After reading and discussing Bellamy's novel, "Looking Backward," I am still at a loss as to whether the society presented to me is one in which I would want to live. The society has many attractive features, such as no war, no money, guaranteed employment, guaranteed health care, and IPOD-like contraptions. However, it seems unrealistic to me that in the course of 113 years that human nature (or even human society) could change that drastically. One look at today's mutual distrust of nuclear non-proliferation treaties, and one wonders how several antagonistic countries could trust each other to remodel society. If I were a country, I would be suspicious of "utopian" ruses that could simply be ploys to take me over. Furthermore, even if the plan was sincere, a failure in the execution of the plan could wreak disastrous economic results (similar to the Soviet Union). Thus, the most questionable feature of the novel for me is the "missing link" necessary to connect the previous mentality of the world with the new one. The narrator mentions that once the people beheld the simplistic solutions to the world's problems, they gladly accepted the new precepts of working for the common weal (and on a worldwide scale), casting aside centuries-old traditions, such as money, advertising, competition, etc.
Doesn't one find it hard to believe that everyone would buy into such a revolutionary idea without considerable dissent? At least in our day, the corporations and military could put down a popular uprising of the masses by starving and jailing the population if they wanted. I guess I just don't yet have enough faith in humanity to believe that everyone would take part in a new grand design without an easily visible instant benefit. In addition, at my age, I am not ready for a society so "flat" and predictable as to render true excitement a relic of the past. One day I hope we will get to a similar society but in a more gradual manner and with less forceful equalization.
Doesn't one find it hard to believe that everyone would buy into such a revolutionary idea without considerable dissent? At least in our day, the corporations and military could put down a popular uprising of the masses by starving and jailing the population if they wanted. I guess I just don't yet have enough faith in humanity to believe that everyone would take part in a new grand design without an easily visible instant benefit. In addition, at my age, I am not ready for a society so "flat" and predictable as to render true excitement a relic of the past. One day I hope we will get to a similar society but in a more gradual manner and with less forceful equalization.