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Why Utopias Fail Research Paper

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A man by the name of Albert Camus once said, “Utopia is that which is in contradiction with reality.” This begs the question: Is a utopia really possible? First off, what is a utopia? The word “Utopia” was created by a Thomas More (1478-1535), as the name of an island in his book. A utopia is essentially society that has achieved the best level possible in terms of everything a union needs, and that there are no problems or weak points whatsoever. The exact structure of a utopia, however is undefined, since no society has ever achieved such perfection. However, many arguments have risen about whether or not such a society is possible. The sides that say it is or isn’t possible are pretty well balanced, but many reasons and examples show the true answer to this question. Although many people believe that a utopian society is possible for valid reasoning, a utopian society is not possible for a couple reasons: the bar for a utopian …show more content…

In “Why Utopias Fail,” the author states, “Ideals are constraints, and the more constraints one tries to impose, the less viable the community will be. It’s hard enough for a private company-an organization focused exclusively on economic success-to survive intact for multiple generations. Add to that special utopian claims on the firm by the employees and you can see how tough the odds are” [paragraph 11]. In other words, the author is saying that a society is already hard enough to run, but with such high utopian values and ideals, the odds are raised even more for the society not to work out. This is important to understand because it demonstrates just how unlikely a society is to work out after utopian values and ideals are imposed. Therefore, a utopia, just by looking at its individual problems, is extremely unlikely to work

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