I'm currently reading Thomas More's Utopia for a course I'm taking, and I'm wondering why I never took the time to read it before. So many of the ideas in this small book appear elsewhere, especially in their dark forms in dystopian literature. It's amazing how very closely the dark universes of 1984 and Brave New World take the ideas in Utopia to their ultimate conclusion if the base precept is that mankind does not really have his fellow man's best interest in mind.
It's curious how many systems have tried to incorporate portions of Utopia. I can definitely see shades of Communism in it, as I can also see ideas that politicians are still suggesting about the best way to run education, government, and trade. My favorite quote so far has been one related to politics, and paraphrasing without the book in hand, it says something to the effect of, "they never allow anyone to obtain an office who campaigns for it." As we stand in the aftermath of state elections and on the precipice of national ones, I rather like that idea....
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And then you said.....