My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 3 #20, November 14, 1997

One of America's earliest and greatest columnists, Don Marquis, when he wasn't writing about archy the cockroach and his pal mehitabel the cat, used his column for occasional installments of his utopia, the "Almost Perfect State." He insisted on the "almost," because he thought continuous perfection would be deadly. If things are perfect as they are, there'd be no reason for anything to change, and every day would be just like the day before. Marquis figured that Lucifer stirred up rebellion just because he couldn't bear the thought of one more day of unrelenting sublimity.

I've been recalling this because I read recently about a man named John Rawls who proposed that people think about what their ideal society would be. What would its highest values be? Its social structure? Who would be rewarded for doing what? Whatever seems right and just, he says, envision it in place.

All he asks is that you keep in mind that, the day after your society comes into being, you will wake up in another body. You might be rich or poor, black or white, bright or dull, well-educated or ignorant, talented or unskilled, male or female, whole or disabled.

Does that, he asks, change your notion of what makes a society ideal? Do you begin to rethink it? Does the crowning virtue of your society suddenly become fairness and opportunity?

I have been thinking about Rawls' challenge, and my own almost perfect state. And to begin building it, I start with the question, why did civilization come to exist in the first place? I believe the answer is, to protect children. Human babies are born so much less ready to survive in the world than the infants of other species, and their unreadiness lasts so much longer that if we want them to survive we need to surround them with protective adults; we need to spend years passing on our accumulated wisdom and survival skills.

For me, then, the first goal of the almost perfect state is to nurture children and raise them to responsible adulthood. All politicians, all laws, all social institutions, all individuals, will be judged by how well they succeed in this.

The second goal of my society is to nurture mindfulness, which is to say, knowledge, thought, creativity and invention. This is where I run into the first possible conflict with Rawls' day after, because in my new body, I might not have much native intelligence. I might not have been born into a family that stuck books in my hand from the time I was three. But for me, this is not a conflict, because the schools in my almost perfect state will start with the assumption that all children can learn, no matter what their backgrounds and heredity, and that if some children do not learn, the defect is not in them but in their teaching. (This is not, I think, hopeless idealistic. If you look at any group of 5 year olds, they are all brimming with eagerness and curiosity and a sponge-like capacity to absorb knowledge. It is sad how many schools seem to squelch this and turn it off by the time children are in 3rd grade.) My schools will educate in the root meaning sense of the word--lead out from. Which is to say it they will lead the child out from a state of ignorance, but also find and lead out from within each child his or her unique talents.

But nurturing intelligence by itself is not enough, because rationality that is inhuman and uncaring makes it possible for us to create and justify landmines and concentration camps. My society would regard kindness, honesty, and respect for others as the most important social values. Bullies and preachers of hatred would be shunned and shamed, not elected to public office. Apologizing for one's mistakes would be welcome proof of growing up. People who tried to escape responsibility for their misdeeds with novel defenses would be told, "Don't be silly."

And in my society, we would all walk gently on the earth, doing our best to not disturb the delicate balance of life on the planet. As the Grateful Dead said,

We don't own this world, though we act as if we did,
it belongs to the children of our children's kids;
the actual owners haven't even been born yet.

Knowing this world is for our children, and for theirs, we will understand that we do not own, we rent. We are merely guardians, who will be held responsible for our stewardship.

What imperfections would I allow to remain in my utopia? Much as this society thrives on cooperation and consensus, I think it has to continue to encourage individualism, competition and risk-taking. These are double-edged qualities, which in the world we really live in are as likely to lead to murder and war as to invention and discovery. But competing and taking risks are important ways to learn hard lessons about our strengths and weaknesses. And no important change comes without people who are willing to risk themselves in order to create or discover.

Those are the basic assumptions my society will be built on. But how would they play out in everyday life? What would our towns be like? How would our businesses be different? How would we move around? How would a gentle society defend itself against predators? What would we read? How and what would we teach our children? Would we need a government, and if we do, how would it operate?

Like Don Marquis, I can't possibly cover all the bases in one column, so I will be coming back to my utopia from time to time. And I invite you to tell me about your Almost Perfect State, because I know you'll think of things that have not occurred to me.

Incidentally, the name of my utopia is the name my husband and I gave the small imaginary town we invented and mapped so many years ago: Blemish-on-the-Landscape. It needs a nice, self-effacing name to keep the Radovan Karadzics out. Because, what if we gave a utopia and everybody came?

NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.

I'll write columns here whenever I really want to share an idea with you and can find time to write them . If you want to be notified when a new one is up, send me an e-mail and include "My Word's Worth" in the subject line.