CAN HUMAN BEINGS SURVIVE UTOPIA?
-Rohit Chandel
‘Utopia’ as
defined in the Oxford dictionary, ‘is an imagined place or state of things
where everything is perfect.’
What if we
got everything we that ask for? What if there were no loss and all profits? What
if all our wishes came true? What if all the countries became rich, prosperous
and flourished with all sorts of goods and resources? Will there be a time when
we could ask for literally ‘no more’?
Human
beings are a social animal. They require food, water, shelter and various other
basic resources to survive, though now a days, the number of requirements lists
a stretch of necessities. Can there be a society where all of us surviving on
this planet could get ‘all that we want’? That wouldn’t just result in the
happiest society all around the world but also the most, rather the one with
never ending resources. The Perfect World, one would call it. Seems such a
beautiful place to be in, right?
Well the
harsh truth is, no one can survive it. In Bible, the Garden of Eden was a
Utopia provided to the first man and woman, where they could have anything they
had in their sight but for a forbidden fruit which God himself ordered them not
to consume. After getting lured by a snake to consume that fruit, they were banished
from the Garden of Eden. The human desire that still exists in each one of us,
couldn’t resist them in exploiting that abstinence.
An
experiment known as, Behavioral Sink, was performed by ethologist John B.
Calhoun
Human brain
is quite complex to understand but it functions similar as that of a
mouse’s. This is the reason why most of
the experiments (including this) are performed on mice than getting into the
trap of human rights violation. In the experiment done by Calhoun, several mice
were kept in a confined area where they were provided unlimited food, water and
protection from all predators, diseases, etc., in short creating a mouse utopia
for them. The result wasn’t as bright as the situation that was provided, the
mice started dying from overpopulation and after some time, it eventually ended
up in the extinction of that once 2200 large population society. Major reason
being cited as ‘over-population’.
Humans had
been provided with plentiful resources since the inception of its species 200,000
years ago, but what we do with it and how we go along with what this universe
has provided us, has been the biggest question. A person gets a million-dollar
lottery, yet he runs into debt, a country finds gold mines beneath it, yet it goes
into trillions of dollars of debt, where does the human being go wrong if we
are the most intelligent and deserve to be at the top of the food chain? The
need to have ‘more’ has not only killed human’s chances of earning an imaginary
utopia, but has also led them to the destruction of the very imperfect world
they’re living in.
The same
might not be the reason of the downfall of our race as was in the case of
Calhoun’s experiment, but yes, if human beings were to be provided with a state
of utopia, they’ll meet the same fate.
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