Utopias, frankly, suck. Or do they? Is it the plea for peace in "Imagine" that gets my goat, or is it something else, something deeper? This is part two of a two-part column.
Let's say that John Lennon's vision of a completely peaceful society has been realized - in other words, we no longer have to imagine "Imagine." Everyone gets along, happy and equal. There's no more greed, no more envy, no more ruthless competition. It's paradise on earth. How do we keep it that way?
There are two options: One, everyone reaches enlightenment at the same time, and no one carries the scars of human nature. All of humanity's bad traits are wiped out by the spiritual factor of your choice, and earth's population just gets along with itself. Option two is to protect the utopia by force.
At our most basic level, human beings thrive on competition. We compete for food, we compete for shelter and we compete for mates. In some parts of the world, this translates into direct confrontation. In the more affluent areas, the competition takes on both a monetary and a personal aspect: Mr. Jones buys a new car. Mr. Smith, his neighbor, feels threatened and also buys a new car. This leads Mr. Jones to put in a swimming pool, and it goes downhill from there.
Luckily, our higher instincts act as a variable in these equations. If Mr. Smith is secure in himself, then he simply wishes Mr. Jones and his new car well. He feels no need to compete, or at least he's able to control the urge. This is the utopian state: Neither party is willing to injure or compete with the other.
But what about Mr. Cook across the street? For whatever reason, he lacks Mr. Smith's security. He is jealous of Mr. Jones' new car. What's to stop him from walking over, whacking Mr. Jones with a baseball bat and stealing it? Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith might try to talk him out of it, but what if he's persistent? What if he ignores them and takes the car anyway?
Well, so what? Mr. Jones shrugs. It's just a car. I can get another one. Mr. Smith agrees.
But what if he had been jealous of Mr. Jones' wife?
In any society, there will be conflict. Most arguments can be settled with words; civilized men have been doing so for centuries. But absent the presence of a divine influence (something "Imagine" eschews), there will always be someone who decides to beat his plowshare into a sword, who decides he isn't interested in talking. So what then?
This is the point where "Imagine" falls apart. Non-violence only works if both parties are willing to participate. It worked in India against the British. It didn't work in Tiananmen Square. If your enemy is willing to use force, then force in necessary to stand against him. My generation seems to have forgotten the necessity of force.
America's young adults are probably the most coddled generation the world has ever seen. The diseases that plagued our forefathers are a thing of the past. The mighty wars which ravaged the globe have mostly dissolved into localized conflicts, little more than a footnote on the evening news. We have convenient food, reliable transportation and warm, permanent shelter - and we didn't have to fight to get all of it. In short, we have utopia.
But we don't know how to keep it.
John Stuart Mill addressed this when he said, "The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
Substitute "comfort" for "safety," and you will see a damning portrait of American indolence. We are so accustomed to being cared for that were a foe to set foot on our shores, a shameful number of us would retreat to our homes and watch the invasion on television, sure that someone would fix things before it got to us. We live in the most dangerous kind of utopia: the kind we did nothing to make. We have been brought here by better men than ourselves, and they didn't do it by joining hands and singing "Kum bay ya."
Let us pray that when worse men come, we will rise to the occasion.
Write to Joanna at jllees@bsu.edu
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