Where the Skies Are Blue: Utopias, Suffering & Hope

Where the Skies are Blue Utopias, suffering, and hope.

By Sophie Levenson

Just as daylight fades into darkness and the moon makes way for the sun, happiness must exist alongside suffering. A painless life may be desired by nearly all people, but the fact of the matter is that there are too many obstacles inherent in human nature and society to allow for a life lived completely devoid of misery. As a race, we have somewhat clouded the meaning of the word “happiness.” The idea of fully-encompassing joy, in essence, is a beautiful one, and even perhaps an essential one. But in modern society, happiness has turned into one more thing to achieve. If one lacks happiness, they are under an immense amount of pressure to attain it. And then they must compare their happiness to that of the rest of the world, something that can only be damaging. It becomes more and more difficult to separate genuine happiness from the illusion. Either perfect happiness is hidden excruciatingly well, or it is just another cruel joke, courtesy of society. It is nonetheless ingrained in our minds that we must find happiness, the closest thing to perfection in our minds.

The concept of a perfect life is a strange one. Perfection, the way that we typically see it, is flawless. It is a state of absolute happiness and the absence of suffering. But perhaps this idea, this definition, is itself imperfect. Perhaps “perfection” is something else entirely.

36 36 In a mathematical sense, a perfect something is complete. It has all the things that it should, or ever would, require. From this angle, a perfect life is absolutely achievable, depending on one’s own subjective interpretation of “perfection.” A life can be full with all of the things that one may want or desire; and thus from an individual perspective, a perfect life may very well be in the books. However, on a larger scale, a perfect world is impossible.

Human beings are in constant competition with one another: individually, nationally, continentally. There are, of course, plenty of “good” people in the world, but there has never been enough selflessness among humans to solve greater suffering. There are innumerable factors that can cause suffering in an individual’s life. There are small afflictions, simple things, like heartbreak and loneliness and a lack of success. There are worse things, more powerful afflictions, like abuse and illness. And then there are tragedies that put dents in the world: famine, poverty, hate, oppression, murder.

What if there were a place in which we could escape the suffering that pervades human life? A place of perfection, where we could be happy, always, free from the chains of being human and the various problems that we have created for ourselves? For they are, truly, problems prescribed by none other than ourselves.

However, on a larger scale, a perfect world is impossible.

In 1516, in the tumult of the Protestant Reformation and the abysmal reign of King Henry VIII, High Chancellor Sir Thomas More published his legendary book Utopia, along with the word itself,

for the first time. He coined the term from Greek roots: ou-topos, meaning “no place,” along with eu-topos, meaning “good-place.” With this in mind, his clever new word posed a myriad of questions, beginning with the most obvious one: is a perfect world attainable?

No, but the reasoning behind why not? is fascinating. The idea of a utopia says an awful lot about human nature. It is magnetically desirable, and yet we ourselves are the only real barrier in front of it. We are all very much aware that utopias are phantoms of the mind, unreachable and completely impossible, but we nonetheless have the word and the idea. It is almost as if we have decided to taunt ourselves with a notion of perfection that is always out of reach.

However, theoretically, there are two ways for a utopia to exist. The first is simple, though just as simply rebuked. If every one of us lived wholly alone, on an island where we had to work for our needs but never ran out of resources, we would be free of the complications of inequality that accompany society. There would be no upper class and no lower, no king and no peasant, no pressure to be above others and no fear of falling below. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have put it, there would be no chains shackling us to a life deprived of free will and liberty. But if loneliness and isolation is the trade-off for perfection, it does not seem worth it. In fact, it does not seem perfect at all, but merely a form of protection and selfpreservation. Humanity is a species that lives not for the sake of living, but for the sake of some greater thing, some abstract concept through which our insatiable appetites can finally be conquered. This something is a near-impossible goal that we set for ourselves—the crown jewel of humanity’s self-inflicted problems. In a sense, we are running in circles, chasing our tails, and pursuing goals that will inevitably become more steps on the staircase that we build until we suffer our last breath of air.

Perhaps we would not know any differently and could not understand our isolation fully, but the human mind is remarkably complex, and isolation cannot completely prevent the possibility of emotion. In this case, simply not knowing that other humans exist would not necessarily eradicate loneliness. Besides, living in isolation deprives a person of a keystone aspect of existence, which is human connection. No man is an island, as it is said, and this is simply because he naturally surrounds himself with others. If people could not connect, there would be a dark, vast emptiness inside of them. Humanity is a species that lives not for the sake of living, but for the sake of some greater thing, some abstract concept through which our insatiable appetites can finally be conquered.

The second theoretical possibility for a utopia would involve an equality so strict that it would suffocate individuality. Such an idea has, of course, been exploited: one notable instance being the short story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut. The world Vonnegut designs in his story strives to conquer inequality and competition by hammering individuality, talent, and ability out of its residents. The government weighs down athletes with heavy loads and kills intelligence with mental “handicap radios” that make it impossible to think. It does not allow anything beautiful, for fear that it will ruin the system. It starves humanity of passion in its effort to fight suffering. But a lack of spirit can be a suffering in itself.

In a more recent work, Lois Lowry explores the same idea in her 1993 novel The Giver. The book explores a world in which nobody sees in color, nobody knows emotion, and complacency is the peak of excitement. However, there is no known crime, no inequality, and everybody is perfectly oblivious to the fact that deformed or imperfect infants are sent like expired leftovers down the trash