You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
hulloworld 's review for:
Utopia
by Thomas More
I listen to a podcast called pitchfork economics. It basically makes the argument that the rich have been hoarding and distorting wealth for centuries by fabricating the narratives of wealth. Right now, their narrative is trickle down economics, but from “suffrage for women would be bad for women” to “freedom for slaves would be bad for slaves,” they’ve been playing the same trick with different narratives for centuries.
This book, written 500 years ago, is like a time capsule capturing the occurrence of the same theme in 1500s England. True to its time period, the story is of landed gentry accumulating wealth and producing very little value at the expense and exploitation of plow drivers. But the themes still hold. In this sense, the book was a valuable read, although it accomplished this in a cumulative 20-30 pages out of 130. The real power of the book is the snapshot it offers into the dynamics of class economics 500 years ago. They’re strikingly similar to our contemporary landscape.
The remainder of the book is obsolete and fraught with a painful blindness to the forces of colonialism. While this might be expected of a book published in 1516, it’s just so damn annoying to read. More’s imagined Utopia is proudly dependent on the labor of slaves and “natives,” who are tasked with the menial jobs of butchering and soldiering. These labors are considered too base for the souls of Utopia’s citizens, whose sensitivities and pathos might be corrupted should they be forced to slaughter the animals whose flesh they consume. Couple this with Utopia’s moral philosophy that the purpose of life is to feel pleasure, and therefore that the consumption of meat produced by slave labor is a near-divine expression of corporeal pleasure, and I just found myself constantly cringing.
These cringe-worthy examples abound in the book, and collectively they reveal that More’s conception of”Utopia” is riddled with the same cancerous class-dynamics that he critiques of English society. His blindness is in who he speaks for. While he can humanize the English working class, and therefore speaks for them, More is incapable of speaking from the perspective of Utopia’s slaves and mercenaries.
Any redeeming qualities of Utopian philosophy and society feel like a deus ex machina. From their collective altruism to their subtle manipulations in war, the Utopian solutions to the problems posed by More are contrived and detached from any context to explain their plausibility. While Raphael, More’s narrator, more or less admits this along the way, that self-awareness doesn’t salvage a ‘narrative’ which ultimately strikes this 21st century reader like a long, half-baked daydream.
I’d say, read this if you’re search for a sense of scale for how long the rich have been exploiting the poor. Read this if you think a 130 page book is short enough that it’s worth the risk.
But don’t read this if you’re looking for a thought provoking outlet for personal growth. There are many other, modern, and post-colonial books that would be a much better place to start.
This book, written 500 years ago, is like a time capsule capturing the occurrence of the same theme in 1500s England. True to its time period, the story is of landed gentry accumulating wealth and producing very little value at the expense and exploitation of plow drivers. But the themes still hold. In this sense, the book was a valuable read, although it accomplished this in a cumulative 20-30 pages out of 130. The real power of the book is the snapshot it offers into the dynamics of class economics 500 years ago. They’re strikingly similar to our contemporary landscape.
The remainder of the book is obsolete and fraught with a painful blindness to the forces of colonialism. While this might be expected of a book published in 1516, it’s just so damn annoying to read. More’s imagined Utopia is proudly dependent on the labor of slaves and “natives,” who are tasked with the menial jobs of butchering and soldiering. These labors are considered too base for the souls of Utopia’s citizens, whose sensitivities and pathos might be corrupted should they be forced to slaughter the animals whose flesh they consume. Couple this with Utopia’s moral philosophy that the purpose of life is to feel pleasure, and therefore that the consumption of meat produced by slave labor is a near-divine expression of corporeal pleasure, and I just found myself constantly cringing.
These cringe-worthy examples abound in the book, and collectively they reveal that More’s conception of”Utopia” is riddled with the same cancerous class-dynamics that he critiques of English society. His blindness is in who he speaks for. While he can humanize the English working class, and therefore speaks for them, More is incapable of speaking from the perspective of Utopia’s slaves and mercenaries.
Any redeeming qualities of Utopian philosophy and society feel like a deus ex machina. From their collective altruism to their subtle manipulations in war, the Utopian solutions to the problems posed by More are contrived and detached from any context to explain their plausibility. While Raphael, More’s narrator, more or less admits this along the way, that self-awareness doesn’t salvage a ‘narrative’ which ultimately strikes this 21st century reader like a long, half-baked daydream.
I’d say, read this if you’re search for a sense of scale for how long the rich have been exploiting the poor. Read this if you think a 130 page book is short enough that it’s worth the risk.
But don’t read this if you’re looking for a thought provoking outlet for personal growth. There are many other, modern, and post-colonial books that would be a much better place to start.