Comparing The Utopian Societies Of New Harmony And The Shakers

In a utopian society nothing is perfect but it can be incorporated into the best attempt to make the society perfect. The similarities and differences of old utopias explain how a new utopia should be made, so that it survives the longest. For example, New Harmony and The Shaker were societies that are examples to compare to see what should be added and what should not be added. To help understand this; the meaning of a utopia is a place where everything is perfect and is mostly perfect in laws, government, and condition. With all of the aspects included, two old utopias can be compared to help dig deeper in the meaning of a real utopian society.

The utopian societies of New Harmony and The Shakers are similar in recruiting people, living

away from society, and both had gender equality. In these utopias they all had to recruit people to further advance their societies. They do this by finding people that were wandering around and ask if they would like to help expand the society. This helped advance the society's technology and the population of the community. A second thing that made them similar was the fact that they lived away from the normal society. The utopias both could achieved more goals because they could do whatever they wanted. These people were not told what to do by normal government, so in New Harmony, they did experiments that helped a normal society and researched with new inventions. While The Shakers lived a life of separation of genders and celebrated church. The reasons why the society's did these things was because that was the only thing that they knew and it was also the reason why the utopias were created. The third thing had alike was the fact that they both had gender equality. In the societies men and women were all the same like in New Harmony the female scientist and the male scientist were treated with the same amount of respect. The Shakers were different, they separated the genders but still had the same amount of respect for each other. In all, both of these societies had lots of similarities with each other.
Although these two societies have some similarities, they are different in education, religion, and government.

The two societies had two completely different purposes so the education was different, for example The Shakers taught religion beliefs in school and normal subjects. But on the other hand New Harmony learned throughout their lives by conducting experiments and learning more about math and science to help improve the world. New Harmony’s people also created inventions for the greater good. Another important difference was their religion. In New Harmony the religion was if they saw it was true they believed in it. This was because the society had a very scientific view on the world. The Shaker were completely different they believed in Christianity and the return of Christ in human form. But some Shakers think that Ann Lee, the creator of The Shakers, was Christ in human form. Another difference between the two was the government and how society works. In The Shaker’s society the government was based on the religious beliefs of the Shakers. For example, Ann Lee believed that it would be beneficial for genders to be separated. This is the opposite for New Harmony’s people because there laws were based on normal laws because they were very scientific and precise. Both Societies had different and similar ideas but there is a lot more aspects to create a perfect

society.
The best society that is like a utopian would be The Shaker because it controlled its people and had strict rule that helped unite it together. This goes back to the definition of a utopian because it is perfect in laws and in government. The Shakers are also the most superior one of the two communities because it lasted the longest and also had the most money. This utopia also expanded its horizon by creating more communities all over America. The way that The Shakers obtained money was by selling furniture to normal societies. New Harmony did not do this at all they secluded themselves and had no money in their community so that is why they fell. If this would have changed the New Harmony community could have stand a chance. In all utopia’s New Harmony and The Shakers had lots of similarities like gender equality, but they also had some differences like government, this is what made these societies important and made them an example of a utopia.