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THE NEW UTOPIA
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About someone who sleeps through the "GREAT SOCIAL REVOLUTION OF 1899.", for ten years before being discovered and thence left in a museum as an experiment, and wakes up in the new utopia of equality.
Turns out it was only a nightmare. But quite a horror, at that.
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"1891 - I had spent an extremely interesting evening. I had dined with some very "advanced" friends of mine at the "National Socialist Club". We had had an excellent dinner: the pheasant, stuffed with truffles, was a poem; and when I say that the '49 Chateau Lafitte was worth the price we had to pay for it, I do not see what more I can add in its favour."
Notice the name of the club. Is it only the name that's connecting it with the then unimaginable future, now infamous past, party?
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"I listened very attentively while my friends explained how, for the thousands of centuries during which it had existed before they came, the world had been going on all wrong, and how, in the course of the next few years or so, they meant to put it right.
"Equality of all mankind was their watchword--perfect equality in all things--equality in possessions, and equality in position and influence, and equality in duties, resulting in equality in happiness and contentment.
"The world belonged to all alike, and must be equally divided. Each man's labour was the property, not of himself, but of the State which fed and clothed him, and must be applied, not to his own aggrandisement, but to the enrichment of the race.
"Individual wealth--the social chain with which the few had bound the many, the bandit's pistol by which a small gang of rob- bers had thieved--must be taken from the hands that too long had held it.
"Social distinctions--the barriers by which the rising tide of humanity had hitherto been fretted and restrained--must be for ever swept aside. The human race must press onward to its destiny (whatever that might be), not as at present, a scattered horde, scrambling, each man for himself, over the broken ground of un- equal birth and fortune--the soft sward reserved for the feet of the pampered, the cruel stones reserved for the feet of the cursed,--but an ordered army, marching side by side over the level plain of equity and equality.
"The great bosom of our Mother Earth should nourish all her children, like and like; none should be hungry, none should have too much. The strong man should not grasp more than the weak; the clever should not scheme to seize more than the simple. The earth was man's, and the fulness thereof; and among all mankind it should be portioned out in even shares. All men were equal by the laws of man.
"With inequality comes misery, crime, sin, selfishness, arrogance, hypocrisy. In a world in which all men were equal, there would exist no temptation to evil, and our natural nobility would assert itself."
"We raised our glasses and drank to EQUALITY, sacred EQUALITY; and then ordered the waiter to bring us Green Char- treuse and more cigars."
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""What's the matter?" he asked; "anything disturbed you?"
""No," I said; "I always wake up like this, when I feel I've had enough sleep. What century is this?"
""This," he said, "is the twenty-ninth century. You have been asleep for just one thousand years."
""Ah! well, I feel all the better for it," I replied, getting down off the table. "There's nothing like having one's sleep out."
""I take it you are going to do the usual thing." said the old gentleman to me, as I proceeded to put on my clothes, which had been lying beside me in the case. "You'll want me to walk round the city with you, and explain all the changes to you, while you ask questions and make silly remarks?"
""Yes," I replied, "I suppose that's what I ought to do.""
"Everyone was dressed, as was also my guide, in a pair of grey trousers, and a grey tunic, buttoning tight round the neck and fastened round the waist by a belt. Each man was clean shaven, and each man had black hair.
"I said:
""Are all men twins?"
""Twins! Good gracious, no!" answered my guide. "Whatever made you fancy that?"
""Why, they all look so much alike," I replied; "and they've all got black hair!"
""Oh; that's the regulation colour for hair," explained my companion: "we've all got black hair. If a man's hair is not black naturally, he has to have it dyed black."
""Why?" I asked. "Why!" retorted the old gentleman, somewhat irritably.
""Why, I thought you understood that all men were now equal. What would become of our equality if one man or woman were allowed to swagger about in golden hair, while another had to put up with carrots?"
"He said that they had found they could not maintain their equality when people were allowed to wash themselves. Some people washed three or four times a day, while others never touched soap and water from one year's end to the other, and in consquence there got to be two distinct classes, the Clean and the Dirty. All the old class prejudices began to be revived. The clean despised the dirty, and the dirty hated the clean. So, to end dissension, the State decided to do the washing itself, and each citizen was now washed twice a day by government-appointed officials; and private washing was prohibited."
Further descriptions of living arrangements are so like what one yt video showed about a factory in China, it's not as funny as the author thought, if he did.
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For that matter, further description is all horror - abolishing not only marriage but love, breeding of humans no different from that of cattle, children taken at birth by state and brought up until they finish their state selected training at twenty, country all market garden with rectangular roads and canals, world all one language and no variety, anyone better has an arm or a leg or head to lose! No literature and no art, either. No sports, of course.
"I looked at the faces of the men and women that were passing. There was a patient, almost pathetic, expression upon them all. I wondered where I had seen that look before; it seemed familiar to me.
"All at once I remembered. It was just the quiet, troubled, wondering expression that I had always noticed upon the faces of the horses and oxen that we used to breed and keep in the old world."
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September 21, 2020 - September 21, 2020.
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