LMU B.A.Religious Studies – EN110: Language & Style – Essay #5 – Fall 1976

Notes and essays from my first college English course, much here is cringe-worthy. At the same time, I find it interesting where my mind would wander to when I was given deadlines. After getting positive responses from my professor, this was my first experience writing for an audience (of one). Enjoy (2023-11-16)

Utopia

By Joe Bustillos

EN110 B – Essay #5
October 29, 1976

Thesis Statement; No political system has totally met man’s need for freedom and security.

The politicians all make speeches 
while the news-men all take notes
and they exaggerate the issues 
as they shove it down our throats.
Is it really up to them
whether this country sinks or floats?
Well I wonder who would lead us
if none of us would vote?
- Larry Norman¹

With the confusing doctrines of Frederick Nietzsche pounding in my Christian brain I walked toward my room amidst Loyola’s tall palm trees. As I walked, a bald-headed middle-age man approached me, and gave me a piece of paper. He. looked the other way as he mumbled something about wanting a change in government. The paper was a notice about whom the communist party was backing as their candidate for president. With Nietzsche yelling in one ear, this communist in the other, and the Lord somewhere in between, I began to think about change myself.

The desire for a Utopian state has led mankind down a long and diversified road. Recognizing man’s paradoxical need for both freedom and security has brought into existence many different systems of government. Some systems, such as anarchy and theoretical communism, have favored man’s need for freedom. Other systems, such as fascism and totalitarianism, have favored man’s need for security. Democracy, as it was originally drafted, has attempted to mediate between the two poles of anarchy and totalitarianism

In going through the marshland of political systems it would be wise to to remember the words of Plato:

How charming people are! – always doctoring, increasing and complicating their disorders, fancying they will be cured by some nostrum which somebody advises them to try, never getting better, but always growing worse…

Are they not as good as a play, trying their hand at legislation, and imagining that by reforms they will make an end to the dishonesties and rascalities of mankind—not knowing that in reality they are cutting away at the heads of a hydra?²

The problems that exist in various systems of government can be blamed on the fact that the innovators of such systems have problems also. Because democracy, as it was originally drafted, attempts to meet man’s need for both freedom and security, it can be called the preferred state. However, its preference is short because the individuals elected to govern in the democratic system, by human nature, tend to favor one of the two basic needs of man. Also adding to the failure of the democratic system is the tendency of men to ask more from the state than what it was originally designed to satisfy, namely the need for freedom and security. Likewise, all political systems, from anarchy to totalitarianism, serve to do nothing more than to cover up the “first cause” of the political mess-up: The Nature of man.

Concerning the nature of man St, Augustine of Hippo once said that man was made for God. Likewise, if man becomes separated from that relationship that he has with God, then he becomes dissatisfied and restless. Does the restlessness of mankind’s heart, the fact that he’s always seeking “change,” regardless of the fact that he has surrounded himself with a multitude of political and social systems, tell us anything about where he stands in his present relationship with God?