A dystopia is a utopia which went astray
And admit it, to someone from the 1900′s, we have all the components of a utopia. We have so much abundance that a very tiny minority of farmers can provide food for everyone, and the vast majority never has to worry how big the next harvest is. We have thin, flat computers straight out of science fiction. Robots vacuum our floors. The sky is full of satellites and everyone can tap into them at any time with cell phones small enough to fit in our pockets. I could go on and on: in every way, we enjoy technology that would astonish our ancestors. And yet a lot of us suffer lives of scarcity. In a world where technology is rapidly replacing jobs, we cling to a philosophy that every person is supposed to labor all their life. Restaurants throw away more food than they serve, and yet people go hungry. The scarcity we suffer is artificial: we could end it with willpower alone, if we were willing to change how we think about wealth and entitlement.
Our relationships are increasingly virtual
Facebook pretty much redefined the word “friend”. Many dystopic authors have written about citizens becoming “numbers”, but they missed a crucial point. It’s not the government which numbered us; we did it to ourselves. There’s nothing inherently wrong with social networks and caller ID and forums and WoW guilds. But care must be taken that these do not take the place of real, face-to-face friendships.
Privacy? What’s that?
Again, the sci-fi authors got it wrong: it wasn’t the government who installed cameras in every house; we did it ourselves. To different extents, we’ve all become exhibitionists. Our websurfing is monitored by Google, our spending habits are monitored by Visa: compared to these, the security theater at the airport is relatively mild. We’ve all heard the cliche that you and I eat better food today than King Henry the 5th in his time: but besides that, we have more courtiers as well.
Inherent cynicism
It’s not that people don’t trust the government: it’s that people can barely even imagine a world where they trust the government. We’re so jaded that we expect big corporations to be evil. During the Bush years, activists spoke of “outrage burnout”. They gave a name to a condition we’ve all suffered since the Industrial Revolution.
Victimhood Incorporated
In today’s society, everyone’s a victim. Taking self-responsibility for one’s own life is proscribed: there’s always someone you can lay the blame on. You’ll find whole organizations to advocate for you. Don’t be mistaken, they have no intention of actually helping you: if they could somehow make things right, they’d be out of a job.
Political Correctness
Have you read the latest edition of the Newspeak Dictionary? If you’re confused whether an infraction falls under the political correctness umbrella, give it the PC Test: If someone insists on their innocence, does that count as evidence of their guilt? Only racists say “I’m not racist” and only sexists say “I’m not sexist”: it’s the PC Test in action.
Arbitrariness of Wealth and Value
The money we use fails to accurately measure the value of goods. Prices are arbitrarily determined by monopolies and price-fixing. You can send unlimited information to the other side of the planet for virtually free, using email, but it can cost as much as a quarter to send a text message, using cellphone, to your next door neighbor. We debate with ourselves for hours before buying a useful piece of software for $30, but pay $60 for a single dinner without even blinking. We chastise the poor for being lazy but ignore the ridiculous advantages into which the wealthy were born. A fund manager is not worth the same as ten thousand schoolteachers, but you’d think so if you looked at paychecks alone. The point isn’t to complain about these things– the point is just to illustrate how arbitrary wealth and value have become. Peoples’ entire lives are devoted to numbers which are ultimately meaningless– and that is dystopia.
We live in a dystopia… Now what?
Dystopic settings make a great backdrop for novels and video games. Once you realize how dystopic real life is, real life becomes a pretty awesome novel/video game. Like playing a video game, you know that whatever happens in the game, you’re “safe in real life”: you might have your house foreclosed, you might be fired from your job, but it’s pretty hard to actually starve in our society, and that’s because a dystopia is a utopia which took a wrong turn.
FURTHER READING
Ten Future Predictions
Arbitrary Leadership
SEO: The New Superstition
100 Things That Make Me Happy