Even though this question was raised in class about where individuality is in a utopian society, I cannot completely agree with the answer. In a utopia, individuality would almost cease to exist as conflict and difference over important questions such as values would boil away. The example was politics would no longer be needed, as there would be no difference of power in society.
I think I have a hard time understanding this as I lean more towards having the traditional religious view on human nature rather than the progressive intellectuals. I believe “humans are naturally capable of evil” rather than human nature is inherently good and its social institutions that corrupt them. I am not sure that by eliminating the bad social institutions within a utopia, that conflict will not arise. Looking historically, it will be difficult to remove conflict. Within this utopia, I believe that someone will question how this society is able to function. An individual who seeks out the truth could potentially spark a conflict in the utopia.
This relationship of good individuals within a utopia and then evil individuals that are corrupted is also connected to religion. Based on historic records, religion has been around almost as long as humans have. The Christian view of human nature is to construct institutions that will mold human nature in order to escape the propensity of evil. Furthermore,religion is why I do not see a utopia being able to succeed. Human beings generally want something to believe in that is a higher power than themselves. There are so many different religions and belief systems that exist, it seems unrealistic to boil away conflict.
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I also talked about the discussion of human nature and its susceptibility to corruption in my blog post. I think that given the current reality of society it is unattainable to achieve a utopian society. I agree with you that intellectuals who are seeking out the truth could result in potential conflict. People have different perceptions of what the truth is and will likely have different ways in which they will handle the truth. I think it is a possibility for some intellectuals to keep the truth for themselves in an attempt to to shift power dynamics in society. On the other hand, the intellectuals might choose to spread the truth to the world. While in some cases this can be beneficial, the truth could be polarizing as well. It could result in people desiring radical change in society and even a revolution. Yet, this is not the goal of progressivism. Progressive intellectuals’ main end goal is to achieve a utopian society. In order to accomplish this they try to use reason to govern society and obtain order. According to the Progressive view, the world is not so hostile to reason. Progressivism also encourages the use of political movements to catapult their agenda. I think that it is somewhat contradictory that one of the main goals of Progressivism is to combat political corruption, when in reality, I think it is pretty rare for a political movement to have no corruption whatsoever. There are likely members within the progressive that think (or claim to be) combating political corruption, when in reality they are participating in it themselves. An example of this I mentioned earlier could be them trying to capitalize off of the truth for their own personal gain.
To continue your point of utopian society being impossible to achieve, intellectuals simply have their own false perspective on human nature in general. As a unit, humans are not innately good. I remember having a similar discussion in a different class about a child’s behavior toward other children. If it were up to them they would be rude, mean, take toys away from other kids, and physically or emotionally abuse other kids if it were not for adults or their parents stepping in and reprimanding them for that sort of behavior. I also come from a more religious background on the view of human nature in that all humans have the ability to do good but we are constantly bombarded with temptations to harm others for things they have done to us or to get ahead of others. With this in mind, it is impossible to construct a utopian society when all people, for one, have their own definition of human nature and second, cannot account for those with differing views and will not ascribe to one person’s definition. It is truly impossible to create a natural utopia without some sort of force and I think a lot of these readings recently have given evidence of that. Several of the intellectual writers who ascribe to communism believe that the ends justify the means, in order to get a utopia there must be sacrifice and unjust actions must be taken. Yet they consistently fail to understand the true nature of human beings and their veracity to their morals, especially religious. This is simply why Communist systems do not hold because religion persists.