Provoked Thoughts

A Like-Minded Utopia      

By: Megan Butler

  

          The growth or demolition of society runs on thoughts, ideas. Rational or not, these ideas form the foundations of everyday architecture¾something as bland and outdated as a government building or something as vibrant and lush as a public garden. Not only that, but thoughts determine leaders, laws, and labored tasks that contribute to society’s welfare. These thoughts piece themselves together in two areas of the brain: the right and the left. But what if society could choose to work with only one of them? What if a person could choose between being a rational thinker, or being a passionate creator? To operate fully in one side of their brain and hone the skills that come along with it?

            Don’t get me wrong, they’d keep the bare, essential functions from the other side of the brain that allows them to do things like eat, breathe, sleep¾I mean, what would be the point of creating a utopian society if everyone killed themselves off by forgetting to eat? But in any case, this particular utopian society is made up of two people: thinkers, and creators. And together, they form a world that strives to be unflawed and beautiful, unblemished by the corruption of mistakes and irrationality.

            But first thing’s first: there are no individual societies. In fact, most of the world was killed off by disease and corruption, war and starvation. So now the survivors rely on each other as one mass body with one goal in mind: to preserve the human race and perfect its standards. Two credited doctors who survived the destruction, one left-brained and one right-brained, stepped in as dual leaders with a single idea in mind. Each knew of a way to sever the connection between the left and the right brain so that a person could perfect the abilities of a side they chose and contribute their perfection to this meager society of survivors. Naturally, politics brings discordance, especially when the survivors have no say in the matter of who gets to rule their very existence. But when you’re a doctor with an array of sharp, pointy objects at your disposal, you don’t expect to be questioned often. Besides, the police force, most of whom chose to be right-brained for the logicality of it, work under the influence of the two doctors. With questions comes a direct promise to be, uh, “detained”¾or better yet, imprisoned in the dark, dank subways under New York, never to see daylight again. Don’t worry, the doctors covered for the lack of vitamin D; every prisoner gets their daily share of vitamins to keep them alive and…healthy, or at least, healthier than they anticipated. But the position of the doctors is never questioned, not unless you want to end up a rotted shell hidden from humanity and its hallow supply of perks.

The doctors are trusted with their medical background and rational¾as well as intuitive, depending on which side of the brain we’re working with¾ability to maintain human existence in as euphoric of a way as possible. Citizens of this risen society don’t have much say in the doctors’ decisions, but they know their rightful place. They know they aren’t meant to run a country, but instead they are meant to rebuild a rattled society where “mistake” no longer has meaning, only “effort”. Contributive effort.

            No one gets to pick what job they undertake in society. Since there are so few left to work with, everyone knows everyone, meaning the doctors know each person by face and by background. The doctors know who works best doing what, given the decisions each person made regarding which side of the brain to keep whole. For example, say Johnny wanted to be a carpenter. Well, the doctors know Johnny has no concept of measurements since he nixed the whole left half of his brain, so they assign him a job as a painter since he’s now more creative than Picasso. This way, Johnny will at least get to work with wood, but in a way that he knows how to.

That’s not all the doctors have control over in this utopian society. What if Johnny wanted to get married to another survivor? Start a family to carry on the human race? Well, according to the doctors, each couple must be two halves of a whole brainwise, of course. Since Johnny’s right-brained, he must find somebody who is completely the opposite so the two can contribute effectively to society. Unfortunately, left-brained people lack emotion and are more critical than the typical right-brained individual. In other words, Johnny runs the risk of being one unhappy camper in this particular relationship. But hey, at least the human race will be destined to continue in this way, according to the doctors.

They also went so far as to plan out the unborn child’s choice of contribution to society. Since the brain isn’t fully developed until after age eighteen, a child has to wait until their eighteenth birthday to make a decision. This choice runs a separate risk of rebellion among the fully operating young crowd, so they have to be monitored more often through their half-brained guardians at school and around the house. If they aren’t careful before their eighteenth birthday, they could be an indirect threat to the doctors’ society, buying themselves a one-way ticket straight down the subway tunnels.

Kids talk, okay? They may not mean to, but personal opinions just get the best of us sometimes. Don’t worry, they’re encouraged not to talk anyway to avoid a slip-up of subconscious hatred. It’s the main subject taught in schools¾how not to openly rant about how society’s out to get you and whatnot. The doctors believe this method is completely moral and that it’s accepted by the majority of the sparse crowd. After all, who defines an opposing moral standard if half the population lives under the intoxicating influence of the right-brain? When they’re so lost in irrationality that they could jump off a bridge and not even know that what lay below is their immediate death? This goes to show that the right-brained people aren’t a threat to the doctors’ moral standards. What are those moral standards? Well, for one, everyone has only half a right to their minds; that way, citizens can exercise their skills with all their energy and provide more for society than ever before. Right-brained people can provide beauty and understanding in a way that’s never been expressed, never been seen. Left-brained people can fire off the square-root of pi in half a second and calculate perfect formulas to a booming economy that resists the threat of job loss and debt. The doctors define this as moral because the way they see it, these two groups of people can account for the gaps that society overlooked before they conquered and destroyed everything the first time around. If the action keeps the people from facing an end, according to the doctors, it’s moral. Even if it means throwing free-thinkers and talkative children underground for the rest of their lives, it keeps society from facing corruption. It’s moral.

I didn’t say it was a particularly reasonable utopia, but it gets the food on the table, so to speak, and it definitely prevents society from crumbling to bits once more.

            Naturally, the doctors could become too powerful and the people too restless or too mindless to function¾there are rare cases of insanity, but the doctors try to ignore them since it hurts the pretty image of the world they created. But in any case, the people combine their better halves together to created one big working-brain that scavenges flaws and seeks to correct them. The people are given an option as to how they want to live in this utopia. Whether their choices are ideal or not, it mends a devastated nation, ridding it of corruption and mistakes.