Rundus: Striving for utopia is part of personal development
Raymond J. Rundus
Since Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden, a perfect home for two perfect human beings, there has been an ardent desire to return to that state of perfect bliss.
The yearning to find a new Eden in our earthly existence has inspired and challenged our species for many hundreds of years. It has sometimes prompted a cosmic awakening of our imagination, and it often has helped to embellish and enlarge our human quests for a better life. More recently, we have been exposed to a number of apocalyptic visions, some in print and some on film, that suggest the "final days" may be at hand. Thus awareness, confrontation and heroism may be called for.
A few days ago one of the categories on "Jeopardy!" was "U" (answers to begin with that letter). When one clue was given, something like "a 1516 book which proposed an ideal government," none of the three contestants could come up with Sir Thomas More's "Utopia.''
Some of the readers of this column may recall my attending a production of Robert Bolt's play about More, "A Man for All Seasons,'' at the Fort Bragg Playhouse in the earlier 1980s with Dana Andrews in the title role. Mr. Andrews was competent but not convincing, often relying on "prompts" to get his lines right.
Thomas More, beheaded in 1535 at the behest of Henry VIII, whom he served as Lord Chancellor of England, was 400 years later canonized as a "saint" in the Catholic church by Pope Pius XI. More invented the term "Utopia" for the ideal political government. The word was formed from a combination of two Latin words and literally means something like "nowhere" or "no place."
In the earlier centuries after "Utopia'' was published, a number of other well-known authors built upon the fascination with explorations of the Earth, and sometimes these were "Utopian" visions which echoed the hope that somehow, even though the Garden of Eden no longer existed, there still might be found an "Earthly Paradise" where man could once again find peace, natural beauty and prosperity - or perhaps even a grimmer existence.
Some well-known examples would include Shakespeare's late romance "The Tempest,'' Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe'' and Jonathan Swift's satirical ''Gulliver's Travels.''
In the time since the conclusion of the "Great War" of 1914-1918, the futuristic novel has often been a "dystopia," an opus which presents a pessimistic view of the time to come: Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World,'' George Orwell's "1984'' and, more recently, both novels and especially films which show the future as a vast wasteland. Very recently, for example, have come "Wall-E'' and "The Book of Eli.''
One of the most interesting courses in which I have been involved was a seminar offered in the earlier 1980s on utopian literature, an upper-division course for English majors that I co-taught at UNC-Pembroke with Dr. Tom Leach.
Tom and I decided that one of the requirements of the course, a culminating experience, would be for each of the 10 or maybe 12 female participants (for some reason, no males had enrolled) to write a final essay in which she would set forth her personal vision of "Utopia."
This part of the course proved to be especially interesting and valuable. Among my papers I have kept is the utopian vision of Jill Fenton, a favorite student of mine. Jill's utopian society was so created that each of the other students in the seminar had a key role in its governance, from the education of the young to developing and administering the penal code.
I did not recall until a few days ago that I had once written an essay titled "My Very Private Utopia." Then nearing 90 years old, my mother had rediscovered it and sent it to our son Richard as he and my wife worked to assemble an album of remembrance that would be given me in March 1997 at the Southern Pines restaurant that hosted my retirement dinner. In a letter dated March 9 of that year, Mom wrote to Richard, "I do think it sums up so many things your dad believed in and strived to impart to other people."
One thing about our mothers: they not only honor early art work by taping it on the refrigerator, they never cease working to improve our self-esteem. As I reread the 10 statements that appeared in "The Scroll" of my small plains college in 1953, which was what Mom had sent to Richard, I asked myself, "Mom, what were you thinking? This is tripe, pure folderol, and perhaps even 'borrowed' from some other witless source."
It seems, nonetheless, that the urge to find a personal Eden or utopia is imprinted in our subconscious, often emerging into our conscious selves. Thus we have created imaginary explorations of space and time where might be found a better place: such as Shangri-La or in Brigadoon or in a commune or cult smoking weed and ingesting meth, or even, in what we imagine will be our eventual, perhaps eternal, home.
In what we desire to make immortal, in what we want to leave behind us, in what we imagine will be our destiny: in these impulses we shape our daily lives and design our legacy.
We will always, in what is left of our life on Earth, keep workin' to discover and develop a personal utopia, a paradise.
Raymond J. Rundus is a professor emeritus at UNC-Pembroke. He has lived in Cypress Lakes since 1985 and is former president of the Cypress Lakes Men's Golf Association. He can be reached at rjrundus@infionline.net.