Everyone just keeps acting like its normal
That’s a common trope in dystopian settings.
The youngest people in the society don’t understand that anything is even wrong. The rich folks have a vested interest in people being more afraid of foreigners and domestic terrorists than any government malfeasance. And the working class is so occupied with simple survival that they see no real opportunity to revolt… until something really falls off the rails, at which point the military moves in to suppress dissent with maximum bloodshed.
In those dystopia settings however, they never seem to have all the literature describing dystopia. We do here
Eh, it depends on the author. I’ve seen a lot of modern Post-Apocalypse/Cyberpunk stuff make comedic quasi-self-references by way of media-within-the-media (A piece of modern literature in the Fallout setting describing a “dystopian” world in the self-proclaimed utopian Vaults, for instance).
But the point of the media-within-the-media is often to illustrate how we fixate on the drama of dystopia without acknowledging the banality of social evils.
Right now, in the mostly-free-press parts of the world, I now think that dystopian scifi no longer serves as a warning of what not to do but instead acts as a numbing agent to increased oppression.
This is going to sound very Maoist or whatever but we need more utopian scifi like Star Trek TNG. We need utopian visions imagined for us so we have something to work towards.
It was so refreshing to watch the Chinese TV show for Three-Body where the world was at peace with each other and trying to solve this bizarre global mystery. Sure, the Chinese government was painted as much more competent than American & European governments but Hollywood does the same thing with the US government too.
1984 literally has a manifesto describing what’s happening.
In fact, the brainwashing of the kids in 1984 to report on their parents having / reading / discussing “controversial media” is a major element of the dystopia. Those media are not explicitly named, but I don’t think they have to be.
I feel like this describes pretty much every western society since we moved beyond tribalism.
I don’t think tribalism was the apex of greatness people seem to think it was.
I’m too broke to worry about much more then working enough to feed myself and afford my shitty apartment for another month.
So what your saying is the system is working as intended.
Oh well, at least frogurt is still relatively cheap.
deleted by creator
The overwhelming majority of people just live where they were born and accept whatever good or bad things come along.
This!! I’ve been trying to tell people this for so long but no one every listens. Most people especially Americans are the boiling frog. They choose to live in blissful ignorance because it’s easier than actually fixing the problem, and now the rest of us who can actually acknowledge what’s going on have to suffer
LOL… how could anyone live in a country with free healthcare, subsidized higher ed, public transit that covers the vast majority of the population, practically zero gun battles daily… oof, yeah, how could anyone?
pfft
Imagine not having the freedom to have your daily gun battle!
I don’t have that hope. There’s plenty of gun violence in my country and state and neighborhood. I’m not anti-guns per se, I’m anti-fuckwits and universal firearms access is leading to the a real dystopia.
It’s always been terrible, this the best we’ve had, and it’s still still terrible.
Reminded me of this:
https://ourworldindata.org/much-better-awful-can-be-betterI’m still to pessimistic to feel hopeful by this, but maybe someone else can :)
In a lot of ways yes this is the best humanity has ever had, but it’s also the first time we’ve had the means to completely eradicate life on earth, and still seen to be barreling towards it. (If you consider the last 80 or so years to be “now”)
I’d argue we peaked between 25 and 50 years ago, and now we’re sliding back down the hill.
I’d argue you’re not very familiar with recent history. Also, who is “We”?
Yeah, life without a dishwasher, hot water and toilet was so much better!
Potential convicted felon president with many active indictments looking to give himself blanket immunity for all crime and appointing himself dictator president for life. All while every year is the hottest year on record, there isn’t enough housing, actually nazis feel safe to actively demonstrate in public, a million less Americans are alive post COVID and all of the world’s wealth is split between 7 people and all the world’s companies owned by 4 parent companies…
What the fuck are you talking about dystopian?
Those in that million category were probably the lucky ones, the afterlife’s probably pretty dope.
Yes, this system absolute madness only equaled by the madness of the mass tolerance of it.
And NOT the fun weekend bender kind of madness I haven’t had time for in years due to capitalist exploitation.
Yeah. Your free time is very limited by the fact you live under capitalism and not magic fairy dust.
I mean, compared to all the other economic systems, capitalism provides more leisure time. But compared to magical fantasy circumstances, capitalism’s a drag.
Never heard of Europe, eh?
Communism limits free time, too. You still have to work under that system. And pay bills. You have to pay for childcare, dental work, travel, food, housing, and just about everything else. Except medicine. But you have to wait for that, and have no choice in who you see.
Depending entirely on the form of communism. Right now the worlds richest 400 have a combined wealth amounting near 7 trillion. In a communist society world wide we could distribute that wealth globally to install water infrastructure, food infrastructure, vaccinate everyone and still have change in the bank to support other large projects.
And this is speaking purely finance. Here in the UK we have more than enough empty home to house all of our homeless.
The amount we work to the resources produced are wildly high, we could work a lot less if not for the bosses ever demanding more.
Well, I am referring to actual communism, not the fantasy kind.
Wealth distribution is not equal under communism. Most is owned by the state, the privileged class still exists. The underprivileged class also exists.
Communism tends to be inefficient and less productive than capitalism, so a lot less is produced. This is demonstrated time and again. People just don’t have a personal motivation to increases production for the state. Distribution is also inefficient. Historically it leads to hunger because central planning is less effective than a decentralized system where individuals are able to make decisions.
So while I agree that the current level of wealth inequality is not good, communism is certainly not the solution. All it does is change where the lines of inequality are drawn. It usually kills a few million people for no good reason, too.
Given that we now have a track record of communism, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would choose it.
well i say if we can go from feudalism to mercantilism to capitalism then why not capitalism to socialism to communism? its again distributing power from the top to the lower status classes, we saw similar in feudalism to mercantilism.
Wealth distribution is not equal under communism. Most is owned by the state, the privileged class still exists. The underprivileged class also exists.
- wealth distribution should be equal under communism, wealth not being equal means we must do better. we don’t look at corrupt corporations and think “to bad its fucked best not make any more”
- under socialism most would be owned and redistributed by the state. communism is worker lead and not state lead at least in my school of socialism.
- under socialism the unprivileged class gets lifted through the transitional period. class distinctions are to be removed through the transitional period leading to a classless communist society.
Communism tends to be inefficient and less productive than capitalism, so a lot less is produced. This is demonstrated time and again. People just don’t have a personal motivation to increases production for the state. Distribution is also inefficient. Historically it leads to hunger because central planning is less effective than a decentralized system where individuals are able to make decisions.
- i cant argue communism and its efficiency as i have yet to see it but i am sure socialism can be made to be more efficient. being from the UK and having the carcass of what was once our publicly owned NHS i know that after WW2 under a Labour government we saw the NHS rise from nothing within 3 years, Labour at the time were socialist. the NHS was revolutionary at the time. we also mass built affordable housing. these are all things we struggle to achieve now.
So while I agree that the current level of wealth inequality is not good, communism is certainly not the solution. All it does is change where the lines of inequality are drawn. It usually kills a few million people for no good reason, too.
so your a reformist?
Are you familiar with twentieth century Chinese or Soviet history? If you are impressed by communism, you really should read up on what happened in nations that implemented it, or attempted to implement it, in the last hundred years.
Communism doesn’t redistribute power to the lower classes. It redistributes power to the Communist Party members - usually an inner circle. The people who are running the massive government that is required to operate a nation with all the central planning that communism requires. The new privileged class becomes the top technocrats and their families.
It’s impossible for wealth distribution to be equal. Wealth is not just money, it is also assets. Say you strip all the assets away from people - let’s say housing - and redistribute it. OK - Now everyone has a house. But all houses are not created equal. Some houses are nicer than others. Some locations are nicer than others. Everyone will want to move into the nicest house in the nicest city, but obviously they can’t all fit. So what do you do? Someone has to work on the farm and grow wheat. How do you force people to work on a collective farm? What about people who don’t want to work? Do they get the same housing as the workers who contribute to society? Even if you house everyone, including providing free housing for those who won’t pay, what about the people who don’t WANT to live in a house? Do you force them to live in a detention center? What about their kids? They keep having more kids… Do you forcibly sterilize them, or do you put their kids into an orphanage, hoping that the state can do a better job raising workers than their lazy parents? And then, what about the homeless? The people who actually prefer living outside? Obviously if they refuse to live in their house, they have fewer assets than others. Now your society isn’t equal anymore, it’s just made some changes in who have wealth.
Yes, socialism can be made more efficient. The trick to it is my introducing a mix of capitalism so you have a mixed market economy. Like in China.
Am I a reformist? It depends on what you want to reform, and what kind of reform you’re talking about. I’d like to see more direct democracy, which I believe can be achieved in my home country through reforms. But in some other countries, it can only be achieved via revolution. For economic systems, a mix of capitalism and socialism seems to be the best thing we’ve found so far. No doubt a better economic system will be discovered someday. But it is not communism. Communism is too extreme. It’s not a good system, and it has failed everywhere it’s been tried.
I’ve read history. I know what actual dystopian nightmares look like. We’re not in one.
“Things can always get worse” is a pretty shit justification to say things aren’t bad now.
Things are NOT bad now.
History does not only repeat, and simply looking at the past can make you blind to the novel ways society has transformed. For example, oppression has been a constant throughout history, but it never has been as faceless as it is today. Lords and kings have been replaced by corporations and agencies operating across borders, in ways and with purposes that I don’t think anyone who’s not actually involved with can claim they fully understand.
You really think oppression is more faceless now than before the existence of cameras? What was the odds that a medieval peasant knew what the King looked like? Or that a slave in Egypt knew the face of the Pharaoh?
Maybe they could never see the actual pharaoh, but what I’m saying is that “The Pharaoh” was itself the “face” of power, and also where power and influence actually resided. Now we have surveillance and propaganda perpetuated by either known but opaque actors (e.g. governmental agencies, corporations) or simply unknown ones. You can believe or not in an international “elite” conspiracy, but by that I also mean random teen hacker groups, data brokers, gov agencies of nations other than the one you live in, etc.
And soon no human will be able to understand the main strategy of the company.
Sure the AI can break it down for the humans, but it’s not always going to be easily comprehensible in human terms.
Sure the AI can break it down for the humans
Depends on who built the model, and the selection of the data used to train it. AI holds a lot of potential in my book, if you use it right. But never stop being critical of the answers you receive, and be aware of they work and their shortcomings
The homeless veterans in my city park disagree.
Yeah, it was much better before when vets died from gangrene swallowing their bodies. No vets - no problems!
No. I’m familiar with history. It is normal.
People are not acting, they are desensitized… we all are in some capacity, the difference being the few who can recognise this😅
I’d say it’s less about being desensitized, and more about the fact that the world has never been a utopia. This “dystopian” stuff has always been happening.
do we tough?
maybe get off the internet and enjoy your life a bit.
Yes we do live in a dystopian nightmare. It’s just that most people posting here, including myself, live a fucking privileged life, where we don’t have to share the same worries that about 80% of the world population have, including a large part of even the US population nowadays.
We (the privileged people) are the baddies from all those dystopian stories.
Doesn’t help when an over privileged brat with full access to devices and the internet then just posts weak ass generalist complaints like this.
Movements make a difference by targeting problems with specific details. Not just whining about them with general, diluted, unintelligible babble designed around some indescript, unnecessarily abstract problem forever just out of grasp.
This was a dog whistle for indifference and hopelessness. This was bait and it does fuck all to do with fixing any real problems.
We do. I’ve got friends who are harassed because of who they are, or what they look like. I’ve had friends almost die because of police kneeling their neck because he defended family from an abuser, friends who’ve been threatened and nearly attacked by homophobes and transphobes, I’ve experienced cops do everything they can to escalate situations to justify violence.
So yeah we really do live in a dystopian era where basic rights and securities are not afforded to the people who need it most.
As opposed to the past where black people where treated as livestock?
Whatever bad thing is going in your life, it used to be worse.
Just because things were worse in the past and marginally better now doesn’t detract from the shittiness of today. And there are quite a few people trying to reimplement the policies of that time period.
Things being worse before is not justification for not progressing to something better.
Things being worse before is not justification for not progressing to something better.
how can things be worse before if we didn’t progress? how can you say the future will not be better?
To quote myself: “And there are quite a few people trying to reimplement the policies of that time period.”
always have been, it’s literally conservatism vs progressivism, eternal battle, you are not saying anything smart here, there are also people trying to implement policies that bring progress.
Please, for the love of God step outside and connect with your community.
I definitely do.
That’s how it always happens, unfortunately. “Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
Literally gives me anxiety to the point I need meds
With you.
Nice that meds exist though.
Yes.
First world graffiti-mask-profile-picture cringe.
