The next issue which gets addressed is what is to be done with the poor, the lazy, the criminal and the disabled members of society. That, in my opinion, sounds like an idea that wouldn’t be out of place in today’s world. His society would have free individuals working together as a community through a transparent political system, achieving technological, artistic and societal progress through global cooperation. But let us, for the purposes of this analysis, entertain the idea that such a governing body can exist so how does it balance freedom with security? You would not think it, but this utopian society is very pro-individual, in fact, Wells at many points expresses disdain against placing people in categories and shares the belief that everyone is unique. Though we are assured that the State is entirely benevolent and utilitarian, providing the maximum possible amount of freedom (one’s freedom ends where another one’s begins), while minimising suffering and security risks, it’s easy to be cynical and dismiss those notions as a pipe dream of a raving lunatic. He does, however, also make a compelling plea for at least the European nations to stop waring one another and form a united economic area with common laws and economic policy which has now come to fruition in the form of the EU, a fact that would probably please him immensely.įrom our current perspective, the author’s World Government seems quite authoritarian and frightful in nature: having full control of the planet’s natural resources, a complex and expansive bureaucratic system, being the sole arbiter of what’s moral and good, etc.
Though the advent of new communication technologies during the last century has made the world ever more connected and sped up the ongoing process of globalisation, we are seemingly not much nearer to Wells’ World State the closest thing to it would be the comparatively weak and ineffective United Nations. Such a state would share one world language (an amalgamation of a dozen different pre-existing ones), one economy, one currency and would be heavily connected by high-speed electric trains. The narrator surmises that for a perfect society to exist, the entire world would have to share one governing body, a World State, if you will. He concedes that for it to function, society would have had to have developed a completely different set of ideals, traditions, ideas and purposes.
Firstly, Wells wants the reader to be fully aware he thinks his utopian dream is realistically implausible, but not entirely impossible.
0 kommentar(er)
