This Venn Diagram is doing the rounds, speaking to History and Dystopian Literature in 2024 or for our times:
The sign is an indicator to popular unintelligence in the general population, and of the general population. Although the Dystopia rides on many ideas poorly understood. The signal becomes interpreted in knee-jerk reaction.
Lets see what the dystopian fiction is communicating as ideas of the present (no future). I will use Wikipedia as “neutral” reference:
POLITICAL FICTION
Brave New World (1932): “Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by the story’s protagonist.”
Animal Farm (1945): “story of a group of anthropomorphic farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, the rebellion is betrayed and, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon, the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before.”
1984 (1949): “Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society.”
Fahrenheit 451 (1953): “a future American society where books have been outlawed and ‘firemen’ burn any that are found.”
Lord of the Flies (1954): “The plot concerns a group of British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves. The novel’s themes include morality, leadership, and the tension between civility and chaos.”
Soylent Green (1973): “By 2022, the cumulative effects of overpopulation, global warming, and pollution have caused ecocide, leading to severe worldwide shortages of food, water, and housing, bringing human civilization to the brink of collapse.”
Idiocracy (2006): ” The plot follows United States Army librarian Joe Bauers and prostitute Rita, who undergo a government hibernation experiment. Joe and Rita awake five hundred years later in a dystopian anti-intellectual society.”
Mad Max (1979-2015, and continuing): “The series follows Max, initially a police officer in a future Australia which is experiencing societal collapse due to war, critical resource shortages, and ecocide. When his wife and child are murdered by a vicious biker gang, Max kills the gang in revenge and becomes a drifting loner in the Australian Wasteland. As Australia devolves further into barbarity, Max finds himself increasingly more isolated yet still willing to help pockets of civilisation, initially for his own self-interest, though his motives always drift into more altruistic ones.”
The Hunger Games (2008-2020): “a dystopia set in Panem, a North American country consisting of the wealthy Capitol and 13 districts in varying states of poverty. Every year, children from the first 12 districts are selected via lottery to participate in a compulsory televised battle royale death match called The Hunger Games.”
SCIENCE FICTION
They Live (1988): “special sunglasses that the ruling class are aliens concealing their appearance and manipulating people to consume, breed, and conform to the status quo via subliminal messages in mass media.”
The Matrix (1999): “depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside the Matrix, a simulated reality that intelligent machines have created to distract humans while using their bodies as an energy source.”
SURREAL
Brazil (1985): “Brazil’s satire of technocracy, bureaucracy, hyper-surveillance, corporate statism, and state capitalism is reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, and it has been called Kafkaesque as well as absurdist.”
CONCLUDING INTELLIGENT THOUGHTS
For “the idiots out there” in the knee-jerk reaction, it has to be explained that is is not simply “science fiction.” The problem is not the literature. It is the idiot’s reading. Here what has to be taught in The Idiot’s Guide to Reading Dystopia: a few concluding facts, which “I” as the intellectual, can see into the reading, “And, yes, idiot, it is there, as literary ‘reality!’.”
- Messaging is different between the genres of political fiction, science fiction, and the surreal. Political fiction can use allegorical fiction or fairy tales. This adds the element of fantasy which politicians use when they cannot get around the facts and so attempt to legitimate their thinking in other-worldliness without understanding other-worldliness. Science fiction is actually better as a critique of science thinking when it becomes obsessive. The surreal brings in the “useful” element of the arts into the thinking.
- Even as the authors had their own political direction, any dystopia can be read to falsely attempt to legitimate a hidden dystopia motivation.
- Science fiction is not apologetics for scientism nor for a weapon against science thinking.
- The Surreal was never meant to be ‘reality’. It is art thinking and has its place in cognition along with all other types of clear and accurate thinking.
Neville Buch
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