Tell me a story...

Regardless of how we feel about the strict rules of censorship that Socrates proposes for his kallipolis, there can be no doubt that he is a firm believer in the importance of stories.

Big Bird and Friends gather 'round for a good story.
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Read_Me_a_Story

Socrates tells us that the stories we listen to as a young child play a key role in forming our morality. They also teach lessons - whether intentional or not - about the types of behavior that are permitted.

To be honest, I'm not sure that I find Socrates to be that far off the mark. I don't know how many of those good ol' Greek myths I'd want to use as bedtime stories for young children. Those gods and heroes do get up to some wacky hi-jinks, don't they?

But aside from the concerns of the content and form of the stories, something that struck me about Socrates' discussion is how it highlights a group of people that we wouldn't naturally associate with loads of power in this particular utopia. Not just the storytellers, but the "nurses and mothers" (53). They are the first educators, the ones who nurture the guardians when they are their youngest and most vulnerable. (Not the philosophers, who will presumably get their hands on the young men - literally and figuratively - once they are ready for a more formal education.) It's those nurses and mothers who must be "persuaded" to choose good tales for the wee guardians. Is it me, or does Socrates seem a bit insecure about whether or not those nurses and mothers will listen to his persuasion?

So let's hear it for those mothers and nurses. They are the linchpin of the kallipolis, whether in Ancient Greece or the contemporary US. Our stories are still what teach us our morality and guide us in our behavior. And is that is as it should be.

Establishing a Utopia

One interesting aspect of Plato's Republic that is unlike other well-known Utopias like Omelas, Utopia as Thomas More invented it, and others is that Plato sets out to illuminate the process of imagining a Utopia, rather than simply placing his characters and reader within one that the author has already fleshed out. This is one of Plato's greatest authorial strengths, because we as readers never know what Plato thinks.

The characters in this dialogue, Socrates, Glaucon and Adeimantus, decide that in order to determine what is truly just in a man, they must discover what justice is in a city. In this sense, Plato opens the door to an enormous overarching irony, when by the end Socrates has banished the poets from the city based on the postulate that they are furthest from the truth, meanwhile the bedrock of the entire text is founded on an extended metaphor.

More importantly for our purposes, the three parties involved spend Book II raising a city up from scratch. First they begin with only a core crucial craftsmen, but eventually the city expands more and more. This expansion is based on the fact that each person is best suited to be well trained at one specific task, and that they should be allowed to focus all of their energy on their specialized craft, so that they are capable of performing it as best as possible. However, this also leads to the invention of currency, because each person needs to be able to trade their skills for food, unless they are a farmer, in which case they need everything else.

When Socrates believes he is finished describing the just city, Glaucon famously rebuttals that it sounds like a city fit for pigs. Socrates then proceeds to describe the luxurious city, wherein the development of justice and injustice should become more transparent. I think one take-away from this argument is that injustice, or to put it another way, the need for justice, comes from a surplus of goods which allows people to live luxuriously and therefore want more than they need. Surely this is the origin of a great many crimes and acts of injustice.    

The world is humongous. It is filled with many people of varying cultures, religions, races, and ideologies. Every person on the planet is unique in their own way; differences exist between every human on Earth. No two human beings are the same. Schisms between groups of people are largely based on conflicting beliefs. All too often in the history of man, it can be noted that because of these differences a multitude of tragedies have befallen mankind: wars have been waged, racism has ingrained itself within communities, and oppression of certain groups has become commonplace.

It becomes apparent that to establish a utopia these differences that exist between people must be considered. One solution could be that everyone could accept one specific set of values that would essentially make everyone more similar, thus making the differences between everyone less apparent. However, this concept would never be feasible. Assimilating multitudes of people under one pattern of thinking would prevent any other pattern from arising. The diversity of human society would be lost as everyone began to hold similar beliefs. Furthermore, this assimilation would stifle the advancement of other cultures, causing unrest with those that want to maintain their cultural identity.

A much better solution to this dilemma is understanding. Rather than trying to erase differences by instituting a collective culture, learning to appreciate the qualities that make everyone different should be a key factor in establishing a utopia. Altogether too often, differences in culture, political stance, and race lead people to avoid interaction with others. If others are perceived to be unlike oneself, people will tend to avoid contact with an individual or group of people, never really developing an understanding of what they stand for and in what they believe.

Understanding (or even attempting to) would make everyone more sympathetic to another’s situation. Instead of judging from the outside with little to no context, people could seek understanding, giving them insight to another person’s point of view and perhaps even changing their own. If there was more understanding, there would be more sympathy. More sympathy would reinforce camaraderie among various groups of people, and with more camaraderie, peace would be more easily achieved.

For some, developing understanding and sympathy can be very difficult because there must be a willingness to develop such things. Deep-seated animosity is the worst enemy of understanding. It is a wall that prevents the process from ever starting. Therefore, people must be taught about other cultures and was of thinking before developing these biases. In schools, children should be taught to appreciate all other cultures and their fellow men and women across the world.          

Where To Begin When Creating Utopia?

The idea of defining utopia seems an impossible task. Even Socrates and Adeimantus can't agree on how to create their theoretical “city.” There seems to be too many variables to consider— what to include and what to leave out. As I continued trying to think of what constitutes a utopia, I was struck by some questions that I could not get away from regarding the idea of utopia being a “perfect place.” Doesn't perfection remove the need for desire? How can innovation exist? How can a true sense of joy be attained  if all you ever know is fulfillment; how would you be able to make a distinction between good and bad while only knowing perfection?

Two things that seem necessary to create utopia and avoid dystopia: fluidity, or adaptability, and balance.

Fluidity would accommodate for the fact that people's needs, wants, and desires are constantly changing. Omelas accounts for this in their utopia by providing an option for everyone. For example, there is religion and everyone worships as they choose or choose not to. Another idea regarding fluidity is one discussed in class while attempting to define utopia: the idea that utopia needs to be thought of as a journey and not a destination. Along that principle a utopia could be a society working together to achieve harmonious perfection. By that standard utopian happiness would be created from hope.

As I contemplated utopia further, I thought of Lois Lowry’s The Giver and the “perfect” society that is portrayed. In exchange for not feeling pain, the society also doesn't feel happiness and all of its occupants are resigned to “Sameness.” So in order to avoid a gray world, another element that would have to exist in the definition of utopia would be balance. Many scenarios of utopia have vast extremes, for example The Giver. Balance or “everything in moderation” is necessary in order to avoid creating a dystopia.

Freedom seems to be another struggle when defining utopia. Too much freedom would lead to chaos, but with too little freedom you live in a dictatorship. Again, the idea of balance needs to be applied, but how would it be decided who regulates the rules? Freedom existed in Omelas but only in the sense that the people could walk away if they found the inhuman treatment of the child wrong. They couldn't choose to free the child or that whole society would cease to exist. Choice seems to be the most important freedom in a utopian society.

One Man's Utopia is Another Man's Dystopia

Books II and III of Plato's Republic comprised Wednesday's reading assignment. Socrates, Adeimantus, and Glaucon, discuss what components are necessary in the foundation of a city. The "first and greatest need," according to Socrates, is food (44). His arguments, to start, are relatively standard. Food, shelter, medical care, etc., are all necessary, and things that generally come to mind when one considers city planning. The incomparable Socrates, however, soon shifts the conversation onto the city's residents, delving into a discussions of censorship, and the like, and how it is necessary in order to keep citizens temperate and without too much passion.

Socrates discusses how he plans to control what stories may be told, and what stories must be "thrown out." He declares that storytellers must be "supervised," and the only sufficient stories are ones that "are fine or beautiful... since they will shape... children's souls" (53). He plans to censor stories that give "a bad image of what the gods and heroes are like," for fear that examples of these mythic figures' debauchery, violence, unvirtuousness, and the like, will create a bad example for young people to follow (53-54). Socrates' willingness to selectively censor the literary/poetic canon of his city's inhabitants, in an attempt to hide any and all notions of bad behavior, is somewhat disturbing. This act of censorship seems quite Orwellian, and to me echoes some of the reasoning certain folks have when trying to ban or censor books today. 

Socrates continues his reasoning for banning certain stories, not only wanting to ban stories of war crimes or the licentious pursuits of the gods, but of excessive laughter, appetite, etc, in an effort to encourage moderation among his citizens. He emphasizes self-control. While I agree that moderation, applied to certain aspects of life, is generally a good practice, the fact that Socrates wishes to control and censor the media consumed by his residents in order to keep them loyal, unfeeling, and "moderate," is worrisome. He decides what the truth is. To me, this seems like the erasure of passion, and he pursues this desire to erase passion, in his specific discussions of the "guardians" dispatched to lead the city, of their education, of the types of music played, etc. To Socrates, censorship is a utopian necessity, in other to keep his citizens mild, emotionless blobs. The classic Greek stories of the gods getting into less than savory activities must be hidden from this city's constituents, because "they are harmful to people who hear them, for everyone will be ready to excuse himself when he's bad... For that reason, we must put a stop to such stories, lest they produce in the young a strong inclination to do bad things" (68).

Does Socrates, the self-imposed founder of the city become the person that decides what is good or bad? What myths are too sexy to be seen? Who determines who decides? His city is based censorship and control of his citizens. He plans to manipulate the media, to hide many of the stories central to the literary canon from the city's unwitting residents in order to keep them completely dispassionate, boring, blah. Bummer!

Congress

I think Capitalism is behind a lot of America's current struggles but I don't really have the socialist vocabulary to articulate exactly what to do and how to do it. That being said, I think that America would become a much more virtuous place if the people in charge (i.e. Congress) were not so apt to ignore the intentions of the vast majority in order to acquiesce the insanely wealthy sliver of the population who financially contribute to their campaigns and ask for favors in return. The Affordable Care Act, for example, could have been improved or tweaked if the issue was the issue average Americans were facing with it. Instead, the most significant problem posed was the tax breaks that the wealthiest 200 families in America would receive if it were repealed.

Therefore, my solution is to send Congress toward the medium of American culture, meaning that their salaries and campaign funds would be shredded. I think Congress should make the minimum wage, actually, and that their health care should match that of their constituents. This would ensure that the minimum wage and the most basic health care are both capable of providing living conditions, because the people in charge of operating it would be utilizing it. Furthermore, if Congress made the minimum, it would inspire more people to be engaged for its own sake, rather than running simply out of greed and potential profit, which is exactly (one) of the things our country needs right now.  

Controlling the Narrative is Controlling the Masses

My original idea for this post was about global food distribution--something that blogger Noel Jones did an excellent job of explaining earlier on this site. Noel mentioned that we produce enough food to feed the planet, but we currently don’t have the means to distribute the food to the people who need it. I absolutely agree with everything Noel has to say about the topic and strongly recommend reading the post here.

 One method that is being developed to combat the global food insecurity crisis are genetically modified organisms, more commonly referred to as GMOs. The phrase is at the forefront of a long contested battle between science and public opinion.What many people don’t understand is that the goal of genetic modification is to create abundant amounts of vitamin-packed food that take less chemicals to produce and can even last longer on the shelves of supermarkets.

pic.twitter.com/at1nGeNWh7

— jesse Williams. (@iJesseWilliams) January 22, 2017

In a perfect world, scientific evidence would reign supreme over the noise of public opinion. Most opposition aimed at GMOs and other technological advancements in society is the result of misinformation and fear. People absolutely have the right to be suspicious of new discoveries. In fact, I encourage people not to take every single article they read on a topic as fact. There are many people who push agendas designed to capitalize on the polarization of consumer opinions, simply because there is money in playing both sides of the field.

 I’m talking about monopolization of the agricultural industry by companies who produce and market both ‘conventional’ and ‘non-GMO’ food products.We have seen this across many aspects of industry, surprisingly with items as common as eyeglasses and as important as EpiPens. In my utopia, it will be illegal for privately owned corporations to mask their ownership over all aspects of production of a good or service as the illusion of choice. The fact that this is allowed in our country today shows that the greediness of few outweighs the needs of the majority. I picture a utopian society as the complete opposite of this. Understanding the ideologies behind these corporate giants is key to combating them. As part of my push towards utopia I will advocate for mandatory courses in marketing and mass media production. It’s important to understand the tactics that are used in advertising, as well as why they are effective if we are going to move past them towards an enlightened society.

 

Another step that I would take is to outlaw all fear mongering, sensationalized, inaccurate, and ‘click-bait’ forms of media. I strongly feel that the field of journalism should focus on integrity and truth. Given the amount of satire news sources that exist globally, I’d say that many other people are fed up with the current state of news and media in America. The messages being portrayed to us are currently a controlled narrative by people who profit from the scared and under-informed. In addition to this, I would aim to turn privately owned news outlets and journals in to publicly owned and operated thought collectives. The technological advancements of the past decade give those with access to the Internet a platform from which to share a positive, widespread message. My favorite example of this is an online magazine created by a sixteen year old girl.

In the words of Alice Walker, "the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."  Give people the agency to make choices about the products they buy, the discoveries they feel are important to their communities, and the information they want to share, and they will prosper.

Self-sacrifice for the Greater Good

In order to make the world a better place, I want to implement a national and international rule that requires everyone, who is able, to volunteer. I believe that volunteering makes a much more significant impact on the betterment of society than society gives it credit for. Volunteering time and service is something that can be done in various forms. It can be done in the comfort of your own home, and there are varying degrees of volunteering that can be committed to make an impact. The amount of time someone volunteers does not have to be huge in order for society to benefit. Even little acts can help others in need more than if everyone did nothing. I believe that volunteering is important because there are a lot of less fortunate people in the world. Not everyone can afford to get the help they need, and when people volunteer and help others they tend to feel better themselves as well. Volunteering has a fairly large range of application as well. Therefore, society would have numerous options. There are hospitals, schools, food industries, nursing homes, and a plethora of other options that could appeal as volunteer options for people. In addition, the method in which one volunteers their time or service also has a multitude of options. People could volunteer and do something from a computer in a completely different part of the world even. Without volunteers, people struggle to be successful. Most things in our world cost money, so without money sometimes people in society suffer. Money provides an incentive for people to do work for themselves and others, but volunteering without a reward builds character and helps people to make real connections. If people stop doing things only for gain, then negative aspects of society like crime could decrease. Sometimes all anybody needs is someone who cares, and the more selfish people there are in the world the more unhappiness will increase. Volunteering is a good way to ground people in reality, and expose them to different people and places. Also, you never know if you will be someone who needs help one day, so it can be mutually beneficial. I believe that society can accomplish this by requiring volunteering to be implemented in schools, communities, and the work force. It does not have to be daily or for very long, but making it required and included in curriculum will help people make time for it. There won't be an excuse if it is already part of what you are doing. Even though not everyone works or goes to school, if communities encourage volunteering the outreach will increase. Obviously not everyone will likely get to participate in the entire world, but if those who are already fortunate enough to work or go to school do, then at least an impact is being made. Volunteering in school can be as simple as people tutoring or cleaning up trash. Volunteering in the work force can be as simple as annual soup kitchen trips. I believe it has a greater chance of being successfully accomplished if the idea is gradually inducted. Maybe it won't ever reach everyone, but at least there is no harm in volunteering even a little to help as many as you can. It is like the saying that goes something along the lines that if you can't help everyone help one person by Mother Teresa.      
 

Keep Calm & Take a Siesta

The hustle and bustle of American society, what with its encouragement of productivity that is better, faster, and more efficient, is quite frankly exhausting. I echo the sentiments Dr. MB expressed in class last week: that we all have too many obligations. By the middle of the school/work day, the productivity of students, workers, etc., grinds to a halt. At this point, the boosting effects of caffeine have more than likely worn off, lunch has come and gone, we've been at work for hours yet still have hours to go, all for it to repeat the next day. This daily slog needs legitimate replenishment. Caffeine or other methods of stimulation can only go so far. Therefore, I propose a solution that has been used throughout many areas in the world for centuries: the siesta!

WHAT: I propose the siesta, which Google defines as "an afternoon rest or nap, especially one taken during the hottest hours of the day in a hot climate," and typically follows lunch. While the United States is not wholly a hot climate zone, unlike most areas in the world where the siesta is common, the siesta could still serve a valuable purpose. A simple respite (one needn't even sleep) each afternoon could serve as a boon to general morale among hardworking students and the average worker bee. Since siestas, as I have learned, are so common in some countries, many businesses are closed throughout this time period to allow workers to rest, too. The privileged, white-collar worker is not the only beneficiary of the glorious siesta.

WHY: With knowledge from my own experience, I am highly aware that many college students simply do not get enough sleep at night. I am also conscious of the lack of sleep among workers such as my parents, who both work in D.C., and must leave for work by 5:30 or 6 in the morning in order to beat the ridiculous traffic heading into the district. Lack of rest is not healthy. People can literally die from sleep deprivation. Additionally, the culture of the "daily grind" is not healthy either. If only our work-obsessed culture were more forgiving to the beleaguered, downtrodden worker bee and allowed for more rest.   

HOW: The siesta should become a tenet of American society. Similarly to how Hood has established a "common hour," so too should businesses, the government, schools, and other colleges do so, and perhaps designate this as a siesta time. People are free to use their time as they please, but they should be encouraged to utilize this designated siesta time, this period of restfulness, as their time to unwind. A radical idea is that businesses that wish to implement these siesta hours should take a hard line, barring the usage of non-work related activities (such as answering calls/texts, checking social media, etc.), things that most workers do when their bosses' back is turned, but encourage it during these siesta hours. Additionally, instead of making siestas mandatory, businesses could offer incentives to employees that choose to take advantage of this time, especially workers whose productivity has increased following the implementation of this siesta system. The tenet of a siesta could likely become more easily accepted on a college campus, because most students could not say "no" to a mandatory nap. Mandatory siestas, however, could pose issues for students and workers alike who have not planned their schedules accordingly. Siestas could serve as helpful suggestions, beginning in places where they could be easily implemented, among the white-collar and higher education sphere, and then gradually be introduced into other areas of society, gaining support and momentum with it from these rested folks.

Food For Thought

If I could change one thing to make our world a better place, I would make sure that every person on this earth has enough food to live a healthy life. 

I know this is a somewhat cliche choice, but as I was considering all the things in the world that I wanted to fix, nothing seemed quite as pressing as this. The knowledge that so many people in this world are starving every day is a fact that I have never been able to wrap my head around. Even as a child it always nagged at me. With such a large supply of food in the world, why are there so many people without it? 

Food is a necessity for life; without it we die. Most of us that live a comfortable life with a constant supply of food often take that for granted, and we are often quite wasteful as well. I am guilty of this as well, I will not pretend otherwise. The greatest food waste, however, comes from restaurants and grocery stores. I witnessed this firsthand when I started my first job at a restaurant.  Every night when we closed, we would dump any cooked food that had not been sold into the garbage. And every night it killed me to throw out so much food. Often it was enough to feed a whole family, if not more. If I had the choice I would have taken it to the nearest homeless shelter, but it was against company policy to do this.

My solution to this is to make it mandatory that all restaurants and grocery stores be required to package and donate all extra food to the nearest homeless shelter. To help enforce this, any business that is found disposing of the food should be fined. If we implement this rule across the world, it could greatly reduce the number of people going hungry in many communities. This solution will only work for the communities with a large number of businesses, since the food will perish quickly and can only be transported to nearby areas. 

So, on a global scale, we must work on transporting food to locations that cannot grow the food for themselves. With the technology we have today, we should be able to easily transport produce all over the world. Additionally, we can help create new methods that improve farming in areas that are capable of it, and maybe even make it possible to farm on land that was once not capable of it. 

While these solutions may not be enough to completely rid the world of hunger, I do believe that this would be a very good place to start. If everyone gave just a little bit of time or money, we could greatly reduce the number of deaths due to hunger. As human beings we should all do our best to make our world a better place to live in for everyone. 

Cultivating Community

Utopia— A wonderfully strange word that brings to mind images that mirror the Garden of Eden. In a world filled with strife, conflict, and uncertainty the idea of a perfected world is one we all delight in from time to time. We look at the current political situation and voice our ideas of how to improve the issues at hand; we judge the opinions of those in power and state how we would have the answers if placed in their role. Often though, as we speak of our “utopia,” we think first of ourselves: how to create a world that meets our own ideals and needs. Yet, isn't this the problem? We live in a time dominated by “me” first— everyone else second. So wouldn't an obvious first step to building utopia be to think first of community and of ourselves second?

What would need to be done to achieve Utopia when most people center their lives singularly? Creation of community would be the first step towards a more perfect world. Community creates responsibility and accountability among those who live in it, and as a result when problems arise, rather than face the struggle alone, community members would have a support system to rely on. Additionally, members would be forced to make decisions that benefited the community as a whole and not small segments of it.

Why is community important? Sadly, at this time in history many of us have lost the desire for human interaction and connection. It is easier often to email, text, or DM someone than to call and have a live conversation or, scarier yet, actually have a face-to-face interaction. Community outside of the virtual world forces us to make human connections, and through those connections find real, solid utopian-like happiness.

How can we cultivate community? The source of our struggle seems to be one thing: money. We don't have enough money; we have an excess of money; we want to get more money; we want to spend money. We work our entire lives towards the goal of financial security because as a result we believe we’ll be able to find peace of mind. While money can solve many of our problems, it is also often the source of many other problems. In order to create a stronger, unified community, money would have to be removed. In place of money to provide for ones needs (I.e. food, medical care, security) a bartering system would be put in place. As a part of this bartering system people would identify their own unique talents and exchange their talent for services they need. For example, a farmer can exchange food he produces to a veterinarian for medical care for his animals and vice versa. This would help to build community because the system would be interdependent on each individual to be successful as a whole. While a major flaw of this system would be that if one person were to fail the whole system might collapse. This, perhaps, is the only way utopia could ever exist beyond imaginary confines— to recognize that struggle and strife will always exist and can not be wholly removed; with this in mind, a utopia would be created as a community working together to resolve issues that arise with the intention of protecting both the individual and the community as a whole.

The Environmental Dystopia

One of the most horrifying issues faced today is our impact on the environment.  Be it our use of plastics - which has led to the investigation of a possible new geological epoch - or our use of carbon dioxide-producing fossil fuels, we are creating a dark future for ourselves and our planet.  An increase in ocean temperatures will increase the strength of hurricanes, which continue to pose a serious threat to human life today.  Flooding increases in some regions and severe droughts in others.Without intervention, human activity may cause entire ecosystems to fall. With all of these side effects and more, we will eventually pose a serious risk to our own survival.

In order to mitigate our negative impact on the environment, several changes must be made. Carbon emissions, for example, have in part been covered by the Paris Agreement, but all countries (worldwide) must follow this plan. Additionally, we can increase investment in researching and implementing carbon capture and storage to reduce carbon dioxide concentration. Littering must be taken more seriously, and we must increase our recycling efforts. To reduce plastic waste, a "plastic tax" could be implemented in order to discourage the purchase and use of such products. Companies that use recycled materials could also be given tax breaks. Clean-up crews could be implemented on a larger scale to remove litter.

In the most extreme case, we could forego our technology and revert to a pre-industrial lifestyle. To do so, governments would need to enact a ban on all unacceptable technology and confiscate such items. People would resist this severe transition and a totalitarian government would most likely be necessary to implement this new way of life. References to our current technology would be removed and literature would be censored. After a few generations, the public would no longer remember the way life used to be. To prevent the same damaging technologies from being rediscovered, governments would have to regulate inventions. Those that don't cause harm to the environment would be granted permission for use, whereas dangerous or harmful inventions would be hidden from the public. The inventor(s) would be placed under strict supervision of the government and forbidden to speak about their dangerous discoveries.

The negative side effects of human activity are well documented. In order to protect our future health, we must also protect the environment.


Image Sources:

1. <http://www.climate-change-guide.com/melting-polar-ice-caps.html>

2. <http://www.countrylife.co.uk/country-life/country-life-litter-campaign-71195>