Topia: Casus Belli — Preface
A word on the underlying theme
In this world, we either live as independent or interdependent. This state, of dependence, revolves around our idealistic thoughts of not only our surroundings and physical environment but also our own thoughts and actions and on a deeper level, around the individualistic Platonist and Aristotelian views. Utopia, as coined by Sir Thomas Moore, is a place where everything is perfect, although the definition of perfect is up to the one who uses the term.
We live in a world where corporations cripple the economy to help it in the future. Hate wars are manufactured by the media and those very corporations in the name of creating a utopian society. Thus we enter a circle of utopia, where every action leads to the next to strive for utopianism but because the actions end up in an endless loop its arguable that we in fact create a dystopian society as a result of this circle. Shavian Dramatists (writers who follow the line of George Bernard Shaw) write about Utopia in a Nihilistic society where the absence of meaning and religion is celebrated. The concept of nihilism says that the main aim of every human should be to achieve “Übermencsh” or the overman[1] as mentioned by Nietzsche. The “Übermencsh” is the one who is willing to risk all for the sake of enhancement of humanity and as the creator of new values. There are groups exist which follow a Platonist view as well, describing an ideal society in which conditions are as equal and preferable for all citizens as could be conceived. Here the first law of the utopian rules is education, through religion and clear music. Over and above the Platonic and Nihilistic views, there are several others, however they share a common gap, they all lack the mention of culture, when it is our culture that has gotten us where we are.
The homogenizing of cultures into one, as said by Joseph Conrad, often leads to portents of complications as ideologies clash leading to wars and extremist attacks, as we have in our current day. Each culture by itself finds harmony and can progress without any sort of hindrance. A utopia would form when these cultures will be able to work towards one goal, taking different paths.
This story explores this view of achieving utopia through the eyes of a country and individuals and their “efforts” to change the world, involving the intermixing of cultures and personalities.
[1] For the purposes of saving the meaning from the texts, it has been kept as `overman` however it should read “overhuman”
