MAY 9, 2025 – Today’s plan required me to leave the Red Cabin first thing to be home by 11:30. I decided to take advantage of the chance for nearly three hours of “quiet time” in the car. No music, no phone calls (except three; one to leave a VM, two check-ins with “the boss”). I even lowered the standard volume of my thoughts.
They kept stirring, however. As my car hurtled across the greening landscape of rural northwest Wisconsin, my thoughts took the occasional unnamed side-road, sometimes paved but often not, then returned by way of another country route named by a sign, such as “Brickyard Road” or “249th Street,” which trust me, was neither preceded nor followed by “248th” or “250th.” My thoughts changed with the landmarks—a copse next to a farmhouse, a dilapidated barn, a beaver home in pond, a home and collection of out-buildings with a sign out front that says, “Baby Quilts for Sale.” Did that mean small quilts or quilts for babies? I guessed the latter but found amusement in the alternative.
Somehow, my thoughts found cohesion and settled on the question of “What is the perfect society?”
I knew this thought was perfectly ludicrous. Why start with such an impossibility? I asked myself, as I sped by a pasture where I caught a glimpse of a farmer on his mud-covered four-wheeler, inspecting his dairy herd. Why not take into account the basic operating assumptions that govern our existence—the most salient being our individual imperfections as a matter of nature? But that’s the whole point of the exercise, I argued. If the objective is amusement not some philosophical breakthrough, go for broke; go for perfect.
The very first problem with perfect, of course, is definitional. What constitutes perfection? According to whom? By what standards? Well, I thought, for starters, to simply the construct of a perfect society would be to ensure that every member thinks exactly as I do . . . about pretty much everything. Everything? I asked myself, as I lowered the cruise control setting a couple of notches in case a sheriff’s deputy was lying in wait on the other side of the no-passing zone.
But I soon realized that the problem ran much deeper than that. If every member of my make-believe perfect society were an attitudinal clone of me, the threshold question would be, which me? Me at 12? At 20? At 30? When I was single? After I was married and a parent of two kids? When I was a Republican? When I was a Democrat? When I was neither? Before I’d read certain worldview-altering books? After I’d read them? Before I’d traveled? After I’d seen a lot more of the world? You get my drift. Some people live a hundred years and change very little. Others live 50 years and change a lot. I’d be in the latter camp, at least when it comes to my worldview.
For eons utopian societies have formed, risen and inevitably fallen. Maybe the more accurate reference is, “societies based on utopian ideals” (have formed, etc.). But eventually, those societies go the way of inflated mylar birthday balloons: they run out of air. Often the leader turns out to be looney. In many other cases, factions form and in time become splinter groups. Then there’s the Quaker community somewhere in New England, where everyone held true to their common ideals consistently, but now the community risks extinction. The point is, no human construct of utopia is very enduring, let alone eternal.
As I approached the Wisconsin – Minnesota border crossing, a bridge over the St. Croix River, I began to see the lesson in my “ludicrous” thought experiment. If I couldn’t begin to imagine a society in which everyone thinks just as I do, how on earth could I reasonably expect a nation of all-comers to figure out what’s best for . . . well, for whom? The rich? The poor? The middle class? The people who like to make loud noise? The people who don’t? The people who like to smoke weed or the people who’d prefer a Cuban, mostly because they could blow the smoke in someone’s face? Our society is a riot of ideas, opinions, judgments, actual needs, perceived needs, understandings and misunderstandings. How we forge “a more perfect union,” will always be a goal but never an achievement. So it would be if everyone thought exactly as you and I—and sometimes I wonder about you, which would leave it to me, but as I’ve said about “me,” which me exactly?
So, next time your hair lights on fire because of what’s happening aboard the American ship of state, pretend for a moment that the vessel is skippered by you when you were in second grade and is crewed by you when you were in college. Then ask yourself, would things be that much better than they are in reality? I can guarantee that if managing the ship were all up to me in my many “iterations,” the voyage would be far from perfect.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
