Utopia

old people, man

Books like this are great to make you realise “damn these ideas I thought were fresh are hella old” and “how the hell did they predict that back then?”

I didn't realise going in how communist this vision of Utopia would be, for good and for ill. Don't know if that's intentional but I hope Engels gives some props to old Thomas More somewhere in his writings.

Yada yada yada some guys who don't understand market economics blathering on in run-on sentences that cover entire pages.

Story: 2 / 10
Characters: 3
Setting: 6.5
Prose: 8

As with Well's “A Modern Utopia”, the book is not so much a story as a pleasant way to introduce an ideal society. Not entirely what I was looking for. Might I suggest Huxley's “Island” as a more relevant alternative?

What's most interesting to me are the ideas that More assumes as default (slavery, capital punishment, men as the head of the family) which nowadays we would probably not include as part of our description of utopia.

What assumptions do we make about ‘the natural order of things' or ‘human nature' that will one day be considered barbaric?

“From my observation and experience of all in flourishing nations everywhere, what is taking place, so help me God, is nothing but a conspiracy of the rich, as it were, who look out for themselves under the pretext of serving the commonwealth”
-500 years ago
(-and now)
((-and probably 500 years from now))
(((if there is a 500 years from now)))

besides the skewering of the self-serving wealthy and ineffectual ruling class, under a slightly different tone i feel what is being described is a dystopia and i'm assuming i'm the first to realize that in review.=P

As is often the case, I really love the Norton Critical Editions with their inclusion of supplementary texts and criticism both from the time and contemporary.