The new generation assures their, much older, Boomer Generation that they won’t have any part of the corporation’s green greed. In the final months of 2011, our North American society has seen thousands of people protest in major areas such as Toronto, Denver, and especially Wall Street. But what exactly are the protests about? According to The Occupy Wall Street website, it says that it’s unified concept is about “...fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.” It also says that the “99 per cent” is annoyed with the “1 per cent” of society creating the rules of the world.
Isn’t democracy all about not having enough people in control of a whole lot of people?
The occupy movement also express that an Utopian society needs to be met. They have physically created a replication of the 16th century description of Utopia, when the name was first used for a fictional book. It has since then been, to me, created into a modern day form of communism. Another world within reality, but nothing close to what reality actually is. Everything is peaceful and everyone is the same or equal. Everything is perfect.
Wait a minute. Perfect?
Utopia has been brought up in American history, and failed, three different times. According to the Unitarian and Universalist Biography website, Brook Farm was the first recorded Utopian society from 1841 until it went bankrupt in 1847. Fruitlands was created in 1843 in Harvard, Massachusetts, and it only lasted six months because of malnourishment and poor diet. The third, Capitalist Utopia, was located just 15 miles north of Chicago. However, after 20 years into the experiment, George Pullman, the creator of this town wanted more power, therefore asked for more in return by his people, and they started to resent him.
An Utopian world cannot exist within society for two basic reasons. For one, it is humanly impossible to make everyone equal in a community or society. A seen in the Capitalist Utopia in the 1880s, competition is basic human nature. It is to weed out others that are weak. Competition has already been seen in other Occupy movements, especially in Halifax. On November 9, 2011, the rioters started to fall a part within the camp. According to Bethany Horne, a reporter for Metaview Management Ltd., from her own eyes what she saw at the Halifax camps, she expressed that the “problem people” of general society were overtaking the camps, and causing the real message to be muffled within the personal problems of the people.
Competition has started to happen within the occupy movements themselves; separating the poor-rich people from the poor-poor people. Fights and arguments within the Halifax camp, according to Horne, became violent and dangerous, creating the evacuation of the camp better for the residents, and potentially better for the rioters themselves.
People that have grown up in a prejudice society may have some difficulty in assimilating themselves into an utopian way of thinking. In this equal society, race as well is an equal part of the way of life. However, coming from a western culture influenced by the British and other northern European ancestry, it would be complicated for some people to change their way of thinking. In a 2007 Audit of Patterns of Prejudice in Canada, Anti-Semitism has increased just over 11 per cent, showing that our society is not yet ready for an equal environment.
Finally, an utopian society takes the passion and drive from people’s minds. If there were a Utopian society, everyone would have a role in society picked for them at birth and never be
able to get out of it. A book called The Giver by Lois Lowry describes a community where everything is the same, rules are followed and there is no colour, no music, and nothing that
doesn’t follow the carefully planned lives of the people. If society never broke the rules, our evolution would stop completely, and we would have stayed the same. If we were in a Utopian world, would we potentially think that the world was still flat? Would computers or televisions have been made? Breaking the rules, for the right reasons, has evolved our human selves for the greater.
There have been historical moments where an Utopian movement has happened and miserably failed, all of which have been in the United States. People should see that the occupy movement is no different. Power struggles and human competetiveness is found everywhere, is we as in the camps. The Occupy Movement will weed off and become the utopian world that once was, and people will see that a Utopian communism is unable to work. An Utopian society is, well, not so Utopian after all.
