Compare Utopia And Dystopia

Yet, to me, human nature should always be the foundation of any utopian society for it to be a viable model of the real world. The purposely created societies ignorant of human nature are unstable and would soon become dystopia instead; only by thoroughly considering human nature can people establish a nourishing and long-lasting society.

All Three Early Modern Utopias have sufficient resources as their premise, but differ greatly in the extent of human control. Among the three, Utopia involves the greatest amount of human control, The Isle of Pines the least, with New Atlantis achieving a fairly good balance between the two extremes.

More builds Utopia upon the notion of equality. An ideal society is achieved when everybody grows up in a same

On one hand, New Atlantis is very similar to the society created in Utopia, where a distinction is made between the “knowing” and “unknowing”. Similar notion also exists in New Atlantis. As described in the book, while “the king had forbidden to all his people navigation into any part that was not under his crown”, he made ordinance for his own ships to travel and bring home “light of the growth of all parts of the world”. In other words, he selectively chose the knowledge that was to be spread in the nation. What’s more, as is in Utopia, virtue also plays an important role in this ideal nation. Specifically, trust and honesty seem to be an instinct of the people in this nation. From the very beginning of the story, we constantly get the response “What? Twice paid!” when travelers give extra gifts to their hosters. In other situations, only oral promise is needed in making essential decisions. As is in Utopia, these whole series of goodness of the overall nation is impossible. Therefore, to some extent, New Atlantis also contradicts human nature. However, unlike Utopia, which uses strategies such as humiliation to drive away people’s desire for pleasure, New Atlantis encourages people to pursue pleasure and tries to achieve the good virtues solely by education. Additionally, extensive scientific experiments and research carried out in Salomon’s House allows a dynamic society. That is, unlike Utopia, New Atlantis is a developing society. Most importantly, only a few aspects of the whole society is shown to us in New Atlantis. As the last sentence said, “the rest was not perfected”. The rest, remaining unknown, gives freedom to human nature. It cannot be perfected and it should not be