The utopian society that the Overlords have initiated has gone to great lengths to unify the masses of humanity. Every person on Earth has become proficient in English—since that is the language that the Overlords use to communicate with the humans—travelling the world has become a common pastime, and loosened sexual mores have eliminated many of the boundaries of the family unit. The world, in effect, is becoming more homogenous and interconnected, appearing more and more as a collective rather than a gathering of individuals. While these effects are not inherently bad—many are even beneficial—the rich variety of individual viewpoints and personality that give flavor to humanity are gradually being eliminated. A tension arises between the individual and the collective, and through this, the novel suggests that, although somewhat tragic, the dissolution of individuality, personality, and culture seem to be the inevitable cost of human progress.
As the Overlord utopia develops, nation-states lose their borders, their national sovereignty, and even their particular cultures. When the Overlords arrive, they effectively form a single world-state. Nations are free to govern themselves internally, but they all understand that the greater decision-making power has been taken from human hands, eroding their concept of national sovereignty. Stormgren, the head of the UN, observes that this process was already underway before the Overlords arrived, as seen in the formation of the Federation of Europe; the Overlords merely expedited the process.
The ease of travel made available by the Overlords’ utopia has also diluted the concept of national borders. When people are free to easily come and go, the cultural identity of a nation becomes diluted towards the average culture of all. Particular identity is giving way to the average collective identity. The Overlords bring with them certain ethics (no war, civil rights for all) that though generally beneficial, contradict the cultural identities of particular countries. For instance, the Overlords despise cruelty to animals and so put an end to bullfighting in Spain. Although from a purely ethical standpoint this may seem like a triumph, it also erodes the traditions that form a cultural identity.
Neither artists nor scientists have the chance to distinguish themselves in this new, intensely collective world, and the personalities amidst the broader culture fall away. There are no celebrities and no heroes—only the collective mass of humanity. The utopian Earth under the Overlords is lacking for real, groundbreaking art or truly innovative science. Instead, there is a deluge of family TV serials and widespread recreational interest in the basic sciences without any true scientific progress. With the induction of mass society and a comfortable, controlled world state, there is little to push artists and scientists to rise from the masses and do anything original. Everyone is content to be entertained and to live within the status quo since there are no pressing problems that need solutions, no dilemmas to tackle.
New Athens offers the only opportunity for artist or scientist to distinguish themselves, due to its competitive nature and its small size. However, New Athens is short-lived, and in the march of progress it too falls to the collective mass of humanity. Human children, in their preparation to join the Overmind, literally are stripped of their individuality and join the collective consciousness of the universe. They meet their fate with faceless stares, forgetting even their own identities before the merge into the collective. This suggests that in a truly progressive, universal mindset, there is no room for individuals; instead, individualism is something to eventually be evolved past.
Even before the Overlords, Earth seemed to be on its way to adopting a more global, collective approach. Upon their arrival and institution of utopia, the fate of the individual is sealed, doomed to be absorbed into the faceless mask of humanity at large. However, breaking from other novels that have used science fiction to explore the tension between the individual and the collective, Childhood’s End does not elevate individualism as the highest value to be fought for. Rather, Clarke frames this as inevitable, the way that things are destined to go if humanity is to continue down the road of progress.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Individuality, Globalization, and Progress ThemeTracker
Individuality, Globalization, and Progress Quotes in Childhood’s End
“I can understand your fear that the traditions and cultures of little countries will be overwhelmed when the world state arrives. But you are wrong: it is useless to cling to the past. Even before the Overlords came to Earth, the sovereign state was dying. They have merely hastened its end.”
Fifty years is ample time in which to change a world and its people almost beyond recognition. All that is required for the task are a sound knowledge of social engineering, a clear sight of the intended goal—and power.
The end of strife and conflict of all kinds had also meant the virtual end of creative art. There were myriads of performers, amateur and professional, yet there had been no really outstanding new works of literature, music, painting, or sculpture for a generation. The world was still living on the glories of a past that could never return.
Man was, therefore, still a prisoner on his own planet. It was a much fairer, but a much smaller, planet than it had been a century before. When the Overlords had abolished war and hunger and disease, they had also abolished adventure.
Yet among all the distractions and diversions of a planet which now seemed well on the way to becoming one vast playground, there were some who still found time to repeat an ancient and never-answered question:
“Where do we go from here?”
“There’s nothing left to struggle for, and there are too many distractions and entertainments. Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over various channels? [...] Soon people won’t be living their own lives anymore.”
Suppose, in [the Overlords’] altruistic passion for justice and order, they had determined to reform the world, but had not realized that they were destroying the soul of man?
Nothing in [New] Athens was done without a committee, that ultimate hallmark of the democratic method […] Because the community was not too large, everyone in it could take some part in its running and could be a citizen in the truest sense of the word.
“Everybody on the island has one ambition, which may be summed up very simply. It is to do something, however small it may be, better than anyone else. Of course, it’s an ideal we don’t all achieve. But in this modern world, the great thing is to have an ideal. Achieving it is considerably less important.”
For all their achievements, thought Karellen, for all their mastery of the physical universe, his people were no better than a tribe that has passed its whole existence upon some flat and dusty plain. Far off were the mountains, where power and beauty dwelt […] And they could only watch and wonder; they could never scale those heights.
