The first three years of service include common labor during which time a person may choose an occupation. At age twenty-one, the man enters his twenty-four year long involvement in the industrial army. School, among other things, teaches about specific trades and their histories and about the national industrial system. From age six to twenty-one, the young child attends school.
In fact, this path is the law: "We require, indeed by law, that every man shall serve the nation for a fixed period." (Bellamy 100). In Bellamy's society, a strict path is laid out for the citizen to follow at a very early age. The regimentation of the twentieth century society does not allow for it.
Even though technology made "hell into a heaven on earth," Bellamy does not seem to leave much room for further advancements in technology. Technology definitely has played a role in shaping the utopian society of Looking Backward: "The purposeful, positive use of technology-from improved factories and offices to new highways and electric lighting systems to innovative pneumatic tubes, electronic broadcasts, credit cards-is, in fact, critical to the predicted transformation of the United States from a living hell into a heaven on earth" (Segal 91).
Even if we ignore these faults, we observe that when Bellamy created his society for Looking Backward, he made several false assumptions about human behavior and failed to realize that the only way his society could be imposed would be involuntarily. The twentieth century society lacked the possibility for advancements in technology while at the same time lacking competition and appropriate incentives. The very factors that Bellamy claimed contributed to the society's establishment and success are, in reality, what would lead to its failure. Vallecito, CA: Ross House, 1994).Īlthough Edward Bellamy's twentieth century society in Looking Backward appears to be the perfect utopia, it could never exist. Rushdoony, "Infallibility: An Inescapable Concept," Systematic Theology. The goal is total planning in order to prophesy, total control for total power (Is: 6). Planning is thus increasingly a necessary aspect of the modern state, because the modern state wants to predict, to prophesy, to control. The modern state, as the new god, seeks total control over man in order to speak an infallible word, in order to experiment with man and control him from cradle to grave. To hold to the eternal decree of God is to say simply that God from the beginning planned, predicted, and totally controls everything that comes to pass. Editor's Note: Looking Backward an excellent example of statist predestination: The doctrine of predestination is, of course, the doctrine of total planning and control.
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