The Interpretation of Dreams

This adaptation of the Grasshopper and the Ant seemed very Freudian to me. The grasshopper describes Utopia as a place where nothing is necessary, a world where only games and fulfilled desires exist. He mentions that when  a man wants a house he can get a house, or that when he wants to research a topic, one will be found for him. This reminds me of the id stage in Freud's theories, where a baby expects to, and generally receives all that it wants. It cries to it's heart's content until it is satisfied without inhibition.

This period continues until as a child, we have to learn rules. During this stage, the ego, we only follow them because we have been taught to do so and not because we feel a moral inclination. The grasshopper says a purpose of a game is to fill leisure time. I agree, but I think that games are also a great way to teach children rules.

This is why games might not be possible in Utopia. Even if humans could function without a purpose, I think that Utopians would never care to learn rules because they would be stuck in the id stage of devlopment. Focus and obedience only develop because society pressures individuals to acquire them. Utopians would find games frustrating in the way toddlers often do when they don't win or have a sudden inclination to change their activity. In real life, children learn rules from societal members that punish or forbid them from acting on their every inclination. They then have less trouble coping with rules during games, where they can forgo their immediate impulses in exchange for engaging entertainment. However Utopians would not need to learn rules and would therefore not understand them during playtime.


When the grasshopper describes his dream where the people disappear upon convincing them that they are only playing games, I was reminded of Freud's third stage, the super ego. In this stage, the adult, or adolescent, has internalized rules so that he or she obeys them out of compulsion and not in fear of being punished. This is the stage where childhood is definitively over. Freud believes that most of us repress urges left over from childhood, which cause severe manifestations in our adult lives. He finds that the id stage is the happiest time in our development, a utopia if you will, and that we yearn for this period our whole lives, unable to return to it after internalizing the constraints of society. When the people disappear from the grasshopper's dream, I think of childhood disappearing as we enter the super ego stage of our lives.

When I combine the theories of the grasshopper and Freud I come to the conclusion that Utopia does exist, but that we grow out of it. Upon introducing rules we corrupt the id stage. The question that remains is whether people could satisfy themselves staying idle. In thinking of that I look to Genesis, where Eve in paradise demonstrates that an idle mind is the devil's play. Utopia exists; it cycles as it does in the grasshopper's dream- where everyone disappears upon hearing they are part of a game and returns when the grasshopper awakes- after deaths of adults and births of new generations.