11 KiB
[D] Against Dystopias, Pt 1: "This is an interesting thought experiment, and one could go on in detail about the implications for free will and personal identity... so instead of touching on any of that, Burgess just makes the technology destroy music and joy and personality so we know it's evil."
-
Author: u/erwgv3g34 *
-
Score: 33
-
Created: 2014-08-17T16:37:50
Post:
Comments:
u/AmeteurOpinions [+11] Finally, everyone was working together. (53 minutes later)
Good luck getting any decent discussion with four different articles on the topic vying for attention.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+12] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (an hour later)
Well it's the first one I see with comments.
Postulate: Part of the problem with a fictional dystopian approach to technology is that most people blindly pattern match, what should be a cautionary tale, on the level of "don't touch the burner until it's cooled" becomes don't ever touch the burner thing on the stove it's too dangerous.
u/erwgv3g34 [+5] (a day later)
Congratulations! By commenting in this thread, you have leveraged the power of Schelling points to ensure that all relevant discussion happens here.
u/None [+10] (22 hours later)
I apologize for kicking this off. My original perspective that made me post the article was a little sideways to Scott's: most dystopian literature doesn't actually address current-day social problems, which is its supposed purpose.
So instead of rehashes of Jennifer Government or Snow Crash these days, we get a lot of rehashes of themes about fascism (The Hunger Games), mostly. Snowpiercer and Elysium are about as close as our current crop of dystopian books and films ever actually come to directly addressing present-day issues.
And if dystopias aren't for critiquing society or providing a cogent warning, then what makes them "more literary" and more worth publishing or writing than any other part of genre fiction? Why don't we consider, say, Brave New World to be about the same mindless lulz as Twilight?
I bring up Brave New World especially because the same author eventually wrote a spiritual successor, Island, in which the exact same "technologies" are used on the side of Good (well, a kind of Good, if you like Buddhist ideas) -- but nobody ever reads that one.
u/None [+2] (4 hours later)
I think these articles are talking past each other. See this comment from the discussion on /r/Futurology.
u/None [+6] (22 hours later)
Also this: a lot of so-called dystopias actually represent extremely myopic fears.
Or in other words, a whole lot of dystopias seem to be written by USAsian libertarians; meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, the new, hip way to suffer horrifically is to have your central government break down and become unable to protect you from roving bands of thugs.
u/buckykat [+9] (15 hours later)
the me am play gods plot.
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (23 hours later)
It irks me that people keep defining and redefining their terms without any actual agreement. Dystopias are a failure state for society. You can have a science fictional dystopia that's not caused by the science fictional elements. In fact, you can have a dystopia where the science fictional elements are what break you out of the dystopia (Cory Doctrow does this a lot).
The big problem, to the extent there is one, is that dystopian fiction very rarely examines why there's a dystopia. You don't end up in a dystopia because someone invented a way to patent genomes, you end up there because someone decided to actually implement this plan. Far too often, dystopian novels are all about this terrible society that doesn't even get a proper defense - it's a society that's run by Card-Carrying Villains. I'd argue that a lot of authors don't put that much thought into their worldbuilding (I'm looking at you, Hunger Games), which only exacerbates the problem.
tl;dr: Half the time, shit sucks and they have nifty technology, which is different from shit sucking because they have nifty technology. Dystopia means too many things to too many people for us to have a discussion using that word.
u/None [+3] (a day later)
it's a society that's run by Card-Carrying Villains.
This dates back to 1984, which was an explicit Author Tract against Stalinism. Now, admittedly, Stalin really was that evil (as in, Godwin's Law doesn't apply to discussing Stalin), but the whole difference between 1984 and real life is that in real life, Dystopia is Hard -- Stalinism flopped down dead the instant Stalin himself died. Even North Korea, the world's longest-lasting totalitarian hell-state, is actually on the verge of collapse quite regularly and barely keeps itself afloat at all, despite massive amounts of aid from various freer countries.
I'd argue that a lot of authors don't put that much thought into their worldbuilding (I'm looking at you, Hunger Games), which only exacerbates the problem.
And which makes such stories, IMHO, extremely uninteresting.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (a day later)
How about we come to a consensus on what the word means and try to discus from there?
I like your failure state for society definition, but might go one further and say that it is usually: a society that exemplifies a popular fallacy taken to [ill]logical extremes and represents a form of the reductio ad absurdum argument family.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
Well, part of the definitions problem is that in pinning down our definition we're framing the whole conversation that follows. That's why LessWrong tends to taboo words instead of making a new definition for them. So with that said, let me try to start a discussion without using that words at all.
Hunger Games is one of the biggest new franchises, and at the forefront of this new trend in young adult fiction. But it doesn't really have all that much to do with science fiction, since the futuristic setting is the backdrop of the novel rather than a motivating factor behind the characters. The first novel is a critique of our media culture, which I'd argue that the second and third are critiques of revolutionary politics and hero worship. Science and technology are not being critiqued. The "bad guys" aren't bad because they have the technology, they have the technology because they're in a position of power. Hunger Games is not a cautionary tale about science, it's a cautionary tale about celebrity. I'd say we could do with more of that, rather than less.
Divergent is another one of the big new franchises, and it's not about science or technology either - it's about conformity, and the lesson seems to be about how great it is to be an individual. The world doesn't even really seem to be all that bad before the plot gets going. (As a caveat, I've only read the first book because the writing wasn't that strong, so maybe this changes in the next two books.) Again, not terribly optimistic about the future, but it's not bashing on progress.
Is what people have a problem with perceived pessimism about the future? Or is it a perception that these works of fiction are saying that progress leads in bad directions? I almost feel like some people are seeing cautionary tales as predictions about the future.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (a day later)
Agreed on divergent. I went to see the movie for relationship credit and almost had a meltdown about a subsistence culture when they had neural induction circuitry and hand held gauss-pistols, which if effectively used would give humanity colonies through-out the solar system. I haven't decided if I'll go back to the series because Divergence series spoiler?
Edit: correcting for the potential inaccuracy of a spoiler others have told me.
u/leplen [+3] (21 hours later)
First off, this was fun to read.
I feel like this critique can be leveled at a lot of literature and is right along the lines of Generalizing from Fictional Evidence.
Every story simplifies the world. Every author plays games with your attention. A Clockwork Orange doesn't present its audience with the horrifying counter-factual of life in prison. An even worse selection bias is that the hero usually wins, no matter how many risks he or she takes in order to maintain his or her principles.
Stories lie. Stories lie so the author can grind some ideological axe. Stories lie because author's are lazy, because fiction follows different rules from real life. Dystopias give the hero something large and grand to struggle against. The Dystopia has to take away classical music or personal names for the same reason that Orcs are ugly. It's a shortcut to tell you who the bad guys and the good guys are, so you turn off your moral questioning of whether the hero's actions are morally justified and you know who to cheer for in the Us vs. Them morality play. The citizens of the dystopia are convenient faceless goons.
And that's just how stories are. We like those stories. We like the certainty, the clear moral lessons. We like it when someone takes the big confusing world we live in and simplifies it down so that it's really easy to understand. And it's lazy writing and lazy reading, but laziness feels really good. People don't read Gravity's Rainbow because it doesn't simplify things enough, because it doesn't tell you what character you're supposed to cheer for and you're not sure when it's all over what lesson you were supposed to learn. It's too much like life, too complicated.
u/Articanine [+1] Imperium of Man (4 hours later)
What's with all this talk about dystopian fic?
u/Zephyr1011 [+3] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (5 hours later)
Presumably, someone posted an article about it, that led to people finding more articles on the topic and posting those
u/Empiricist_or_not [+3] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (7 hours later)
BTW been meaning to tell you: nice flair.
u/None [+1] (22 hours later)
I'm watching the both of you.