I thoroughly enjoy many of the science fiction works of Isaac Asimov, an American science fiction writer and biochemistry professor. Reading the short story we did in class, apart from the fantastic science fiction writing, read as a sort of fable, intended to have a lesson behind it. In the story, we see a sociologist visiting a rather small but dense planet that functions by recycling all of their ‘waste’ into new products, almost lossless. However, as the sociologist learns more about the planet, he realizes that their waste recyling has stopped – as they are reliant on a single person to process the waste that is completely socially outcasted. Essentially, this person takes the role of the ‘untouchable’ – the lowest level on the social heirarchy, not even being allowed to be in proximity to the other residents or even speak to them besides work-related issues. This is so engrained in the society that the residents are willing to die over not meeting his demands to be reintegrated into society, at least to some extent. This brings up an important consideration of philosophy I would like to highlight — is a truly egalitarian society possible? In every societal example and history I can think or have read about, there is always this notion of a certain group within or external to the society needing to be marginalized for things to function. For example, so many societies socially outcasted others by profession, with this being more prevalent and harder to control as the society grows larger. Even with smaller societies where egalitarianism was likely (thinking back to an example I saw of a prehistoric person who was probably blind/paralyzed but survived many years after the event happened due to others taking care of them), There is always some ‘hatred’ or level of being ‘scared’ that binds these people together – fighting against others for resources or nature itself.
The work, albeit speculative fiction, highlights a society where the marginalized ‘outgroup’ is limited to just one person, and we’ve chosen to use the word utopia for it. However, as the outgroup single-handedly has the power to destroy society as we know it – there is still no hope, in this example, for anyone to accept them.
As we continue producing massive amounts of waste, and become more reliant on it’s removal, will sanitation workers or people we consider untouchable, gain more power in negotiating a better socioeconomic life for themselves?