Foundations of Futures Studies

Volume 2: Values, Objectivity, and the Good Society

Wendell Bell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351519397
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Futures studies is a new field of inquiry involving systematic and explicit thinking about alternative futures. Wendell Bell's two-volume work Foundations of Futures Studies is widely acknowledged as the fundamental work on the subject. In Volume 2, Bell goes beyond possible and probable futures to the study of preferable futures. He shows that concern with ethics, morality, and human values follows directly from the futurist purposes of discovering or inventing, examining, and proposing desirable futures. He examines moral judgments as an inescapable aspect of all decision-making and conscious action, even in the everyday lives of ordinary people.Now available in paperback with a new preface from the author, Volume 2 of Foundations of Futures Studies moves beyond cultural relativism to critical evaluation. Bell compares depictions of the good society by utopian writers, describes objective methods of moral judgment, assesses religion and law as sources of what is morally right, documents the existence of universal human values, and shows that if human beings are to thrive in the global society of the future, some human values must be changed.

1
Values in Utopian Thought

Let’s begin the discussion of the ethical foundations of futures studies by examining the values that a few key utopian writers throughout history used to define the good society and how they tried to justify their belief in them. Of course, given the immense literature on utopian and social thought, this account is merely an illustrative sample of utopian writers. A comprehensive account has been written by Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel (1979) and I gratefully acknowledge that I rely on it heavily.

Thomas More and Utopia

The Utopian Scenario

Thomas More first published his Utopia in 1516, coining his title from two Greek words to mean “no place.” Raphael Hythloday, More’s fictional protagonist, travels to “no place” after sailing with Amerigo Vespucci on three of his four alleged voyages of exploration. At the farthest place away from Europe, during the third voyage, Hythloday leaves Vespucci and travels on to more distant lands, finally arriving in the kingdom of Utopia. More tells his readers that he meets Hythloday in Antwerp and learns of Utopia from him in a conversation that takes place in a garden of a friend’s house. Book I gives Hythloday’s opinions on the “sorry state of the realm of England” at the time and Book II gives his description of life in Utopia as he experienced it during his stay there.

Before the end of the sixteenth century, More’s book had been imitated so much that a new genre of literature was born. Typically, such utopian writing included a hero setting off on travels to geographical places far from Europe. Often a shipwreck resulted in the traveler’s chance arrival in an ideal society, where he lived for some length of time. Eventually, the traveler returned to Europe where he reported his adventures and the wonders of the ideal society he had come to know. By contrasting the customs of the ideal society with those of existing society, the traveler produced a critical analysis of the real social world.

At first, “utopia” referred to works imitating More. Today, of course, two major meanings have come down to us. One is of a visionary, impractical scheme for social improvement and another is the depiction of some nonexistent society representing ideal perfection. It is the second meaning that concerns us here, a place—and, as we shall see later, a time—if not of ideal perfection, at least of substantial improvement in social life compared with the known, everyday world of the author.

Thus, when I refer to “utopian” or “utopia,” (or the opposite, “dystopia”) I mean a vision of some other place or time that is: (1) judged as more (or less) desirable than existing society; (2) critical of existing society; (3) not currently actually existent; and (4) usually, implicitly or explicitly, a call for some human action to bring a society better than the present one into existence, to work to create the utopia (or to prevent the dystopia) depicted.

This definition is similar to one proposed by Zygmunt Bauman (1976: 17), but Bauman neglects to include a place as well as a time, and he adds to his definition some “measure of hazard.” This latter element seems unnecessary as part of the definition, although it is true that utopian writers sometimes have been put in jeopardy by the reactions of others to some perceived threat to the powers that be in their utopian writings.

Bauman fails to include dystopias in his definition. This must be corrected, because in the general “utopian” literature, we need to include those other fictional societies that are less, as well as more, desirable. For they, too, are critical of existing society, not currently actually existent, and usually call for some human action to bring a better society into the world. They do so, however, by depicting some terrible “Other” that humans must avoid. Often, this is some projection of trends of existing society that require some human intervention if the trends are to be prevented from continuing, the familiar doomsaying strategy. Thus, in the general utopian literature there are utopias (strictly speaking, “eutopias”) that depict desirable societies and there are dystopias that depict undesirable societies.

For this discussion, I’ll leave aside the question of a utopia’s impracticality. It is, ultimately, a matter of empirical fact, although the question may remain in doubt until after some sort of social experimentation. Even then, it may remain in doubt because few experiments may be deemed fair tests by proponents of some utopian vision. Some envisioned social improvements may be realizable and practical and some may not be, and which is which is the subject of—sometimes hot—debate. Arguments about the feasibility of any given utopia are not my purpose here. Rather, I wish to examine the values underlying the various good societies portrayed and how belief in those values is justified as being reasonable.

More as Proto-Social Scientist

Sociologists credit the nineteenth-century French writer, Auguste Comte, with being “a,” if not “the,” father of sociology, because of his monumental work systematizing the social science of his day in his positivist philosophy. Additionally, some writers claim, more controversially, that the origins of Comte’s sociology are largely to be understood as a conservative reaction to the turmoil and social chaos of the French Revolution (Nisbet 1966). Hence, the focus of sociology is on the social order, one of Comte’s major concepts (although this view slights another of Comte’s major concepts, progress).

Yet, more than three hundred years before Comte’s sociology, a prototypical model of contemporary social analysis can be found in More’s Utopia. For example, in Utopia More describes and analyzes social structures both of then existing European societies, primarily England, and of his fictional Utopian society. Utopia contains a basic framework of social categories for the study of social life. It became the model for descriptions of fictional societies, but its framework could also be used to describe real places. Indeed, it became a familiar checklist of topics for later descriptions of existing societies by real travelers. Hythloday’s report of Utopia, for example, can be thought of as an imaginary account of anthropological or sociological field work based on participant observation. Moreover, because the results of Hythloday’s fictional field observations are placed in a comparative framework with real existing societies, Utopia can be thought of as a model for comparative social research as well.

Hythloday systematically describes the Utopian economy, the production, exchange, and distributional systems; the occupational structure and the system of social stratification; the family and household structure, the organization of sexual relations, the system of household authority, age and sex roles, and the socialization of the young; the form of government and some of the laws; religious beliefs and practices; patterns of recreation; forms of deviant behavior and social control; and the conditions and routines of warfare. Thus, Utopia is described in terms that are recognizable as standard categories of social analysis today.

Although More makes no claim to be doing science, he clearly “offers an example of a social organization that is conceivable under empirical conditions” (Habermas 1973: 56). Moreover, he uses a major technique of futurist methdodology, the scenario. He claims credibility by keeping his descriptions within the realm of the possible as defined by commonly understood previous experience and, thus, in a way he “tested” his hypotheses against the everyday observations of his readers.

Yet More did not limit himself to previous experience. Like futurists today, he went beyond it by conceiving the possible and not yet existent social forms consistent with his understanding of the potentialities contained in then-current knowledge. He was doing protosocial science, to be sure, but he was doing more than most contemporary social scientists do, both in creating a possible alternative society and in clearly incorporating value judgments into his analysis.

More as Judge

Facts and values. One difference between Utopia and much modern social science, of course, is that More is writing about an imaginary society while modern social scientists write about real societies. Another difference is that More, unlike most modern social scientists, does not hesitate to judge the “facts” of Utopian society as good or bad. Nor does he hesitate to judge as good or bad the social facts of England of his day. Although he in no way confuses facts and values in his analysis of Utopia, he includes both.

For More, making moral judgments is the whole point of his effort. Evaluation is an essential part of the entire work. He has not relegated values to a secondary role in his work, nor has he banned them from consideration. Rather, More uses value standards to reveal Utopian society as an improvement over the actual societies of his day. He is severely critical of the then-present society and aims to suggest beneficial social changes, even radical reform. More (n.d.: 232) concludes by saying that “there are many things in the Commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed in our governments.”

More’s justification of values. More uses the values of Christian humanism to justify his value judgments. In Utopia, God is the ultimate source of evaluation. True, He is aided both by nature and reason, but they are largely thin veils covering the face of God. Although virtue, for More, is “living according to Nature,” people are made by God for that end. Moreover, one lives according to nature by following the direction of reason which is itself also linked to God.

More confronted the realities of life as he knew them, both the low life that he had observed as deputy sheriff in London and the high life that he knew as a member of the English court, with his understanding of the ideals of biblical Christianity.

What is valued? The most fundamental value in Utopia is life itself. Hythloday says that “nothing in the world can be of equal value with a man’s life,” by which he means, of course, all human life, both man’s and woman’s (More n.d.: 142). Another major value, which also will appear in countless utopian works to follow, is happiness. Obviously, both human life and happiness are still with us today as major human values.

Other values in Utopia include “good and honest” pleasures (as long as no pain results afterwards), health, the fairness of equality that reinforces an essentially classless society and that includes sharing material things, the satisfaction of natural desires and authentic human needs, learning and education, the tranquil life, physical labor (but only enough to provide little more than the basic necessities of life, not labor for its own sake), moderation, freedom from fear and anxiety, religious tolerance (within some broad limits), cheerfulness and goodnaturedness, concern for the happiness of other persons, and good works. Utopians believe, More (n.d.: 221) says, “that by the good things that a man does he secures to himself that happiness that comes after death.”

Devalued in Utopia are the accumulation of individual wealth, the lust for possessions (there is no private property or money), personal adornment (gold and silver are used to make chamber pots and chains for slaves), pride (because it often creates happiness based only on the misery of others), proselytizing zeal even—or especially—on the part of the righteous, and inequality (Manuel and Manuel 1979: 117–49). Utopians condemn premarital sex, adultery, and suicide. They detest war as brutal (although they are militarily prepared and are willing to defend themselves and even to engage in “just” wars).

In his critique of England and France, Hythloday condemns the idleness of the rich and their retainers, cruelty, overly severe punishment, living off other people’s work, cheating, love of luxury, poverty, taverns and alehouses, houses of prostitution, gambling, corrupted manners, lying, entering into agreements and then not honoring them, conquering other lands, corrupt rulers who are more concerned with their own interests than the people’s, private property, injustice, money as the standard of all things, incompetent rulers, and the many other things in the real social world that are at odds with Christ’s teachings.

Equality and inequality. Some explanation must be added about a society put forward as the good society that values equality as fair, but that also contains slaves. The slaves consist largely of criminals (primarily adulterers), prisoners of war, volunteers from surrounding societies who would rather live in Utopia as slaves than in their own societies as free persons, and persons condemned to death in a foreign country who had been redeemed by Utopian merchants and brought to Utopia.

If there are “volunteers,” then we can conclude that the life of a slave in Utopia was not as bad as we might believe with the history of African slavery in the Americas as our model. Slaves in Utopia are relatively few in number and their labor is not significant for the economy. Yet slaves are kept at perpetual labor and are chained. They do the killing and butchering of animals and the dirty work in the dining halls, among other labors. If they rebel, eventually they are put to death. But if they behave and show repentance, they may be released from slavery (More n.d.: 198–202).

Other forms of inequality are patriarchy within the family and a meritocratic system in education and learning. In the case of the latter, some particularly talented people are selected to devote themselves entirely to study. They become learned persons who teach others and who occupy a variety of roles in the governance of the society. If such persons do not fulfill their promise, however, they can be returned to ordinary labor (More n.d.: 171).

In other ways, Utopia is an egalitarian society in which people share food, live in houses of equal quality and amenities, give equal respect to all occupations, work no more than six hours a day for the most part, and devote themselves equally to their self-fulfillment. More (n.d.: 228) says that among Utopians “there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity; and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties.”

The true and the good. Utopia, then, combines both the true and the good. It includes the true in the sense of providing a truthful account of the existing society at the time, although this is given only unsystematically out of More’s own considerable experience. It includes the true, too, in describing Utopian society in the sense that the description, as we have seen, is in accord with then current experience and the real possibilities of the time. Utopia really could have been created with early sixteenth-century technology.

It includes the good because it involves evaluation. First, existing social practices in European societies are judged by a clear set of values and found to be wanting. Second, the nature of Utopia itself is shaped by those same values. In fact, Utopia embodies them. Although Utopia was an improvement on existing societies, it was not perfect. More did not presume that much. It was, after all, the work of man, not God, and only God, so More believed, could create perfection in this world (Manuel and Manuel 1979: 117–49).

More’s repudiation of Utopia. More later repudiated his utopian vision, spurning the idea of basic equality in his subsequent writings. In his own behavior, he violated his principles of pleasure and tolerance. He sometimes wore a painful hair shirt and whipped himself with knotted ropes, and, as chancellor in Britain, he had Protestants whipped and burned (Manuel and Manuel 1979). Perhaps, we should not be surprised, because, lurking just below the surface of the pleasures and tolerance typical of Utopia, is another view that More occasionally lets creep in, as when he says that people should not stray from “that religious dread of the Supreme Being, which is the greatest and almost the only incitement to virtue” (More n.d.: 226). Dread is out of keeping with the general goodwill of Utopian society.

The Legacy of Utopia

But, despite More’s renunciation, Utopia had a life and an influence of its own. It was part of the social transition from the feudal to the modern world. Utopia is antifeudal. There are no great baronial estates or manors. It is largely an urban society where individual freedom and participatory democracy flourish, though they are limited compared with our standards today (Manuel and Manuel 1979: 124).

It both exemplified and promoted an increase in the scope of human consciousness. As such, it was an aspect of the European discovery of worlds new to Europeans and their exploration of the Earth. It was no accident that 1516 was the date of Utopia’s publication. The Age of Discovery had begun in 1492 and was well underway when More wrote Utopia, using as his ideal Other a distant and unknown land beyond the edge of European travels. By 1504, Vespucci’s Mundus Novus describing his real voyages, although itself partly imaginary we now believe, was available and offered a first-hand model.

The real voyages added fuel to the flames of curiosity and speculation already burning in Europe, but More went beyond simply using a fashionable interest as his model. He added more coal to the fires by inviting a further leap of the imagination. Who knew what strange and alien peoples and social customs would be encountered next as Europeans traveled beyond the edges of the known world? Utopia made the possibilities appear unlimited. It was the Star Trek of its day.

Utopia was also part of the information revolution, which had begun with the invention and spread of movable type in Europe in the mid-fifteenth century. The Gutenberg bible was printed about 1456 and was followed by the publication and distribution of major pieces of classical learning. The latter encouraged the confrontation between then-modern beliefs, especially theological doctrine, and earlier Greek and Roman social thought, a clash that was to produce a tidal wave of creative activity. ...