Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don't fit in?
Interpretation
Utopias struggle with inclusion and dealing with those who do not conform.
This quote by Margaret Atwood highlights a fundamental challenge faced by ideal societies, particularly in literature. It questions how a utopia can address the existence of individuals who do not conform to societal norms, suggesting that perfect societies may inadvertently exclude or marginalize those who are different, thus revealing the complexities of human nature and social organization.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about social inclusivity at a community meeting.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
We must realize that the Reformation world view leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state.
In the midway of this our mortal life,_x000D_ _x000D_ I found me in a gloomy wood, astray,_x000D_ _x000D_ Gone from the path direct.
The problem with spending your life climbing up the ladder is that you will go right past Jesus, for he's coming down.
Hindustan had become free. Pakistan had become independent soon after its inception but man was still slave in both these countries -- slave of prejudice … slave of religious fanaticism … slave of barbarity and inhumanity.
This evolution towards a real responsibility for others is sometimes blocked by fear. It is easier to stay on the level of a pleasant way of life in which we keep our freedom and our distance. But that means that we stop growing and shut ourselves up in our own small concerns and pleasures.
I want to live perfectly above the law, and make it my servant instead of my master.
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