The Problem of Change

Ultimately, the creation of utopias comes down not only to a fear of being wrong but a fear of change. 

The latter may seem unlikely since utopias are so often associated with revolutions, theological, political, economic, and so on. And people can wish to build better environments without, necessarily, wanting to build utopias. That is, there is a distinction between "we are going to tame this wilderness," "we are going to usher in a new world," "we are going to live perfectly," and "wow, those roads really need to be repaired--excuse me, where do we put the sewer lines?"  The Founders of the United States recognized that the new social order would still have to deal with human beings--hence, the debates over how government should be ordered.

The veer towards perfection appears to occur when utopia builders--whatever their political stripes--try to cancel out or override mutability: change, human vagaries, human oddities, human nature. 

The end result is often not only a focus on how the utopia will run but a move to force human behavior into something that won't get in the way of that running. The utopia is no longer there to serve humans. The humans are there to serve the utopia. And the change in focus occurs because change--as a human constant--is seen not as normal but as a threat.

In the epilogue to His in Herland, I needed to figure out, "How would Alima Asytanax adapt to his new environment?"

In truth, I didn't think he would have any trouble adapting at all. My students from outside the U.S. adjust fairly quickly to life in the U.S., those who come from rural areas and refugee camps and those who come from cities in Africa, South America, Russia, and South Korea. They complain about winters in the Northeast. Otherwise, American modern life in a small city is not that big a deal.

However, the ability of a fourteen-year-old, high-energy, intelligent and curious boy to quickly adapt to a new life left me, like for utopia builders, with a writing problem: Oh, no, where's the conflict!?

I wrote The Translator.

Eugene: I agree that human beings evolved to adapt. It's literally in our genes. If anything, unless we actively swim against the tide and (purposely) give ourselves culture shock, we adapt faster than we expect. Language aside, the foreign isn't as foreign as we often want it to be.

The stumbling blocks are usually the mundane day-to-day stuff, not the National Geographic stuff. Like how the plumbing works. Or the sheer density of human activity.

In Non Non Biyori, which takes place in the sticks, pretty much anybody from anywhere else is exotic. So the hometown girl once treated as remarkable because she attends school in a nearby city now finds herself upstaged by the new girl who moved from Tokyo. Tokyo!

A common trope in anime and manga is the alien who shows up in Tokyo and almost immediately fits into daily life. This trope is not without precedent. In the mid-19th century, after 250 years of isolation, the Japanese government sent delegations all over the world and the rest of the world sent delegations to Japan.

I've always thought it's a good model for how an alien invasion would actually play out.

It seems that anime and manga became ubiquitous practically overnight (though it took half a century). Publishers figured out pretty quickly that they didn't have to flip the page order in manga. K-drama caught on even faster.

Kate: Your comment about "mundane day-to-day stuff" reminded me: during my study abroad in England, I got irritated because British stationary stores sold A4 size paper rather than 8-1/2 x 11, and the A4 wouldn't fit well in my notebook (and I'm used to America, which even back then sold every paper size). A peer commented that it was the first time she had seen me behave in an insular fashion (everybody else kept complaining about the weather) but it was the first time I actually felt inconvenienced. I didn't make the mistake of bringing only shorts, short-sleeve shirts, and sandals for a stay in England in July. Different currency was a given. Bank holidays were irritating but not that big a deal. The underground was fun! I adored the ability to buy little cheeses at Sainsbury rather than blocks of the stuff (and I loved the pastries). The dinky kitchen in our flat was cute. Ribena, though gross, was interesting.

But paper of the wrong size? Ahhhhh.

Taking the above into account, I went ahead and had the epilogue focus on Alima's ability to adapt. Life may get overwhelming--and then there's the unfamiliar plumbing.  Otherwise, life is life.

Utopias are static environments. Human beings, however devoted they become to routine or perhaps because they are so good are turning anything into routine, are not. 

Note about image: One of my previous versions of His in Herland took place at the same time as the novel. Terry stowed Alim in Herland and went to fight in World War I. Alim and many of the women helped wounded soldiers who found themselves near Herland. Terry eventually returned, flying his tattered plane the last few miles after a dogfight to crash-land near Herland and be taken in. He survived.

I retained the image (from a previous post) since my point still stands: Alim is willing to take on a supposedly more dangerous, less apparently streamlined world when he leaves Herland. 

Utopias are the equivalent of magical thinking: a desire to pretend that the weirdness and randomness and uncertainty and "we don't know the future" nature of life has been "handled," put in its place, rendered innocuous, non-threatening, manageable, unsurprising. Human beings can be stored and rendered happily not at risk--like Star Trek's brains, in stasis forever.

Alim abandons the pretense.

Epilogue

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding