clyde Posted January 26 In the last couple of years I've been intentionally cultivating a compassionate perspective. As I've been doing so, my experience is becoming more purposeful and joyful even when things are unpleasant. Lately, I've been examining where my distrust and fear of people and institutions comes from and what comes up is the dystopian fiction that I have been exposed to. 1984 Fahrenheit 451 Brazil Soylent Green Logan's Run They Live Hunger Games Lord of the Flies Minority Report A Scanner Darkly In Time (staring Justin Timberlake totally underrated movie The Walking Dead games Sleep Dealer The Matrix The Stand Cerebus X-Men the Neuromancer series Cloud Atlas With the exception of Cloud Atlas, when I look back on how these works have affected me, I think they have encouraged paranoia and distrust rather than some sort of reasonable and helpful skepticism. It is worth noting that Cloud Atlas has a hope that doesn't rely on individualism and also that I was exposed to it when I was older than the other pieces of fiction I've listed here. I'm becoming more and more confident in pacificism and empathy. I'm starting to wonder if the effects of dystopia fiction in an individualistic, capitalist society is for folks to basically exaggerate their disconnection and trust of others---while adding an attractive spectacle that we tend to want to create in reality---rather than to warn us about something that could go wrong so that we can avoid it. What are your thoughts? As you consider where you are and how you got here, how has dystopian fiction affected you? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
brkl Posted January 26 I wouldn't say dystopian fiction attempts to be a warning. A lot of it hasn't been written with the aim of presenting a realistic or likely future, although some of it has. Mostly I see it as commentary on facets of contemporary society. A lot of it deals with corporate culture, the idea that a company has a responsibility to its shareholders but not society and the implications of that, including the dehumanization of its workforce, cybernetics being a literal represantation of that. A Scanner Darkly is mostly a commentary and memoire of drug addiction and the relationship between users and the police, again dehumanization in many forms. The individualism and disconnect between people existed before dystopian fiction and the fiction is an attempt to deal with that, to find an outlet for a bunch of different anxieties. We need more of it because the world is turning to shit while we are trying to smile, raise our kids and avoid thinking about it, resulting in massive cognitive dissonance. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted February 1 I find it suspect that numerous popular distopian fiction ideas end up becoming realities. Perhaps what is happening is that my way of seeing what is occurring is through the lense of the futures that I have been primed with. It makes me wonder if the world would be noticeably more consensual if imagery and ideas of utopias were more popular than the nihilistic hellscapes that seem to be seen as more real. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
