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LITR 5439 Literary & Historical Utopias
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1st Research Post 2015
Melissa Hodgkins
2015
June 20
Intentionally Selfless: Utopia and the Loss of the Individual
As we’ve been reading and discussing both literary and historical utopias
I find myself wondering why there continues to be a fascination with the concept
of utopia, a perfect place, an ideal civilization, a slice of community that
distributes resources and provides equally amongst the masses? As we began this
seminar reading Sir Thomas More’s Utopia
and have progressed to reading twentieth century works such as
Herland and
Anthem, we see that throughout
literary thought, regardless of time, religious doctrine, gender, nationality
(just to name a few) writers and philosophers are drawn to the idea of community
as a means of providing a higher quality of life to the masses both as a means
of social and economic critique specific to their own time and place, but also
as a larger critique of the dangers of individual desire and will over the
communal, or larger good. American culture idealizes the heroic individual, it
plays into the romantic notions we have of national and individual identity. We
collectively value the individual who rises above circumstance and uses their
own wits to rise in station and in power; these idealizations are largely the
justification for our capitalist economic system that values the dollar above
all else. In fact, the notion of the individual is so engrained into our
collective consciousness, while we continue to yearn for a better world free of
economic and social inequality; we simply balk at the notion that the cost of
admittance to utopia is to be intentionally selfless, to be stripped of the
romantic notions of the heroic individual. Why is the loss of individuality
perpetually depicted as the price of admission to a better world? And more
importantly, why does that terrify us if it means a society without hate,
without injustice, and without hunger?
To begin, I am drawn to Sir Thomas More’s description of Utopia. He
writes, “There are fifty-four cities in the island, all large and well built,
the manners, customs, and laws of which are the same, and they are all contrived
as near in the same manner as the ground on which they stand will allow” (More,
Utopia, Book 2 Paragraph 2). Here we see that there is an appreciation for
uniformity, both in appearance and in the customs of each city within the
country. Sameness is equated with prosperity and equality because cultural
differences lead to conflict. By eliminating cultural difference it can be
argued that a portion of individual identity is also sacrificed to the communal
good. Why is this an appealing proposition and why does this idea also induce
fear? To begin to understand this question, I am drawn to the
intentional communities discussed in class, as
these are communities that, as their names indicate, are intentionally founded
with the purpose of establishing a community built upon equality and social
consciousness. The community that stands out to me as a successful experiment is
the Twin Oaks Intentional Community which
was founded using the principles outlined in B.F. Skinner’s 1948 utopian novel,
Walden Two. The utopian premise
behind this novel is that the “Mind was not a place or a thing of our own
making, but actions and reactions, private and public, acquired in social
context” (Altus, 322). The language behind this concept, which would come to be
known as
operant conditioning in the following decades, denies the existence of an
individually determined “mind”. Instead, we are socially conditioned to respond
to various stimuli, both internal and external, based upon the positive and
negative feedback we receive in response to our actions. Thus, our consciousness
is naturally altered by our environment and our social interactions within our
communities. Skinner asserted that “Freedom was not free will, but rather having
the requisite repertoires and opportunities for attaining valued outcomes”
(322). Therefore, Walden Two was a
community that thrived upon the conditioning of individuals to cooperate and
adhere to the ideologies, and therefore prosperity, of the larger community. For
Twin Oaks, this ideal was almost impossible to adhere to. The commune was
founded in 1967 and in its first six years Twin Oaks struggled with an almost
80% turnover rate of membership due to a number of disillusionments with the
reality of implementing utopian concepts into real-life practices. In his
article entitled “From Walden Two to Twin Oaks” Frank Adams quotes a Twin Oaks
member as saying, “Even here the ideal has yet to be achieved” (22). Members
recount in-fighting over problems as large as the community’s labor credit
system, familial and sexual practices (specifically jealousy) and smaller issues
like who will do the dishes and what color to paint communal living spaces.
While Twin Oaks struggled to establish themselves as a
Walden Two community, they managed to
find a balance between their utopian ideals and their real-life problems. At the
center of these conflicts was personal interest. Essentially, even individuals
committed to intentionally living amongst community found struggles with
discarding personal interest and identity to the betterment of their community.
Despite these early conflicts, Twin Oaks continues to evolve and thrive
today. They have long abandoned the
Walden Two model and have adopted an
egalitarian style of
living. They find pleasure in working hard. In fact, they average a forty-two
hour work week (grossly equivalent to the average American worker’s schedule)
and promote a culture of work and equality. The price of this lifestyle is a
lack of alone time as documented by Frank Adams, and largely, an abandonment of
personal property. While these seem like minor concessions in exchange for free
healthcare, three square meals a day, free rent and your own room, they come at
a price. While individuality is said to be prized at Twin Oaks and children are
encouraged to express themselves and to think freely, one’s own freedoms are
constrained by the labor credit system, the will of the larger collective, and
the “mindfulness” of intentional living. These constraints do deny the
individual certain freedoms. While More’s Utopian sameness has disappeared and
Skinner’s Walden Two conditioning has
largely been replaced with egalitarian ideals, the fact remains that the
individual comes second to the group; otherwise, the entire experiment would
fall apart.
Despite being drawn to Twin Oaks as a backdrop to answer the questions at
the heart of my research: 1) Why are utopian communities depicted as sacrificing
the individual for the community? and 2) Why does the loss of individuality
frighten us in light of the possible benefits of a utopian community? I do not
feel that this experiment fully answers these questions. It has shown the
complexity involved in transferring a literary community such as
Walden Two into a functioning
real-life experimental community, and has further proved my point that the
American individual is a self-serving and romantic concept of identity that is
difficult to shed, but I wonder if it anticipates and responds directly to the
anxieties of a more modern notion of individuality and identity. Therefore, I
found it useful to examine another more post-modern conception of communal
living, a radical project that calls for global change, a project called
The Venus Project. According to
their website, “The Venus Project is an organization that proposes a feasible
plan of action for social change, one that works towards a peaceful and
sustainable global civilization. It outlines an alternative to strive toward
where human rights are no longer paper proclamations but a way of life.”
The project operates out of a 21.5-acre
Research Center located in Venus, Florida. The project claims that “Either we
continue as we have been with our outmoded social customs and habits of thought,
in which case our future will be threatened, or we can apply a more appropriate
set of values that are relevant to an emergent society” and “Experience tells us
that human behavior can be modified, either toward constructive or destructive
activity. This is what The Venus Project is all about—directing our technology
and resources toward the positive, for the maximum benefit of people and planet,
and seeking out new ways of thinking and living that emphasize and celebrate the
vast potential of the human spirit” (https://www.thevenusproject.com/en/).
In order for the Venus Project to work, it requires a collapse of the
current money-based global economy. “The money-based system evolved centuries
ago. All of the world's economic systems—socialism, communism, fascism, and
even the vaunted free enterprise system—perpetuate social stratification,
elitism, nationalism, and racism, primarily based on economic disparity. As long
as a social system uses money or barter, people and nations will seek to
maintain the economic competitive edge or, if they cannot do so by means of
commerce they will by military intervention. We still utilize these same
outmoded methods. Our current monetary system is not capable of providing a high
standard of living for everyone, nor can it ensure the protection of the
environment because the major motive is profit.” While the Venus Project’s
ideals seek to strip the world of vicious dictators and brutal corporations that
function through the increase of profit margins and largely marginalize and
exploit the members of the lower and working classes, and insists upon
establishing a means of global cooperation in which all members are provided
for, the expense of this success is: the forfeit of individuality and greed, as
an extension of the heroic individual and his immersion in capitalism, and its
ideals. On the Venus Project’s website there is a
Frequently Asked Questions
tab. Question #66 gets right at the anxiety expressed within my research: “Will
people all be alike?” The response is as follows: “Yes, in these ways:
Interested in latest science and technology, Never accept anything unless fully
explained, Not judgmental of different cultures, Curious of things that are new,
Instead of few people carrying the nation many will participate, Allegiance to
methodology, will have ability to solve problems and recognize that
contributions come from all different cultures thus helping to eliminate
prejudices, Share resources and ideas”.
What I have found is that in order to provide the greatest good, there is
inevitably a price to be paid in exchange for this “stability” (Altus). Fiction
has long identified this price and my research has largely confirmed that
hypothesis. This price is the giving up of the concept of total free will and
individuality. Twin Oaks Intentional Community adapted the theories proposed by
Skinner’s Walden Two into a real-life
intentional community in which the collective provides for the individual at the
expense of total freedom and the exchange of labor. Likewise, The Venus Project
is a look to the future in which the individual and the desires of wealth and
stardom that come with our current culture’s vision of individual success are
cast aside, in favor of a world that provides equal access to resources and
eliminates the concepts of wealth, power and exploitation in favor of human
rights. While I have found that individuals are required to forego selfish
desire, what these projects offer in exchange for this concession is profoundly
enticing and should cause each of us to reflect upon the society in which we
live and question the values presented by the systems that be. Ask yourself, “Am
I more important than everyone else?” What I have found is that these projects
transform that anxiety into “Am I just as important as everyone else?”
Works
Cited
Adams, Frank. "From Walden Two to Twin Oaks." Change 5.4 (1973): 21-23. JSTOR.
Web. 16 June 2015.
Altus, Deborah E., and Edward K. Morris. "B. F. Skinner’s Utopian Vision: Behind
and Beyond Walden Two." The Behavior Analyst 32.2 (2009): 319-35. JSTOR.
Web. 16 June 2015.
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/UtopTexts/MoreUtopia/utopiamore.html
http://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html
https://www.thevenusproject.com/en/
