Lately, I ran into different utopias. Now, I am going to talk about Lost Horizon, by James Hilton.
The famous term, "Shangri-La" first appeared in the book "Lost Horizon." In the book, an airplane was hijacked, and four passengers were abducted to Shangri-La. Those four passengers , Conway, Barnard, Mallison and Miss Brinklow, represent four different characters: Conway represents widsom and logic; Mallison ethics and emotions; MissBrinklow, a missonery, religional zeal; and Barnard, a realistic aloofness and irresponsible attitude towards the society.
While Mallison tried to escape out from Shangri-La, and Barnard enjoyed hidding there, and Miss Brinklow zealously seeked to expand Christrian terrotory there, Conway, carrying a slacking attitude, actually found Shangri-La his true destination.
From the begining of the book, we learned that Conway eventually left Shangri-La and lost his memory, and he set out a journey to return to it after regaining his memory. The rest of the book is a back-tracking of what happenend in between. I am now at the two-third of the book and eager to find out how he left the Shangri-La and how he lost his memory.
Similar to Plato's Republic, Shangri-La is governed by a Philosopher King, albeit his title is High Lama. Like More's Utopia, Lost Horizon has many acute observations about our current society. Kind of cynical and kind of austere. The existence of Shagri-La is based on a pessimistic fore-vision on our society.
