"Erewhon, or; Over the Range": the book of the imaginational world without technology

 

"Erewhon, or: Over the Range" is a novel written by Samuel Butler in the year 1872. That is the tale about the world, where technology was prohibited, and ill persons are treated as criminals. And criminals are treated as ill people. 

The Erewhon is classical satire, which should bring some ideas to the mind of people. In the work of the philosophers, they would handle Erewhon like it would be the real world.  If we are thinking about the society of Erewhon, the imaginational "low tech" world, there is one little question about that world. We might ask, what is the motive for that kind of action? 

Sometimes I tried to think, why this imagination world Erewhon, the product of the mind of writer Samuel Butler is prohibited technical products? How Butler got that idea? 

Suddenly an interesting idea came to my mind. And that is why Butler did not write about the "anti-Erewhon"? In that world, everything would be made by using technology. Robots would carry people even to the toilet if we would use modern technology in this satire. Butler would not probably know anything about robots because he lived in the 19th century. But maybe some modern writer would someday try to make the anti-Erewhon. 

I saw the introduction about that book, and Butler wrote this novel as a satire when he read the book of evolution by Charles Darwin. I remember that I have read this book somewhere in the past, and then I suddenly stopped to think, how Erewhonians treated their people. Somehow I have thought that somehow we are in a similar situation, which should be satire. 

We live in a shallow society where all things are measured through ownerships, bank account, payroll, and how productive people can be. When someday we are thinking about old people or people who would not return to work anymore. Are we treating them like in Erewhon? In the first imagination world, Erewhon, created by novelist Samuel Butler might seem like paradise. 

But suddenly we are seeing that there is no perfect society in that fantasy world. We are not perfect either. Can we see some similarities between those people and people who are living in the fantasy world called Erewhon? People who cannot produce anymore, how we treat them? Are they living in the world where we want to live? 

How we are treating people who are making crimes for their free will? Those people are breaking laws, but they can produce something for society. They can return to working life after the prison penalty. And pay taxes. And we understand those people. They have a rough childhood and wooden toys behind the heat radiator. But what if the person would get ill mentally. What if the mental illness is genetic or caused by the alcohol use of the mother. 

Before that person is born? How we treat those people?  This is one of the questions, what we might think. If the person would be justified as mentally ill. That thing will cause isolation. And nobody is interested in those people. But how many TV shows are interested in the criminals returning to society. The tales of criminals or real crime stories are interesting. But the tales of the people who have the genetic disorder are not interesting to anybody.