A Modern Utopia

Some thoughts about the super-obscure "Modern Utopia," by HG Wells. This is almost free (99 cents) from Kindle. It's well worth reading for the money, and I encourage people to give it a look.

For one thing, it's a literary tour de force - a totally unique way of dealing with a subject. HG sets a task for himself that's worth noting for those of us who "live in our heads". Thinking about Utopia is a special kind of meditation. What would be a perfect world? HG takes due note of other efforts going all the way back to Plato's Republic and Thomas Mores' Utopia.

HG says you need to jump into this perfect world yourself and imagine this world to be populated by people you recognize as humans like yourself and people unlike yourself. Perhaps imagine a Utopia that doesn't boil down to a world governed by people like you according to your values. Given HG's example, I have found this to be good advice - even a roadmap to encourage us to think in this way - perhaps to examine our own assumptions about what would happen in the perfect world we imagine.

HG actually jumps into his Utopia with a friend who completely rejects the project. The friend wants to imagine an alternate world where his own personal life turns out better. He cares not about the details. Now, is it really possible to imagine a perfect world that doesn't fix your own issues? For example, in my perfect world, I'm a lot younger with all my bad decisions rolled back.

HG has made me think about a lot of stuff - the litmus test for decent literature. Here are a few things worth turning over ...

• HG feels that the only role of government is to guarantee individual liberty. For example, he wants the government to step in to make sure that the liberties of mothers are not compromised by them having children. People interested in the history of socialism will recognize this one. So we see the central role of "liberty" and the germ of sympathy for women (from a man's point of view).
• HG needs some kind of Utopian money. He wants an underlying value. Not gold. Maybe "energy". Not a bad idea, but it side-steps the actual security behind money - debt. HG is a bit vague about the role of debt in the Utopian economy. Interestingly, he wants a woman to assume debt to cover the social cost of raising her children. I find HG's economic (monetary) ideas to be completely implausible, but that's OK because HG explicitly admits the Utopia is his Utopia with all the warts that may afflict his own imagination. 
• In HG's world, legislation and executive authority are trusted in a kind of priesthood. Ironically, HG himself would spectacularly fail the entrance criteria for the elite (HG was a famous womanizer). But one must ask a more better question: would actual humans ever accept the rule of any kind of "morally superior" group? Isn't this a bit like the Communist vanguard or the Chinese Communist party?

HG's line of thinking forces you to consider the details in a way that other "Utopias" don't. This is not entirely different from HG's most famous work: "War of Worlds," which imagines real people caught in an alien invasion. Both are classic examples of the "Science Fiction" method, which is to ask "What If?"