The second week of our History of the Future class has us
reading two extremely different articles. The first reading by Francis Bacon, New Atlantis, has us dropped into the
narrative of a sailor. It is through this sailor that we are introduced to the
mythical island of Bensalem. There he and his crew are treated well by the
inhabitants who bathe them in luxury. The sheer fantasy of the situation, being
saved right before starving and being welcomed with open arms by an
isolationist state, throws the story straight into the mythology section of
literature. At first glance, Bensalem or New Atlantis is the picture perfect
utopia, completely self sufficient and isolated from the rest of the world. For
added measure Bacon has also lazily tossed in the entire description of the
island within the last 11 pages of his story. He has also a fixation on
Christian religious tradition. He has also created a poor undeveloped, unnamed,
main character. He has also concluded the story poorly. He has also used this
very same format of “we have also” to start multiple sentences towards the end
of his story.
Yet this New Atlantis hides quite a disturbing tone of bias
for Christians, most likely reflecting off the author’s ideas of a Christian
utopia complete with King Solomon’s writings and chaste marriage. The only
reason that the sailors are allowed to stay on the island is because they
claimed to be Christians and swear on their word not to harm anyone.
Surprisingly the sailors are allowed to enter based on this weak, easily
breakable oath. The residents of Bensalem rejoice and take pride in their own
“pure” marriage customs and generosity. At the same time they are fearful of
being “discovered” by foreigners (referred to as strangers) and use the names
of other nations as disguises abroad. Thus, the Bensalem is a contradictory
combination of isolationism and globalism, the result of Bacon’s over active
imagination.
The second reading is thankfully more logical in discussion than the first. In his article, What is History?, Carr describes how many historians of his present time have the idea of historical progress incorrect. His entire article is laden with truths. These truths cut through the darkness to reveal the falsities of statements. His first truth is the absurdity of the claims of Western decline. Fear mongering politicians of many Western nations love to go on and on about their nation declining (For example, our Make America Great Again phenomena). However, the current material situation reveals that the West still has dominance. Carr gets his point across saying that the only reason for the complaints is because of a country’s fear of not being the bearer of progress. In fact, history has demonstrated time and time again that top leading civilization of a time period changes from era to era. His second truth is that progress in history does not abruptly end. For example, simply reaching the fabled era of Communism does not end history. People continue to live, learn, and grow expanding past what Marx might expect. History does not have an end date where everything else past that is the same was yesterday. Carr does a wonderful job explaining how history continues to progress forward, perhaps not in a straight line, but definitely forward.
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