Russ Lanier

The Pursuit of Happiness: It's harder than it looks

“I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said, “I don’t know.”

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

What is it to be happy?  What’s the difference between being happy and feeling happy?  When I think of utopian literature I start to imagine green landscapes with bright and vibrant communities filled with diverse people that get along for the common good.  Ideals such as equality, fairness and justice were the guiding principles that promoted unity and peace.  Up until class began, my only experience with a fictional genre was when I read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (1889-1963) as a kid.  But as I’ve grown older, I have come to admire all forms of literature.  To me, reading a book is like traveling without the airfare.  The more I read - the broader my perspective about the world grows which translates into a more fulfilled and enriching life.  For my web highlight essay, I have selected several posts from former students whose research falls in line with my own inquires and questions about the genre and its texts.  This focus will be on Objective 4c., which asks “is the word “utopia” too simple or singular a word to represent the phenomena it attempts to explain and does its author’s worldview of the past, present and future play a big part to its realistic prose?  I have always been interested in analysis that focused on the state of the human condition and that’s why I feel that the four texts we have covered thus far, paint an accurate picture of the past, the present and the future of humankind.

          I would have to say that Anthem (1938) by Ayn Rand is one of my favorite texts so far because it presents the opportunity to ask those hard to ask questions in life.  Who really owns me?  Do I have value and who determines it?  Do I work for the collective or am I my own person?  Organized religion has placed enormous pressure on defining who owns the self.  Since the beginning of the 20^th Century, religion has convinced many that it is that individual’s duty to be part of the collective, to help others and that selfishness when concerning the individual is wrong.  Ayn Rand’s defense to this argument is well presented in a 2013 Research Post written by Jacob McCleese.   She states from a video that “as an individual, I will never live for the sake of another man, nor will I ask another man to live for me”.  She believed that it is our moral right to our own lives and that nothing is greater than productive work from a thinking mind.  Not only could I relate to her bold sense of confidence, I admired the spirit of making a stand about the human mind.  Who are you to determine my happiness - I decide what’s right for me!  Most utopian novels stay away from religion but Rand did not shy away from this taboo subject. 

In the post titled “Ayn Rand’s Utopian Religion”, the key figure in her work Anthem (1938) - Prometheus - challenges the validity of what makes the individual happy - serving the collective or serving a mysterious omnipotent being?  She argues that the individual is the highest form of intelligence and that no other being (including man) can determine his destiny.  She felt that happiness should be pursued through “rational thought and tangible evidence” and not supernatural rhetoric.  After review of this post it correlates with my overall question that the idea of happiness, just like it’s counterpart “utopia”, can be a widely misunderstood  and thus may actually be “too simple of a word” to determine its overall magnitude on the human experience. 

When Thomas More wrote his famous work Utopia (1516), Jenna Zucha describes the standard convention of setting which takes primacy in the story both figuratively and literally.  In her post titled, “Utopia as a Literature of Ideas: The Search for an Ideal World”, More’s reality was all about the “vile evils of England at war, corrupted politics and lawlessness of the community” and therefore the setting promotes Raphael’s push for a Utopia because he felt that man on his own would not be virtuous enough to pursue happiness for all.  He contends that man’s desire to develop and maintain a world of equality and fairness are mere words and that man’s primary drive is to seek his own wealth - even at the expense of others.  Raphael (speaker of nonsense) compares the current state of man with the infamous place called Utopia or the “true commonwealth” as he alludes to earlier in the passage -  “What justice is there in this for a banker, goldsmith or nobleman that either does nothing at all, or, at best, is employed in things that are no use to the public, should live in great luxury…while a ploughman who works harder than the beasts themselves, employed in services so necessary to the commonwealth, earn so poor a livelihood and must endure a miserable life(2.74)”.  Like Ayn Rand some four hundred years after him, Thomas More felt the ideals of a Utopian society would never be achieved as long as we rely on being a part of the collective.  

The great theologian and philosopher St. Augustine (354-430 C.E.) believed that happiness was tied to the soul, the Epicureans felt friendship was the key for a pleasurable life, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E) argued for “eudaemonia^[1]” and Socrates (469-399 B.C.E) was fine with it simply being the pursuit of truth.  Even in Greek times, the notion of “the good” was still a complex ideal that continues to baffle us today.   In Katie Parnians 2011 essay “The Perfect Utopia: A Contradiction in Terms, she lays out a very strong argument for how difficult it can be to achieve a consensus on the utopian ideal.  She argues “the justification for such an ambiguous definition of utopia lies in two primary conclusions, the first being the ability to serve as a remedy to the ills of a culture (socially, religiously and economically) and secondly, utopian ideals should not emulate as byproduct of westernized thought”.   Furthermore she goes on to highlight that due to this conflict of individualism and its advocacy for being selfish is in direct stance against what I assumed was to be the utopian ideal, especially if one was to compare Prometheus to Raphael.  I’m beginning to feel that the detraction in utopian genres is the ability to establish a consistent and accurate definition of “homogeneity” rather than “utopia”.

Growing up in the south, I don’t ever remember being encouraged to think critically or prompted to ask questions about tradition.  In Plato’s Republic, the cave is symbolic and represents how easy it is for people to be swayed by mere illusion and misdirection and that coming out of the cave is what we all must do in order to become enlightened to the truth.   Changing a mindset from an agrarian, mechanical educational model that breeds conformity and mediocrity to a more dynamic, spontaneous learning environment requires fearless determination and courage.  This is what I believe Objective 4c is all about - questioning the ideal and choosing your own based on what fits you….the individual.  Before college, what I thought were true beliefs were nothing more than opinion, false assumptions and unsound rational arguments fueled by religious intolerance.  But that has all changed now. 

Works Cited

Melchert, Norman: The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction To Philosophy. Oxford University Press 6^th Edition - (2011)

The Utopian Journey of the Unknown

Prominent author and longtime contributor to the New Yorker magazine, Malcolm Gladwell wrote, good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade.  It succeeds or fails on its strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else’s head – even if in the end you conclude that someone else’s head is not a place you’d really like to be. [1]  Majoring in the Humanities like I do, I value this perspective for I think no matter what the prose, all forms of literature breeds critical thinking.  Good writing in a sense, opens doors to places and ideas that seem different but yet hauntingly familiar – almost like déjà vu.  After the first week of class, I realized that I was not a total stranger to the utopian/dystopian genres.  Even though I am not a fan of fiction, I was aware of some of the authors such as Sir Thomas More, Ayn Rand and George Orwell but I was not familiar with what work they were famous for.  After reading them I was surprised to learn how vivid and lifelike the dystopian novels were in relation to setting and the realistic picture it painted of a future in decline.  In utopian literature, the characters journey is a centralized convention that can easily be linked to a multitude of other academic studies like sociology, anthropology, economics and history and therefore, I believe lends itself as an asset to broadening one’s mind about the world around them.  Analysis of the four texts will outline several attractions that I have experienced and hopefully will provide some insight into the lessons I have taken away so far from this class.

Freedom from the Ideal

Before class started, I read Ernest Callenbach’s utopian work Ecotopia (1975) first before the other three text (Utopia, Herland and Anthem).  Having done so, I believe this shaped my perspective about the genre (i.e. dystopian included) toward a more positive acceptance.  I enjoyed the book mostly because of its ecological underpinnings and its “call back to nature” vibe which I am a big fan of.  The character of Will Weston and his transformation is very relatable and the fact that the book’s use of real American cities with familiar landmarks, I believe, invites us to be more invested in the story.  One of the biggest attractions of Ecotopia for me was its descriptions of innovative solutions that address real world challenges, like pollution, global warming and escalating financial pressures.  Housing, education, security and a well maintained food source are all crucial elements to any society’s survival, even if it is a fictional one.   After six weeks we see that while the solutions Will writes home about may appear to be primitive he concludes that the” risky social experiments undertaken in Ecotopia have worked on a biological level. Ecotopian air and water is clean, the land is well cared for and productive.  All life systems are operating on a stable state basis and can run indefinitely” (p.198).  This admission is clearly a turning point in the story and allows the reader to go outside the story and reflect on their own conditioned lives and find similarities.  What frustrations does the ecological tale exploit and have in common with older dystopian works that question man’s existence – by asking - who is more valuable, the individual or the collective?

Am I A Number or Am I Free Man?

Thoreau once said, “When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before”.  A student of the humanities himself, Thoreau felt that the heart and soul was the center of everything and if self-evident truth was ours to seek, then we need not be trapped by social norms that stifle creativity and passion.  Over seventy years since his death, these same values on individualism were at the center of Ayn Rand’s philosophy in 1938.  After reading her book titled Anthem, I immediately saw the contrasting styles between a dystopian novel and an ecological based utopian story. The main protagonist, Equality 7-2521 (Prometheus) was a character that believed in independent thought, the theory of knowledge was his birthright and that independence and the pursuit of happiness was his duty to pursue.  He exclaims to himself, “I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is a speck of dust lost in its eternity. I know not and I care not…..my happiness is not the means to any end for it is the end…it has its own purpose” (43).  Often times the concept of individualism only comes to mind when an injustice is committed and the character is cast out or forced to die for their principles.  Similar roads have been taken that mirror this commitment to strongly held ideals.  We know from history that Socrates felt this way, so did Sir Thomas More who paid dearly with their lives all because of someone else’s flawed ideology.  As for Charlotte Perkins-Gilman, her death while tragic, tells of her strong ideals and that up until the day she died the “end was consistent with her life of determined independence”. 

Questions of Gender in Utopian Literature

          Since birth, children seem to be blinded with this preconceived notion that everyone around us; family, school teachers and even strangers, love one another and work together harmoniously for a common purpose.  This notion can be an exaggeration and once realized can have a profound effect on how the child views the world.  Ideals so engrained into our existence like marriage and sex are spur on endless debate about our culture and freedoms.  In Herland (1915), the author makes a good case for how westerners are so cliché when it comes to tradition and in many ways takes on the fight for women’s rights.  In the text Gilman not only questions the validity of biological differences between men and women but also establishes the legitimacy of a women’s power for independence through the establishment of a fictional utopia consisting of only one gender.  From an ecological standpoint, Gilman also argues that disease, crime, pollution and poverty – which are not issues in Herland - could be conquered if the problems (issues) were addressed through rational lines of reason and done so with the good of the community in mind.  From population control policies to industrialization and decentralization, the story of Herland at times acts as a blueprint which suggests that building a successful community does not necessarily require the attributes of man’s ingenuity just the desire to be independent and far removed from the guise of unwarranted subjugation.

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”  ― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

The Spirit of Truth and How Utopian Literature Contributes

I must admit, I do not write very well and the reason I feel this way is due to years of conditioning.  Literature regardless of the genre can emulate life and with its narratives can strike up conversation that leaves us questioning our own lives.  That’s what I enjoy about this genre.  Keeping in the spirit of the genre, I often question whether we as a society have forgone our foothold on being virtuous and just in all our affairs.  Global poverty, genocide and politics sadly confirm that our materialism and economic prosperity has trumped the compassion and tolerance it takes to see through the potential demise of humankind.  With the four texts that we have covered over the past 3 weeks, dystopian literature is by far the more real for me.  It consoles me and reminds me that my anxiety about the world is not a new feeling but one that has puzzled humankind for centuries and the only answers that I will hope to find is within the arms of literature.

Works Cited

Gladwell, Malcolm (2009). Introduction.  What the Dog Saw. New York, NY. Little, Brown and Company

Melchert, Norman: The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction To Philosophy Oxford University Press 6^th Edition - (2011)

Henry David Thoreau – The Heart of Thoreau’s Journals (1961)

Campbell, Joseph. (1991) The Power of Myth - with Bill Moyers. New York: Anchor Books. 1991