How to Build a World
"The Ones Who Stay and Fight" by N.K Jemisin
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Fifth Season by N.K Jemisin
Utopia by Thomas More
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin
What is 'Utopia?'
A land of happy people who live in a 'perfect' society with communism, lack of material value, no true distinctions between class, no poverty, no crime, religious tolerance. They have little internal or external conflict.
Orogenes
The political leaders & policy-makers of the world work to take action on climate change by 2025
Everyone is happy
Everyone is happy
People are aware of the suffering of the child that goes on for the sake of their perfect lives.
Exploration of ideas of how even the most perfect societies can seem flawed. if the thing holding their institution together should fail, there would be great suffering and pain for all.
Slavery
The laws of many states in the United States allow slavery to persist and do little to stop the institution from propagating. Ultimately, slavery remains directly connected to the economy and profit
Dehumanization for Benefit & Profit
Clones -> Organ Donation
Guardians/The Fulcrum
Planetary devastation due to climate change
One group suffers for the sake or benefit of another
Enslaved people are contained in their forced roles by laws and by slave catchers.
Node maintainers - functional enslavement: The orogenes that are not deemed worthy of further training under a Guardian are forced to maintain nodes, effectively being used to help control the seismic activity of the planet against their will. Not only are they forced to do this task, but their immobilization also enables adult orogenes to abuse them for sexual satisfaction.
It is easier for one person/one group to suffer while others benefit.
Those interested can look on the social media of the real world, watch its TV, see the calamity so different from their perfection.. This infects them, they turn away from their happy state and spread the bad ways like a virus.
NLMG and UR differ in this sense. The clones are raised and taught of what their fate will be, and accept it, despite knowing of a better alternative--this knowledge but state of inaction is seen in Kathy's point of view throughout the story. Alternatively, in UR, enslaved people are aware of the abuse and seek to escape it.
Clones accept their circumstances, allowing this system and harvesting to persist.
This is something mirrored in recent times in COP26: "The Glasgow Climate Pact adopted is a global compromise that reflects a delicate balance between the interests and aspirations of the nearly 200 countries that are parties to the core international instruments that govern global efforts on climate change." https://www.un.org/climatechange?gclid=Cj0KCQiAqbyNBhC2ARIsALDwAsC8GW8otkGOil1PfIEELKYP_8TgG-KcNRFpiZ_psjcOPIu1BdwQBh4aAmkOEALw_wcB
Climate Change -> State of Environment
Capitalism, Money & their Consequences
Alternatively, both the enslaved people in UR and the orogenes in TFS are kept in their status by the societies that they live in or the institutions that they exist under. The Guardians and The Fulcrum in TFS ensure that orogenes are working for them, and most comms do not accept orogenes, forcing them to turn to the Fulcrum in the first place. In UR,
Clones are educated by their Guardians from an young age of their purpose, and still do not . They do not know any other way of life, and are easily taken advantage of due to the way they were raised and the fact that they were never offered another way of life (Ishiguro 2005: 106).
Every 'utopia' is a dystopia for at least one person.
However, the label of 'perfection' is subjective. Single view of happiness -> distorted view of happiness
Definition and Control of the Definition of a Human/Life
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White/Racial Supremacy that is maintained and justified by capitalism
Unwelcome in most human comms
Communities/Comms
Marginalization of both the orogenes and the comms that are farther away from the capital, Yumenes.
Raphael explains that the policies and institutions of the Utopian people are better than those of the Europeans, but the Europeans will continue to think that the most vital concept in Utopia--no private property, communism--is ridiculous.
Kathy explains that, once they left Hailsham and were given opportunity to be in the real world, they “rarely stepped beyond the confines of the Cottages” (Ishiguro 2005: 118). It was not out of fear but rather because they did not know anything else.
The literal translation of 'utopia' comes from the Greek ou-topos meaning 'nohere' or 'no place' - implying that a utopia can never exist.
The Utopia that More describes has no royalty or prince, and it has no money or monetary system. It even goes so far as to make that which the normal world sees as valuable (gold, silver, previous metals) seem worthless. "By making his Utopians adopt a communality of possessions More liberates them from the passions generated by acquisition and loss; by the same token, they are relieved of the whole ideological burden which distorts European society." https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-more/#Uto
More's Utopia also still retains the institution of slavery. While this is a sign of the times he lived in, it also supports the idea that a utopia for some cannot be a utopia for all. Some have to suffer and do things against their will--even if the tasks, like in More's Utopia, are not strictly 'laborious.'
In the continent, the "Stillness," every few centuries the planet endure what its inhabitants call a “fifth season" -- which refers to the catastrophic climate change that occurs
Both the resources of the world and certain peoples that live on it are abused for profit.
People in marginalized groups are forced by the institutions that control them into lives where they only know how to function and exist in one setting. Because they only know one kind of way of living and are provided with no better alternatives, they have no reason or chance to leave. This is an act done to create dependency and structure as well as an “effort to monetize the value of care” (Casid 2012: 112). http://www.jstor.org/stable/23362776.
The idea that the feeling of happiness comes from the same source for all people creates a very single minded way of thinking, and enables assumptions to be made based on the group whose ideals & wants are valued more. In following this way of thinking, someone will always be unsatisfied.
"Yet when his classmates put their blades to a colored cadaver, they did more for the cause of colored advancement than the most high-minded abolitionist. In death the negro became a human being. Only then was he the white man’s equal." (Whitehead 2016:141-142) By dehumanizing enslaved African Americans, slave owners and other white people are able to do whatever they wish to them. And when the enslaved are freed in death, they are seen as human once more when they cannot fight back or change anything.
Police & Law Enforcement
Organs are given to people battling cancer
"They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery." http://sites.asiasociety.org/asia21summit/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/3.-Le-Guin-Ursula-The-Ones-Who-Walk-Away-From-Omelas.pdf
The name 'Utopia, from ou-topos, was a pun - the almost identical as the Greek eu-topos, which means 'a good place'.
"Among [Utopians], virtue has its reward, yet everything is shared equally, and all men live in plenty. (More: 1516: 38)
While not everything in Utopia is perfect, the idea of communal resources seems to be the cornerstone of building a perfect society. This is something that harshly contradicts modern ideals.
More himself voices objection to this part of Utopia: "My chief objection was to the basis of their whole system, that is, their communal living and their moneyless economy. This one thing alone utterly subverts all the nobility, magnificence, splendor, and majesty which are the true ornaments and glory of a commonwealth." (More 1516: 110)
Abuse justified for function
Jemisin describes the orogenes as individuals who “serve the world… [they are] useful not merely to a single [community], but all the Stillness” (Jemisin, 2015: 34)
Unequal access to life-saving materials and air conditioning; people suffering that are not fully responsible for the problem. The rich, despite the incredible impact they could have, fail to help and remain a crucial part of the issue.
When people fear that they are in danger, they are quick to turn on people and groups they see as a threat. This highlights how humanity possesses both a “necessity for the cultivation of empathy,” and a “necessity for knowing its limits” (Whitehead 2017: 160). https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1tqx96m.9?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
Marginalization
MFTF depicts how economic systems like capitalism are responsible for the climate devastation and depicts how the natural environment was brought to its tipping point
"Possibly some of the richest two percent of the world’s population have decided to give up on the pretense that “progress” or “development” or “prosperity” can be achieved for all eight billion of the world’s people. For quite a long time, a century or two, this “prosperity for all” goal had been the line taken; that although there was inequality now, if everyone just stuck to the program and did not rock the boat, the rising tide would eventually float even the most high-and-dry among them. But early in the twenty-first century it became clear that the planet was incapable of sustaining everyone alive at Western levels, and at that point the richest pulled away into their fortress mansions, bought the governments or disabled them from action against them, and bolted their doors to wait it out until some poorly theorized better time, which really came down to just the remainder of their lives..." (Robinson 2020: 57)
People are aware
However, in Jemisin's short story, the people notice the way their world is on the brink of dystopia and they don’t ignore it or walk away – they have the choice to stay and fight.
Jemisin's story is based off of "Omelas"
Jemisin depicts the utopia, Um-Helat, as a possible future. The past "America" is barbaric to a point that shocks the citizens who know of it. This place is suggested as a real potential for our world, described as a place we could get to if we worked hard enough. "To achieve this future "where numberless aspirations can be fulfilled" (1), the story argues, "history" must be "actively, intentionally corrected," and to correct it, we must become like the Um-Helatians, "learned enough to understand what must be done to make the world better, and pragmatic enough to actually enact it." https://muse.jhu.edu/article/803697
People can pay for survival, causing another group to suffer.
Utopia VS Dystopia
By Erin Devine