Life in Utopia: Monotonous Life Against Pleasure

MONOTONOUS LIFE AGAINST PLEASURE

Just because everything is pre-planned, life in Utopia is so very monotonous that people had to adopt a pleasure-based approach about life, based on happiness and happiness alone: “In fact, they do everything they can to make people enjoy themselves.”²⁹, “Here they seem rather too much inclined to take a hedonistic view, for according to them human happiness consists largely or wholly in pleasure.”³⁰

That hedonism is not rooted in pure and plain pleasure of self-amusement and self-entertainment. There are higher pleasures that need to be pursued, for this is claimed to be what God would like them to do.

For one thing, they need to strive for the well-being of others as a consequence of the utilitarian ethics they have, which is regarded as one of those high pleasures. However Utopians, contradicting with their own non-individualistic system, seek pleasure for their own selves as well, which is a stunning aspect of their understanding since they have almost no notion of self as argued above. They, as being extremely good at finding excuses, have very good reasons to do so: “…nothing could be more humane, or more natural for a human being, than to relieve other people’s sufferings …So why shouldn’t it be equally natural to do the same thing for oneself? Either it’s a bad thing to enjoy life, …or else, if it’s good for other people, …why shouldn’t charity begin at home?”³¹, “if Nature says you must be kind to others, she can’t turn around the next moment and say you must be cruel to yourself.”³²

Additionally, their religious incentives encourage a sort of hypocrisy which leads them to bargain with the Parent, and hence culminates in a self-seeking approach: “But they’d never dream of despising their own beauty …unless they were doing it on the benefit of other people or of society, in the hope of receiving some greater pleasure from God in return.”³³

The hypocrisy which is born due to the dull lifestyle of Utopians who are stuck between their already planned lives and utility-maximizing perceptions is faced when it comes to fulfilling their duties to the other “particles” of the society albeit their unwillingness. If a man is so sick that there is no hope for a cure, for instance, Utopians ask him to go for a euthanasia, which is practically saying that they don’t want to take care of him, he is not welcome any more and he should die.