A Perfect Place Void of Perfect People

A Perfect Place Void of Perfect People

         I can dream of a world full of colors but without colors, a world with so many views but only one view, a world of groups but no clicks. Worlds of perfection where we can all agree, work together, and love one another.  We can dream of Utopia, but can we achieve such a place? Dictionary.com defines Utopia as “An ideally perfect place, especially in its social, political, and moral aspects.” When I think of my perfect world it conflicts in many ways with another’s perfect world, so it cannot truly be perfect.

         When I say something like “ideal place” my first thought will be much different then another person’s. My ideal place being a tropical island with no one around, the breeze blowing softly by, a hunter may think of an ideal place as being his tree stand deep in a forest listening to his own heartbeat. If I say an ideal race, some people may think a white race or a black race, but some people may want a race void of colors, where everyone is the same no matter what color that may be. When I say ideal leader some would think of a king, while some would want a queen or a president and some others would want no leadership at all.

A perfect world would contain no law, seeing as how there can be nothing illegal or wrong in a world of perfection. Without law no one can truly know if they are doing something that could be construed by another person as wrong. A Utopia is truly a paradox.

         Victor Hugo is a French author that said, “Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal.” He pinpoints the topic in an indirect way. As we live we dream up the perfect place, but to have a perfect place everyone must agree that it is perfect. To all think the exact same we are losing our freedom of opinion, we are losing our power to think as an individual. Can we truly be alive as human beings to sacrifice so much for such a world?

         Socrates the Greek philosopher said, “Know Thyself.” Michael Novak an American philosopher took that a step further and said, “To know oneself is to disbelieve Utopia.” We cannot truly live in reality, in our own world, while we are always under the delusion of Utopia. For our world to be livable, to come even close to a perfect world, we as human beings need to realize there could be no perfect world. In a perfect world we, as humans with all of our imperfections, would not belong. Dictionary.com defines Utopia as “An ideally perfect place, especially in its social, political, and moral aspects.” We are not invited.