How We Might Live
News from Nowhere is a utopian representation of Morris’ vision of an ideal society. This Utopia, an imagined society a literal Nowhere is idyllic because the people in it are free from the burdens of industrialization and therefore they find harmony in a lifestyle that coexists with the natural world. In a lecture “How We Live and How We Might Live” 1884, Morris gives his opinions about an ideal existence. This opinion is the bedrock for the novel. Morris writes, 'Before I leave this matter of the surroundings of life, I wish to meet a possible objection. I have spoken of machinery being used freely for releasing people from the more mechanical and repulsive part of necessary labour; it is the allowing of machines to be our masters and not our servants that so injures the beauty of life nowadays. And, again, that leads me to my last claim, which is that the material surroundings of my life should be pleasant, generous, and beautiful; that I know is a large claim, but this I will say about it, that if it cannot be satisfied, if every civilized community cannot provide such surroundings for all its members, I do not want the world to go on.'
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“Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply.... We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, “How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?””
—William Golding (b. 1911)