It is easy to forget the good things with all the petty tyrants that are put in charge as leaders doing wrong to their people. They educate us and make us aware of those issues, and they also function as warnings about the current state of those in power or state of affairs of a government. Dystopias depict problems that might occur in the future, and they discuss reality. The ruling class or the government uses propaganda to take control of people’s minds.Īuthors use dystopia to express their concerns about issues of society and humanity and to warn us about our weaknesses. Furthermore, either everyone faces extreme poverty, or there’s a large income gap between the rich and the poor. In a dystopian world, there is either no government or a controlling and oppressive one. Disasters, overpopulation, wars, revolutions, oppression, and rebellion are all recurring themes of dystopian literary works. Dystopian literature has explored and portrayed different nightmarish images that might happen to the world in the near future. Unlike utopia, dystopia is an imperfect world. Before people began imagining utopias and dystopias, they imagined pasts or places like the Garden of Eden. If utopia is a paradise, then dystopia is a paradise lost.

A better society is possible, and utopia helps create hope for it. Reaching an ideal goal may be impossible, but it is something we can strive for or use as an inexhaustible source of motivation for improvement. Even if not applicable, utopia should stand as an objective. utopian ideas encourage us to question the present system. The purpose of utopia is to criticize current social structures and measure how wrong they actually are. utopia is important in the study of different societies because it helps us contemplate various methods of social organization and understand current social and political systems better. utopia has four different functions, and they are: However, what is the usefulness of creating an ideal society when it is difficult to apply the idea in real life? Some people believe that utopia has only a literary purpose, but in truth, the idea doesn’t lack pragmatism. The ideas that arose from the topic were used extensively by politicians, thinkers, and philosophers. The idea of a perfect society has changed countless times throughout history, which proved that it’s somewhat subjective and ambiguous. The objective is to give shape to the idea in theory, without considering how difficult it would be to apply it to the real world. The hypothetical utopian world has an important aspect – it’s a world that doesn’t obey immediate applicability. The use of the term utopia began when society began thinking about how a perfect society should be, including its people, communities, and government. The work is satirical, criticizing the political organization in the XV and XVI centuries. Thomas More was the first to use the word in his book, which tells a story of an island with an idyllic and peaceful government. The term comes from ou-topos ( ou – not, and topos – place), meaning no place, or a place that doesn’t exist. The term utopia has become a common word in our everyday life. But what is a utopia, and does it have a deeper meaning than what our society shows us? When discussing hypothetical or ideal societies, utopia can always be heard as an argument/counterargument. Real World utopia: What is It and Can We Attain It? In contrast, we have a dystopia – an imperfect society in which everything goes wrong.

Everyone has meaningful jobs and access to education, there’s no private property, there is freedom of religion, and women are able to take on leadership roles. According to his descriptions, everything that’s not in Europe is in utopia, or better said, that utopia is everything that Europe is not. Raphael tells More that he had discovered an island called utopia, located south of Brazil. In the book, More meets Raphael Hythlodaeus, who is one of the original 24 people who had traveled to the American continent with Amerigo Vespucci.

First published in 1516, More had written it as a young scholar who had a clear and ambitious goal – to become the court advisor to Henry VIII, then king of England. Written in 1516, it is a sociopolitical satire that eventually became one of the most widely studied and thought-about manuscripts of the Western world. Thomas More’s utopia is a capital work of fiction. Create Your Personal Space at MyHappiness.page.

Dystopia vs utopia