Consequences
Inspired by the Utopian ideas expressed in A Traveler from Altruria, in 1894 Unitarian minister Edward Biron Payne and thirty of his followers founded Altruria, a short-lived Utopian community in Sonoma County, California; short-lived presumably because altruism—defined as an unselfish concern for the welfare of others—does not lend itself well to compulsion or force, but springs from the hearts of each individual. Thomas Merton once stated that "he solution is love as the highest expression of man's spirituality and freedom" and that "ope of attaining true freedom by purely political means has become an insane delusion."
Howells would eventually create an Altrurian trilogy, following the first book with Letters of an Altrurian Traveller (1904) and Through the Eye of the Needle (1907).
Read more about this topic: A Traveler From Altruria
Famous quotes containing the word consequences:
“The middle years are ones in which children increasingly face conflicts on their own,... One of the truths to be faced by parents during this period is that they cannot do the work of living and relating for their children. They can be sounding boards and they can probe with the children the consequences of alternative actions.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“If you are prepared to accept the consequences of your dreams ... then you must still regard America today with the same naive enthusiasm as the generations that discovered the New World.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)