you don’t understand human nature. If you get that wrong, and I think a LOT of people are getting it wrong, then you’ll end up causing more problems. I don’t pretend that I’m going to solve any of humanity’s problems. I’m in no position to do such a thing. But I still want to understand the world around me as much as I can.