Ruthi Engelke McDonald 

Utopia in the Balance: Engaging Utopian Ideals in the Community

It’s only been three weeks, but I feel as if my mind has expanded exponentially regarding the notion of Utopia. I had not thought deeply about the concept, but batted it about as if I completely understood it. In my British Literature course, I paired an excerpt from Sir Thomas More’s Utopia on the qualities of leadership with an excerpt from Machiavelli’s The Prince on the same topic. My students then used these polarized concepts to discuss their own ideas regarding which aspects of each model created the most beneficial leadership style. Discussion of literature and how it relates to our own world view and misperceptions can be so enlightening. This in-depth study of utopias in both literature and in historical settings of intentional community has broadened my awareness of how the genre and its conventions affect social history. What I have realized is that although I had not spent time in deep contemplation of the genre per se, I had been entertaining Utopian concepts for quite some time. I may not live in a commune, but I do exist in several communities that evoke utopian ideals in order to work and play together. My yoga kula functions as a community based on a common practice of yoga with its eight limbs as a basis. Asana, the physical practice of the postures of yoga, makes up only one-eighth of the total. A key limb, the Yamas, includes five moral restraints to guide the practioner on her life journey: non-violence, truthfulness, nonstealing, moderation, and nonhoarding. These controls, along with the Niyamas or five observances: purity, contentment, austerity, self-study, and devotion to a higher power allow for the possibility of reaching a consensus among  the kula. The individual can thrive within the community without either entity taking precedence. Balance is required for this to happen, and that seems to be the difficulty. We have a tendency to lean too far one way or the other and see things primarily in black and white, instead of shades of gray, or even many different hues. I hear people arguing one way or the other, when really, what we should be seeking is the middle ground. I believe the Buddhists call this the Middle Way, where one seeks the midline to create balance. In yoga we recognize the pull of the muscles in opposing directions, but we always, always “pull to the midline.” As it is on the mat, so it is in life. We are pulled in opposing directions and unless we are mindful to focus energy into the middle, we will be pulled apart. So it appears to be with Utopian ideals and communities. It is when they lack balance that the difficulties occur.

          Man/Woman is a community oriented creature. Human beings seek comfort, strength, and safety in numbers. Two heads are better than one, but too many heads will argue. We seek organizations of like-minded individuals; we are able to live more comfortably, peacefully, and profitably when we are connected with our tribe. The problem ensues with the introduction of “the other.” The conflicting perspective must be either assimilated into the established community, integrated into the collective concept, or rejected and banished. The Utopian model requires a visitor, someone to offer a conflicting opinion and a need to be re-educated.We see this strongly in Herland with the three male outsiders. Jeff becomes part of the community, accepting and embracing the Herland way of life. Terry cannot bend or alter his view of a patriarchal society being the “right” way, so he must leave. Van is the bridge; the women of Herland expand their thinking to a bisexual union, and Van is able to refine his notions of manhood to accept and learn from their perspective. The two tribes (male/female) find a middle ground through his character. Although Weston chooses to remain in Ecotopia, he also functions as a bridge between Ecotopia and America. He is the outsider, come to open negotiations with the Ecotopians on behalf of the American government; however, as he lives among them, his views alter to embrace their unique way of life. There is a strong suggestion by the end of the novel that Weston will influence the Americans on the outside but very little reason to believe that he will influence or change the Ecotopians. I think this is largely due to the fact that the Ecotopians and the Americans are closer to their dual origin of being one country, while Herland is far removed in time and space from the patriarchal society from which the men more directly descend. The problem that I find in Ayn Rand’s Anthem is that the prevailing society has moved so stringently away from the egoistic excess of its pre-millennial form to an even more repressed collective. This strict adherence to a group mentality results in the rebellious break from it by the main character, Equality 7-2521, causing him to attempt to recreate a “new” society focused on the individual. What is lacking in Anthem is any middle ground. In order to highlight her objectivist vision of an individualistic “me” centered society, Rand had to create an unworkable “we” focused collective for it to react against. Instead of strengthening her argument; however, this disparity places even more distance between opposing perspectives. Utopian ideals seem to work best when members find a way to work together instead of against each other. The individual need not necessarily be lost in order for the society to commune in prosperous tandem.

          Twin Oaks has managed to function as a community where people strive to work together for the common good, while still retaining their individuality and unique talents, for over forty years. According to Rachel Monroe, who took advantage of the policy allowing “an opportunity for the visitor to consider membership and for the community to consider prospective new members” (twinoaks.org) by living and working among them for three weeks, members set their own schedules and engage in many different types of work. Reading “the Twin Oakers live by their labor sheets” (Monroe), I was reminded of the post-apocalyptic society of District 13 in Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay where the citizens had their schedules tattooed on their arms every morning. In District 13, the government decided citizens’ schedules for them, but Twin Oakers choose their own schedules. The members also have a choice in what kind of work they perform for the community, unlike in Rand’s dystopia where the talents and interests of the worker were not taken into consideration when assigning jobs. Most Americans see work as something that they want to minimize doing, only pursuing it as something they must do in order to participate in leisure activities or to gain objects. In this way, the TO community differs in the prevalent view that “work is fun. And, since they get to more or less choose when, where, how, and with whom they work, that may well be the case” (Monroe). The Twin Oaks website reveals that members are required to work 42 hours per week for the community, but that includes regular household chores like cooking, washing dishes, laundry, child care, shopping, etc. When I include those activities into my work-week hours, the number is much higher than 42! This shortened work week and focus on the work being fulfilling, for “being busy means something different in a world where most of your work goes toward feeding, clothing, housing, and healing your friends and neighbors” (Monroe), is a commonality shared with the Ecotopias. Citizens of Ecotopia work 20-hour work-weeks, and workers take part in the running of the companies. Self-management is another convention that seems to lead to the success of utopian communities, but this is also dependant on people being willing to abide by some kind of philosophy of moral conduct and to work seriously on conflict resolution.  This is a problem as there seems to always be individuals who take advantage of others by cheating, lying, or just being lazy.

          Although Twin Oaks was based on Skinner’s philosophy as exemplified in his book Walden Two, the community no longer strictly adheres to the original intention of behaviorist theory. Sarah Coronado notes that “allowing that Utopian literature posits much of its philosophy on community functioning…it is not surprising that much of the progression found within this genre also deals with optimizing social structures.” The social organization seems to be another important element of utopian fiction and communities. The Utopian novel bogs down when it becomes more like an essay or tract for urban planning.  Much of the page space of the novels that we have read has consisted of descriptions of the social structure of the community. More’s Utopia reads like a law brief or community plan, because his intention was to entertain the notion of an ideal for community management or government. The Utopian novelist is likely to have “activist” or “social reformer” on his or her resume as well as “writer.” B. F. Skinner was a psychologist; More was a politician, while Rand, Callenbach, and Gilman were all activist writers. Since there must be a conflict for a story to have any kind of excitement, the only plot structure that has worked is to introduce a character with a differing  point-of-view and experience to act as a foil. This device allows the writer’s philosophy of social interaction to shine through, and as long as he/she can create conflict between the outsider and the focus group, there is enough of a story to keep the reader engaged. The trick for writing utopian fiction seems to be to allow most of the pedantic rhetoric regarding waste products (Ecotopia), reproduction(Herland), governmental policy(Utopia), and political agenda(Anthem) to fall aside in favor of plot. As we get into our discussion of Oryx and Crake, I believe we will see that Margaret Atwood has been less heavy-handed in her critique of society than the previous authors. Not that she does not make her message clear—she simply presents situations for the story to move the dialogue regarding human social interaction instead of the ideology pushing the story along.

          What I have discovered is that the literature opens the conversation about how human beings live together, what kind of impact we have on the environment, how we resolve differences in opinion, and how we balance the work so that there is equality in labor. Not one of these fictional stories represents an actual, working community; they exist only in the minds of the readers. It is what these readers do with the ideas germinated in these novels that matters. One of the conventions of utopian literature is that the territory the residents inhabit be cut off from the general population. This in itself is enough to thwart an argument for Utopian possibility. Modern society is too interconnected for that to be within comprehension. So even if we can never attain a truly Utopian society, we can draw lessons and tools for improving our present situation. Human beings crave community. Even in the most archetypical American ideal, the family is the nucleus of human involvement; its own utopia or dystopia. Most of the population spends at least some of their time on activities that require a certain level of human interaction. The fact is that we are all linked in some way, whether it is in our living groups or on the Internet. We can learn from utopian literature and intentional communities how to live in this post-modern world, taking these practices from our smaller encounters out into the larger world. Twin Oaks allows visitors to come live with them for short periods of time and hosts retreats, so that individuals can learn about how they live and take that knowledge back into general society. Plum Village, Magnolia Grove, and numerous other communities perform a similar role in passing on the practices of mindfulness in communication and interaction with others. Tim Ryan, the congressman from Ohio, brings his practice of mindfulness, which he learned on a retreat, to his work in the political arena. Can you imagine what could happen if Congress meditated together? Stuff might get done!

          Utopian literature and intentional communities have social objectives that drive their functions. The importance of child-rearing and questions of what make a family unit are key parts of most of the dialog but are most keenly outlined in Herland, where the mothers take this task as being their first and foremost responsibility. Every decision made in their society links back to how it affects the children in their care. The perpetuation of the ideals of motherhood, along with the joys of childhood development, contains the promise of life-everlasting among the women.  Children can almost always be viewed as the legacy of their parents. In the short passages that we read from Woman on the Edge of Time, this notion of the power of parenting, as well as the parenting role’s own capacity to allow the parent to be subjugated is highlighted. In the passage set in “the brooder,” we find that neither women nor men give birth to children but are assigned babies grown from embryos in the laboratory to parent with two other members of the community. This non-gender based parenting is difficult for the main character to swallow, coming from a society where women give birth and thus tend to children’s issues, while men take a back-seat in the parenting process, allowing them to pursue other power roles. The female character Bee points out that “as long as we were biologically enchained, we‘d never be equal,” (Piercy) to explain why this key difference in the procreation process was eliminated. The concept of what constitutes a family is volatile question among our society. Even when we think we have repressed the question of “race,” companies like General Mills, which owns Cheerios, still garner a back-lash of negative feedback from a simple commercial portraying a medium skinned little girl with her pale mother and dark father. Even though the negative response was loud, the positive response was more common, indicating a shift from a dominant racist ideology.

          Utopian literature opens the discussion regarding societal ideals and intentional communities experiment with these tenets. There is no such thing as a “perfect world,” but that doesn’t mean that society doesn’t need to keep striving for lofty goals. The need for individuality and the need for community can be balanced, but each entity must pull toward the mid-line in order to accomplish this. The individual needs to be mindful of not only his own needs within the community but also his need to serve the community and the community’s need to be served. John Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Some people have more of a tendency to ask what is in it for them; others are more likely to give of themselves so much that they neglect their own needs. Utopian study shows that balance is needed in any human contact, even in our contact with our own ego.

“If the utopian exists not in order to display perfection, but instead to extend our conceptions of what’s possible, then the most truly utopian thing about Twin Oaks—a place with its share of in-fighting and mold smells and unpredictable pockets of small-mindedness—is how they have reimagined the ways work might fit into living, and the fact that they have been surprisingly successful at doing so” (Monroe).

Monroe, Rachel. “I worked hard for no pay — and I dug it.” Salon.com, 10 February 2013 (originally at clustermag.com).