11. A World That is Almost Surreal 

“A busy man is never wise and a wise man is never busy,” said the Chinese linguist, novelist, and philosopher Lin Yutang (1895 – 1976). 

He came into the limelight when his unusual book My Country and My People reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list in 1935.

Today, while flipping through pages of one of my old diaries I came across a page where I had copied from somewhere one of his quotes. Now after a little enquiry from a friend who has worked and lived in China for many years, I am told that this is a part of an essay Lin Yutang wrote titled, Importance of Living.

I wish to share because the world we are living in is a perfect example how the world should be according to Yutang.

He writes: “Imagine a world in which there are no stories of murder in newspapers. Everyone is so omniscient that no house ever catches fire, no airplane ever has an accident, no husband deserts his wife, no pastor elopes with a choir girl, no king abdicates his throne for love, no man changes his mind, and everyone proceeds to carry out with logical precision a career that he mapped out for himself at the age of ten. Goodbye to this human world.”

Yutang continues, “All the excitement and uncertainty of life would be gone. There would be no literature because there would be no sin, no misbehavior, no human weakness, no upsetting passion, no prejudices, no irregularities and worst of all, no surprises.”

Despite all the best wishes we all hope to have the utopian world of our own, somewhere we also would like to have some thrill in that world.

Utopia is a Greek word and its literal meaning is ‘no place’ and it was used first time by Sir Thomas More in his Latin text Utopia way back in 1516. There are two similar words – Eutopia, meaning ‘good place’ and Utopia, meaning ‘no place’. 

Twentieth century added another similar word Dystopia, meaning ‘bad place’ – somewhat opposite to Utopia. 

Western philosophers have categorized four different types of dystopias. All attributed to some of the controversial writers and their writings – Orwellian (George Orwell, author of 1984), Huxleyan (based on Aldous Huxley’s works), Kafkaesque (Franz Kafka's works with the bleak, dehumanizing characteristics), and Phildickian (based on the science fiction writer Philip Kindred Dick’s books).

All four have imagined and narrated their stories in their own peculiar kind of society.

Out of these three which we really strive for? Naturally Utopian world. 

If we believe Lin Yutang then that wouldn’t be the right choice since we shall lose all the thrill of life and the world. However, we will certainly not like Dystopian world.

Here I must remind that Americans and communist haters call Russia and China a dystopian world. 

But is it? 

I think we are living in a world which cannot be categorized. 

This is a world that is almost surreal. 

(Photo by Agimmeta)