Throughout history, mankind has strived to create a society in which the needs of all who live within it are met. Many different creative thinkers have pondered upon the idea of an ideal society. Thomas More and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have both expressed their own thoughts about what an ideal society might be. Government, free will and equality are all different variables of society that impact daily life. Individuals within a society possess different values and ideals; this, therefore, creates different views of what an ideal society is defined by. The ideals of each individual within a society must be upheld in order for an ideal society to exist. An ideal society is unattainable due to the subjective nature of humanity.
Free will is a property of human nature that depends solely on the individual. Every individual in a free society has the ability to make any decision that impacts his or her own life. This means that any one person can use their own free will to alter or hamper the ideals possessed by another individual within the society. This notion goes against the grains of the idea of an ideal society. An ideal society would have to provide the ideal conditions for all those who lived within it. The principles and standards of the inhabitants within the society would determine these ideal conditions. If an individual within this model society could alter the life of another individual within the society, the ideals of the second individual may be broken; this consequently undermines and destroys the concept of an absolute ideal society. Thomas More's Utopia carries the premise that everyone within the utopian society does what is necessary for the good of the society, and that one's free will would consist of only what is beneficial to the culture. This, in itself, is limiting free will by excluding the possibility of freely doing what is not beneficial to the culture.