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Thursday, July 29, 2010
More Dicussions
Some time ago while we were discussing the Giver, Miss li was telling us about a specific Utopian society that existed in the past. I found it relatively interesting, thus decided to research more on that society and I was taken aback by what I discovered. The community was named the Oneida Community and surprisingly it existed for a total of about 40 years. This community was very similar to that of Jonas' society in the sense that it hope to achieve a Utopian community. For example, in the Oneida community there was the practice of complex marriage. Whereby young male teenagers were only able to wed postmenopausal women and young teenage girls were only able to wed elder seniors. This was done in order to prevent accidental pregnancies. Similar to how Jonas' society had a elder of communities to decide the job vocation of youths in order to prevent them from making the wrong choices in life.
After uncovering such a scary fact, I sympathized with the people of the past because they were able to live in such a society where everything was restricted. Let alone have a thriving community where the population continued to grow in spite of this. I can never imagine myself living in such a world where everyone was so sheltered from the reality of life. These people have never been able to see the reality of the outside world and have been kept away like that of the people living in Jonas' community.
An example of this would be John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the Oneida Community. He was unable to deal with his own weaknesses such as his insecurity with women or his shyness. Thus he decided to run away from this by constructing the Oneida Community, to make them acceptable in a society that did not see them as downfalls. This was John Humphrey Noyes' way of running away from reality to live in a "fake world" that he created for himself because he way unable to accept his downfalls.
However it is ironic how the harder an individual tries to achieve a Utopian world, do more dystopian factors start to arise. For example, in the Giver when Jonas discovered the truth, he started to feel like he was being oppressed and thus resented this. Also, in the Oneida community it began to decline massively because the younger members started to be affected by the outside world. Therefore, they no longer shared the same sentiments as their founder John Humphrey Noyes. But rather, the need for personal and individual development was beginning to show and finally led to the dissolve of the Oneida Community in 1881. This shows that it is only a matter of time before the truth is being revealed to the society and the members realize that it is not their Utopia any longer.
Therefore, it is essential that we learn to accept our downfalls because sooner or later we are going to have to stop living in our "fake world" to face the reality of life. A Utopian society will never be able to exist like that of Jonas' community and the Oneida Community. A more modern example of how a Utopian society cannot exist would be communism which alike aimed for the idea of equality of some sort. However, in this day and age the idea of communism fails to exist as well. Which is why I believe that we have to accept our downfalls in life and learn to pick ourselves up and not try to run away from these problems but rather face them head on!
After uncovering such a scary fact, I sympathized with the people of the past because they were able to live in such a society where everything was restricted. Let alone have a thriving community where the population continued to grow in spite of this. I can never imagine myself living in such a world where everyone was so sheltered from the reality of life. These people have never been able to see the reality of the outside world and have been kept away like that of the people living in Jonas' community.
An example of this would be John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the Oneida Community. He was unable to deal with his own weaknesses such as his insecurity with women or his shyness. Thus he decided to run away from this by constructing the Oneida Community, to make them acceptable in a society that did not see them as downfalls. This was John Humphrey Noyes' way of running away from reality to live in a "fake world" that he created for himself because he way unable to accept his downfalls.
However it is ironic how the harder an individual tries to achieve a Utopian world, do more dystopian factors start to arise. For example, in the Giver when Jonas discovered the truth, he started to feel like he was being oppressed and thus resented this. Also, in the Oneida community it began to decline massively because the younger members started to be affected by the outside world. Therefore, they no longer shared the same sentiments as their founder John Humphrey Noyes. But rather, the need for personal and individual development was beginning to show and finally led to the dissolve of the Oneida Community in 1881. This shows that it is only a matter of time before the truth is being revealed to the society and the members realize that it is not their Utopia any longer.
Therefore, it is essential that we learn to accept our downfalls because sooner or later we are going to have to stop living in our "fake world" to face the reality of life. A Utopian society will never be able to exist like that of Jonas' community and the Oneida Community. A more modern example of how a Utopian society cannot exist would be communism which alike aimed for the idea of equality of some sort. However, in this day and age the idea of communism fails to exist as well. Which is why I believe that we have to accept our downfalls in life and learn to pick ourselves up and not try to run away from these problems but rather face them head on!