Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [119]
“Hedonism.”
“I suppose. We think of it more as joyful living. Guilt is often so misguided. More neurosis than genuine repentance for harm done.”
“Be honest, be moral, be comfortable,” I said, remembering the plaque.
At first it seemed like a joke. Now…
“Like so many,” Wisper continued, “Homer came to America to escape persecution for his attitudes, for his beliefs…”
“…for his refusal to wear pants in public…”
“For a lot of reasons,” she said, sounding a bit annoyed. “He was an acolyte of Hythloday, and had notions of creating a utopian society similar to the one created by his mentor here in the New World.”
“A society centered around being naked.”
“Partly. More centered on freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom to wear clothes or not.”
“Who’s Hythloday?”
“Some guy in Europe hundreds of years ago who built a community of like-minded people…”
“…who liked to be naked.”
She stopped walking and looked at me with some sadness.
“You seem kind of hung up on only one particular aspect of what I’m saying,” she finally said.
“I don’t mean offense. It’s just such a major change from what I’m used to. I’m trying to get my head around it.”
“The easiest way to do that is to experience it.”
She saw my hesitance.
“If you tried it,” she said, smiling, “you might like it.”
“If I tried snails, I might like them, but—…”
A pained expression filled her face, and I felt immediately as if I was losing her, and the Chihuahuas began yapping at my heart, again.
“I’m working my way into it,” I said. “You’re fighting against years of repression here. Honestly. Just give me time.”
She studied me for a moment, sadly, then forced an uncertain smile, and we continued walking.
“So has it become the utopia Homer wanted it to be?”
“Not really, no. It’s nice. I like it. But the essential requirement of ‘utopia’ is homogeny—and people are never homogenous—even when they’re basically the same. Brothers, and sisters often can’t even get along, and it doesn’t get any more homogenous than that. Married couples may have a commitment to one another but can still see the world very differently.”
I saw her point, and it bothered me. Not because walking beside her on the shores of this not-quite utopia—gloriously naked as she was, while I still wore pants—proved our own differences were visibly obvious, and potentially insurmountable, even though we genuinely liked each other. But because with her thoughtful history lesson and deep understanding of the moral, philosophical, and religious origins of society, along with her view of the overall direction of the world, she was clearly smarter than me. Than I? Than…
See! She would know! And when a woman is smarter than the man, that is a recipe for disaster! Unless you’re creating a sitcom. Then it’s gold.
I’d never even considered what the word ‘homogenous’ meant anywhere outside a carton of milk, let alone how it applied to utopian civilization. I felt like a frog listening to the goddess Athena—wise, beautiful, independent, even-tempered, and logical Athena, obviously hoping to commune with me in some intellectual way—and all I could think of was jumping on her nakedness. She continued on, blithely rubbing her mental superiority in my face, while I wanted to rub other things in hers.
“In utopia,” she continued, “everyone thinks the same, and agrees all the time because they’re wise enough to see ‘truth’. But ‘truth’ is always different things to every individual, and being given the freedom to do what you want to do, no matter what anyone else may want to do, creates conflict with someone else’s truth. So, ultimately, any utopia requires a benevolent dictator to keep the peace on those—supposedly—rare occasions