FREE ESSAY ON UTOPIAN SOCIETY

UTOPIAN SOCIETY

How the Quest for a Utopian Society
Has Been Obscured by the Struggle for Power
According to the curriculum of our Athens to New York course, we are supposed to study
certain themes that are carried through history and literary works of various eras. In
addition, there are some recurring themes that also become evident, especially in some of
the more recent works that we have studied. Works like Cornel West's Race Matters, Elie
Wiesel's Night, and Franz Kafka's The Trial, carry many similar themes, and teach us
readers some important lessons about ourselves as the human race. Through each work's
message, we can study what it means to be: human, a member of a community, and moral,
ethical, or just, as well as how individuals respond to differences in race, class,
gender, and ethnicity in relation to action (this quote taken from one Bob Anderson).
While I dare not attempt to categorize each of the meanings that the authors gave to
their books, I can find one major similarity. In each of the books, the author is in
search of a Utopian society that does not contain all of the faults of our modern day
society.
Charles Darwin heavily believed in survival of the fittest in his work with evolution. In
the society that we have created in our world today, one can see this belief holding
true. Survival and all around relations between different groups in general has become
dependent on five little letters. These letters spell out power. One who holds the power,
seems to try and lord over those who do not. This struggle over power has become one of,
if not the, reason for the major differences between groups. While the battle over power
rages on, a Utopian society will continue to be an impossible goal. Allow me to explain
by use of the books I have earlier highlighted.
Franz Kafka's Night tells the story Joseph K., a man who must defend himself against the
courts of the day, while lacking any and all information about his case. The man finds
himself suddenly arrested one day and placed on trial for a crime he does not know he
committed. The man becomes increasingly frustrated as he finds no one capable of helping
him develop a case to defend himself with. No one can even provide him with any
information about why he is on trial. With no where to go, and no one turn to, Joseph
discovers that the justice system that was designed to help the people has worked against
him, and his situation is utterly hopeless.
Kafka makes a strong about how modern bureaucracy and totalitarianism has become so
extreme that it harms the people that it is designed to protect. Justice has become jaded
by its own self and its own methods. A government is created by the people, for the
people, but has instead gained the power to lord over the people. Here we see the power
switch from man to the system. Joseph has become alienated from normal society because of
crimes that he does not know he committed, displaying the corruption of the justice
system.
This nightmare is not entirely too far from our modern day reality. According to a
well-known book that discusses this topic, Urban Administration-Management Politics and
Change, Contemporary technological society places a heavy burden upon the individual to
adapt to a large-scale, highly complex, and often times impersonal bureaucratic
environment. For a substantial number of the members of the modern mass societies this
burden has become the source of pervasive feelings of anxiety and estrangement now
fashionably termed 'alienation.' (Bent & Rossum, p. 201) Man now has the choice of
falling into line and being another cog in the wheel, or finding himself alienated from
the rest of society who presumably does. 
In this dark and dreary portrait that Kafka paints of our modern world, a community is
formed when everyone agrees to accept his role, be equal with everyone else. It seems
that being human is more of being part of a system and being like everyone else, than
being an individual. In order to be morally just, one must follow the laws and the
system, even if they work against you, rather than for you. Men's minds have been warped
to believe that justice is merely a state of mind.
Elie Wiesel searches for his Utopian society amid the horrors of the Holocaust. His book
Night, gives an autobiographical account of his real-life nightmares during World War II.
He had seen things that no one should be forced to see; things that may have swayed his
once immovable faith in God. In a world of despair, where the Nazis had unlimited power
over the Jews, a Utopian society where are all equal seemed unattainable. It was sadly
simple, one group (the Germans) had the power and ability to eliminate another group that
they deemed subordinate, so they tried to erase them. 
Elie had high religious morals. He strongly believed that the power of prayer could
overcome all, although this belief became questionable as his horrors continued. He loved
his family very much, and wanted to stick by his father through thick and thin from the
beginning. Even in the end, his only concern was that his father survived. Survival was
of dire importance, and in order to survive one needed to keep his faith in God and his
love for his family. The light in someone's eyes showed if he was alive or dead, once
that light was lost, the body followed. I wanted to use some quotes from The Diary of
Anne Frank in order to complimented Wiesel's accounts, but I found I learned much more
from observing the ongoing, daily tribulations than finding one exact quote. The
holocaust consisted of so much gradual torture and the best quotation that can be used is
an entire book as opposed to one small insignificant sentence.
Cornel West brings the issu e of Utopian society to our modern-day lives. Regarded as one
of the greatest thinkers and racial leaders in the world today, his book Race Matters not
only expresses his feelings about the situation of the human race today, but it also
provides some suggestions and optimism for the future. He states that although Whites
have much of the political and social power in today's world, Blacks do not due entirely
too much to help their situation. He confronts prejudice but expresses his belief that
all races share the same destiny. According to Newsday, West's thinking consistently
challenges the conventional wisdom [and] confronts the reader with profound and
unsettling insights. (West, back cover) 
West calls for some positive action to be taken in order to make all races truly equal.
He sees many differences among all races, but he feels that this is natural, and each
must be understanding of the next. In the book Jews and Blacks, West was asked to comment
on how to confront the problem of anti-Semitism by inner-city Blacks. You have to
convince people that it is a problem. He states. Black people are facing so many
difficult issues today-Blacks don't have enough resources, and food and housing and
health care and so forth-that it's not always obvious to African-Americans that alongside
of these there's also the problem of anti-Semitism. (Lerner and West, p.249)
West's Race Matters explains his ideas and beliefs in full detail. He pushes for a
Utopian society, in which all races get along and treat each other as equals. He says
that we as a human race need to see things from all angles. One must step back and look
at the entire picture before making a judgement. Perhaps the most meaningful point that
Mr. West tries to express is that our society as a whole needs strong leaders. Today we
lack strong racial leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Very much like
Martin Luther King, West dreams of a day when one group does not have any social
advantages over another. He dreams of a day when there is no power struggle between
races. 
Through each of these monumental works, we learn some important lessons about the human
race. West, Wiesel, and Kafka preach against the alienation and segregation that we
create in our society. We design our governments and create our political systems in
order to aid us in dealing with each other, however, they have been obscured through
time. Now they have begun to work against us, alienating us from each other. Justice has
truly become in the eye of the beholder, as its rules and regulations have become as cold
as stone. 
I see the main theme in Night, Race Matters, and The Trial as being the impossible quest
for a Utopian society. The struggle over power has created a wall between different
groups. Whether this be the power of the government, or of one group over another, the
human race cannot peacefully coincide unless each individual sees the big picture instead
of being limited to his own point of view. Everyone needs to take a step back at look
what is wrong within himself and the world that he surrounds himself with, if any
positive movement is to be made in order to unite everyone. If a Utopian society is ever
to be reached, a common ground must be reached on what it means to be human, what it
means to be a member of a community, what it means to be moral, ethical, or just, and the
manner in which individuals and communities respond to differences in race, class gender,
and ethnicity are related to action. (again quoted from one Bob Anderson) In order to do
so, we must place this struggle for power on the back burner for the greater good of all
humanity.