What is Utopia like?

By Lee Hyon-soo

The society in which we live is filled with injustices, so we all dream of a place of perfection. Such an imaginary place is referred to as Utopia. This term was coined by Thomas More in his book of the same name published in 1516.

Many people seem to yearn for Utopia without really knowing what it is like. The main features of the place depicted in More’s book are outlined below.

Utopia is a republic. All government officials are democratically elected and public affairs are discussed and decided at the council of elected officials.

There are very few laws, and those that do exist are written in plain language and easy to understand. This means there are no lawyers and each person pleads their own case in court.

There is no private property ― everything is under public ownership and divided equally among the entire population, so no one is rich or poor. The houses are allocated by lot and changed around every ten years.

Everybody practices farming, irrespective of sex. Besides agriculture, each person is taught a special trade of their own. Most children are brought up to do the same work as their parents. If a child fancies some other trade, he is adopted into a family that practices it.

The products of every household are collected in warehouses, and distributed according to type among various shops. The head of a household then goes to these shops and takes away whatever he wants, without any sort of payment. Utopia has no money.

All people have a six-hour working day with a lunch break. After supper, they go to bed at 8 p.m. and sleep for eight hours. They are free to spend the leftover hours to do what they like. Most people spend the free periods on further education instead of wasting their time in idleness or self-indulgence.

Everybody wears the same sort of clothes, which vary slightly according to sex and marital status.

All people in town have their meals together in public dining halls. Cooking is done by the women of the household who are on duty. In the countryside everyone eats at home because of the greater distances involved.

To travel to another town, one needs official permission. If anybody is caught outside their own district without permission, they are brought home in disgrace and severely punished as a deserter.

When marriage is contemplated, the prospective bride and bridegroom view each other’s naked body in the presence of a chaperon before they make the final decision. The rationale for this is that you cannot judge the whole person from a few square inches of their face.

Knowing what it is like to live in Utopia, would you care for it? For me, some features of Utopia are not to my liking. I do not fancy a communal mode of living. I want to earn a living on my own ― doing what I like to do. Nor am I willing to give up my right to own property such as a house to live in. Most of all, I do not want my life to be overly regulated. Although our democratic, capitalistic society leaves much to be desired, I would not trade it for More’s Utopia.

Thomas More wrote his book “Utopia” to present his vision of an ideal society. He believed that the Utopian way of life would provide the happiest basis for a civilized society, but he admitted that it would be mostly unadoptable in the real world. Probably that is why he named his imaginary country Utopia. Deriving from two Greek words, ou (no) and topus (place), Utopia means "No place.”

The writer is a freelance columnist based in Toronto, Canada. His other writings are posted on https://blog.daum.net/tom_hslee.