Sorry, producers, there’s no Utopia

Published 10:07 pm Monday, September 8, 2014

Much of the water-cooler talk across the county on Monday was about “Utopia,” a new reality series on Fox’s entertainment network. The premise of the show is that strangers are brought together for a year, in an isolated location, to make a perfect society.

Though it’s weighed down by the usual stereotypes and conventions of “reality” television, the series works remarkably well, in some respects. It highlights in a microcosm many of the political problems we face today, and shows exactly why we haven’t solved them.

“Based on a Dutch format, the U.S. version of ‘Utopia’ is billed as a 365-day-long social experiment where 15 folks have been selected to live and work together on a bare-bones plot of land while being filmed by 130 cameras. Unlike similar reality TV trials like ‘Survivor’ and ‘Big Brother,’ there’s no host, competition or prize,” the Associated Press reports.

There’s a goal, though — a perfect society. Sunday night’s premier episode, however, showed why no one has created one before.

There’s no perfect society because there are no perfect people.

Let’s take the most basic elements of governance. One “utopian” told audiences she was looking for a society with “no power, no money, and no religion.” She outlined a socialist paradise, with cooperative community members helping each other, talking out their conflicts and sharing sacrifices.

Good luck with that. The “no power” and “no money” utopia lasted all of 15 minutes, when the first stressful situation was contrived (participants had to limit the number of belongings they brought in).

The group quickly reverted to a Hobbesian “state of nature,” with members threatening each other and taking what they could. That is, as Thomas Hobbes said, “the natural condition of mankind.” And it’s why we institute governments and agree to social contracts.

We institute order because order protects freedom — it doesn’t limit freedom.

It would be nice if the utopian’s Marxist mantra, “from each according to his need, to each according to his need,” was workable. It’s not.

The reality show’s utopians found that out quickly, as well. With electric cables to be dug, gardens to be hoed and toilet facilities to be dug, the hard workers have quickly come to recognize (and resent) the members who don’t work as hard.

Did anyone really expect any other outcome?

You’ll remember that the Plymouth Colony was designed as a Christian utopia.

“The original colony had written into its charter a system of communal property and labor,” writes Jerry Bowyer for Forbes. “As William Bradford recorded in his ‘Of Plymouth Plantation,’ a people who had formerly been known for their virtue and hard work became lazy and unproductive. Resources were squandered, vegetables were allowed to rot on the ground and mass starvation was the result.”

The reality show really is politics writ small.

Any society is a collection of competing interests. Governance is how we balance those interests.

Attempts to create a utopia are doomed by our own fundamental natures. The best we can do is guarantee rights, so that individuals are free to seek better, rather than perfect.