This is a book that I know I don’t fully understand, but it really doesn’t matter. The reason I don’t understand it, is the fact that it deals extensively with philosophy, primarily moral and political. This is a subject that I only have cursory knowledge of, but the novel is still fabulously funny.
The plot is quite basic; Professor Caritat - scholar of the Enlightenment - is forced to leave his home country of Militaria due to his controversial ideas. A former student of his helps him leave, giving him the mission to find the best possible world in which to live. The humor of the novel comes from the encounters Caritat has in his travels, thus inscribing the novel into other such satiric works as Gulliver’s Travels.
Each land which Caritat visits is the extreme representation of a specific view of human life and society. The first place, Utilitaria, only measures what is practical and worthwhile. Food is healthy but bland, smells are eliminated and people are judged solely on their worth of productivity. When a person is no longer productive, s/he is carted off to the Farewell center to be removed.
Caritat is kidnapped by dissidents who want to extort the government, but is rescued by a priest from Communitaria. In Communitaria people are open to diversity, they even celebrate it, but offence must never be given. Here, even the smallest remark can cause great controversy and Caritat gets into trouble when he by mistake enters the ladies’ room because he cannot recognize the icon on the bathroom doors - since the icons are not allowed to cause offence, they cannot be overtly feminine or masculine, such as our typical icons are.
Risking a trial for the use of the word ‘indignant’ which the Communitarians take as a racial slur on the Idigens, Caritat rushes off and meets two men - Karl and Fred - who talk of Proletaria, where the market, money and commodities have been abolished and everyone are free from class oppression. This is one of the chapters that I enjoyed the most, recognizing many of the quotes inserted into their discussion. The utopian thrust of Marx’ and Engells’ ideology is revealed and dessicated in satirical mode.
Caritat travels on and reaches Libertaria, a satiric view of capitalism and liberal ideology. Here, everyone one is free - to be left alone, for as the Prime Minister Jugula Hildebrandt says there is no such thing as society, only individual persons. This obvious reworking of Margaret Thatcher’s views shows a very direct criticism of extreme capitalism and liberal ideology. Psychiatrists suddenly lose their jobs, as Hildebrandt decides to abolish mental clinics in order to make the mentally ill free from government interference, and instead turn the clinics into cosmetic surgery clincs, in order to maximize profits.
Caritat ends up working as a porter, but leaves in the end in the hope to find the almost mythological Egalitaria many speak of in Libertaria. He does not find Egalitaria, but instead realizes that it is his journey which is important, not the destination.
The novel is a comic warning against fanaticism. Caritat learns in the end that none of the places he lived were pleasant, because they were too extreme and one-dimensional. Instead, moderation is better, connecting the various philosophies in order to create a proper mix. Only by continually revising these connections can one truly create a better world, but never a best world.
‘Best world’ implies something static, and if there is one thing the Enlightenment showed, as Caritat points out, it is that we can never ignore developments and that enlightenment is not a destination, but a journey.
