Utopia - 3 - Crime, War, and Religion
Book Two (Part Two)
Quote
And though no man have anything, yet every man is rich.
Notes
🔥 Most of the bondmen in Utopia are criminals from other countries. A few are their own people, and they are punished more severely because somehow they became criminals despite growing up in Utopia.
🔥 Someone who is sick beyond care is allowed to commit suicide (by not eating, for example) instead of prolonging their suffering.
🔥 When a family shows their son or daughter to another family for a potential marriage, they show them naked. This way they can't hide any deformities on their bodies.
🔥 Having sex before marriage is punished sharply. Divorce is allowed, but only if there is a good reason.
🔥 Most punishments involve some kind of bondage (labour). It's better to get some use out of criminals, and they can serve as an example to others. If they still cause trouble then they're put to death. Criminals can be resuscitated if they behave well.
🔥 As they punish sin, they also reward virtue and will display images of their heroes to pull people toward those virtues.
🔥 They have few laws and no lawyers. Law should be simple enough that anyone can defend themselves. This way there's less opportunity for sophistry among lawyers and experts.
🔥 Neighbouring states often send people to Utopia to learn from them and they return more virtuous and wise for having done so.
🔥 The people of Utopia don't form leagues (alliances) with others formally. "The fellowship of nature is a strong league." Writing out an agreement only leads to conflict and misunderstanding.
🔥 Utopians hate war and avoid it where they can. But sometimes you can't avoid it.
🔥 Sometimes they'll cause dissension within the enemy kingdom as an alternative to war. They have lots of wealth that they can put to use for this, since they don't value gold themselves.
🔥 Though they rarely resort to war and even more rarely fight themselves — they usually hire others to fight for them — if they do fight, they are fierce, bold and ready to die in battle.
🔥 When the battle is finished, they make their enemy pay the cost of the war, and they have many yearly revenues from this (since they've never lost a war...).
🔥 When it comes to religion, though there is a diversity of beliefs in Utopia, most people believe in a mysterious father of all — "a certain Godly power unknown, everlasting, incomprehensible, inexplicable, far above the capacity and reach of man's wit, dispersed throughout all the world, not in bigness, but in virtue and power."
🔥 Upon hearing about Christianity, it seems like there were many similarities with it and the Utopians' main beliefs. Especially since the early Christian church "held all things in common." Many Utopians got baptized.
🔥 Christianity only caused trouble in Utopia for anyone who then insisted that all other religions were evil. This goes against the Utopians' principle of peace and tolerance among people's religious beliefs.
🔥 King Utopus made the law for this to establish harmony. Even though he knew only one religion could be true, he believed it would come forth naturally through the light of reason.
🔥 Utopia is a true commonwealth because everything is held in common and cared for in common. Unlike in other societies where individualism and private property are more dominant (so says Raphael). In other societies, people get rich without doing any real work, and labourers lead miserable lives in poverty. This is a conspiracy of the rich, Raphael says, taking everything for themselves.
🔥 When you get rid of money, you get rid of lots of suffering and crime and other problems, too.
🔥 Pride is the still deeper evil, more evil than greed. Rich men aren't happy unless others are wretched and poor.
🔥 With that, the conversation with Raphael ends. Thomas More has other questions to ask and says he doesn't agree with everything he's heard. But he hopes to find time to pursue those questions some other day.
Thoughts
There is still some naivety in this section. Like the fact that the Utopians are so battle-hardened and have presumably never lost a war, but also they avoid fighting a war themselves at all cost, and they don't train(?). At least, the book didn't mention anything about training soldiers for war. Also, their achievement of religious harmony seems pretty idyllic, too.
That all being said, Raphael's attacks on the rich and their greed was still pretty resonant. The rich use their cleverness in manipulating the complex legal code to acquire more wealth and steal it away from the poor. And they do no real work themselves.
And maybe getting rid of money and private property can get rid of a ton of problems in society: "For who knoweth not, that fraud, theft, ravin, brawling, quarrelling, brabbling, strife, chiding, contention, murder, treason, poisoning, which by daily punishments are rather revenged than refrained, do die when money dieth?" It may not — probably not — be as simple as that, but it still does seem to strike a chord.