Up
03.07.2017

How Nightmares Come True

We are starting an anthology of dystopias – alarming literary and screen forecasts that are coming true right before our eyes.

                                                                                               Utopia – a place that does not exist

                                                                                     Dystopia – a bad place that does not exist

Welcome to Hell

To try to look into the future is human. To do it, for someone it is enough to read newspaper horoscopes while others build rather orderly hypothetical models of how human life can be organized. Optimists produce sweet fairy-tales – like Thomas Moore with his Utopia Island or Tommaso Campanella with his City of the Sun. Realists and Pessimists make up temperate scaries or extreme thrillers named dystopias by literary criticism. Basically, they are a warning to contemporaries and descendants about phenomena and processes they should apprehend so as not to feel heart-wrenched later.

Well-educated people know the majority of popular dystopias very well starting with the proverbial “We” , “1984”, “Brave New World”, “Fahrenheit 451”, various works by Vonnegut and the Strugatsky brothers, “The Bull’s Hour” by Yefremov and even pseudo-children’s “Dunno on the Moon”. On the other hand, film buffs and those who simply forgot how to read or originally were not able to read with pleasure have already consumed numerous films (blockbusters – “The Terminator”, “The Matrix” etc.) and series of the genre (contemporary – “Black Mirror”, “Westworld” adapted from a film of the same name)  that were not based on literary works.

It is commonly known that the general logic of dystopias is to create the integral picture of public life that, in authors’ opinion, is destructive for the mankind. Its trigger is a certain radical change in the technological basis of the humanity or its social norms. Because the trigger is pulled the humanity turns off its fundamental way and starts experimenting in a destructive way or simply acting “perpendicular to” ideals of humanism.

Alas, not only computers wear out, so does literature. A part of the most famous dystopias is considered to be anachronism today, a part is thought to be just interesting reflectionism on the possible way of the humankind’s development whose crossroads with the real course of history has already been passed. Thus, parodies on socialism and capitalism that were popular in the 20th century have lost their biting satirical taste. The ideas of technological innovations that were overlooked by the scientific thought because more revolutionary technological solutions were immediately offered seem merely antique. However, some visionary authors long ago made forecasts that are coming true right before our eyes. And they strongly emphasized what events such a choice is fraught with.

An Arsenal of Triggers

Putting it simply, the humanity can be described as a social and technical system – there are people and there is their creation – machinery and equipment (from the simplest mattocks to artificial intellect). And the authors of dystopias operate them in various combinations. As a rule, either a scientific discovery changes the society in a dangerous way or a merciless authoritarian / totalitarian power stimulates the emergence of innovations strengthening the regime or everything happens simultaneously, almost like in the reality.

Then all sorts of scenarios of the major human horrors coming true are enacted. Like, for example:

-         famine in the full sense of the word or poor quality synthesized foodstuffs resulting from the power’s manipulations or an ecological catastrophe (in one of American novels the main hero is sentenced to death by hanging because he stole the last real steak in the world for his perfidious girlfriend’s father);

-         forced death by the Government and on sufferance of other generations (the Kzhi and the models in “The Bull’s Hour”, all the novels about compulsory euthanasia of the elderly in order to save natural resources and public funds);

-         loneliness – a forced rupture of social ties by the Government; a ban against love; cutting off emotions (“Brave New World”);

-         limiting access to information, manipulating people’s minds, rewriting history post factum (“Fahrenheit 451”, “1984”);

-         using weapons of mass destruction (“Planet of the Apes” – the result of using nuclear weapons, “Lord of the Flies” – threat of using nuclear weapons, all the variations of zombie apocalypse  because of pandemics caused by deadly viruses of different origins);

-         depletion of natural resources of the Earth because of the human’s activity, an ecological catastrophe, a war of the nature against the humankind – volcanoes, “revolts” of the flora and the fauna;

-         dehumanized eugenics, genetic experiments – a birth of primordially more competitive descendants to rich people and nations; a focused creation of fighting mutants or limitation on embryos’ potential by DNA manipulations;

-         unrestrained trafficking of human organs, legal cloning of the human;

-         artificial intelligence getting out of control (a lot by Asimov);

-         the war as such regardless of the reason;

-         etc.

In dystopia, everything mentioned above is mostly a consequence of either someone’s (terrestrial of extraterrestrial, individual or collective mind) total control over the humanity or the anarchy (again with centers of totalitarianism) resulting from a social, anthropogenic or ecological catastrophe. It is just like this as even under the anarchic scenario freedom is limited by threats of more replete and better armed aggressive intelligence brethren.  And weapons, advanced artificial intelligence, break-through information technologies (like social networks), genetic engineering products, ecologically unsafe economic programs most often appear on the Government’s order.

Basically, the key feature of a dystopia is a forced limitation of human freedom that draws opposition from the most talented individuals whose behavior in the inhuman society becomes deviant. Of course, in many mellow utopias people are only relatively free but it is part of the social convention so everyone is happy. While in dystopian worlds the remaining best part of the society starts fighting against the system. Or they choose their own way so as to go beyond the radius of its social norms.

The World We Live In

What has already come true of the facts we have been scared by dystopianists for so many years?

Quite a few things but fortunately not everything yet.

Synthesized food of debatable value and safety? Go to any shop – you will find it there. And organic quality of “organic foods” is not always ultimate either.

Forced euthanasia? So far the civilized world has not gone beyond voluntary euthanasia. Though cries of local ignoramuses that elderly people must be deprived of their right to vote as well as peculiarities of the Ukrainian pension scheme are a serious warning.

Loneliness has become especially evident after social networks and smartphones appeared. What is not used is atrophied. The absence of necessity to communicate face-to-face leads to inability to do it and, in the end, to a voluntary and unavoidable isolation. According to the existing data, 70% unmarried Japanese people are not enjoying romantic relations: the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research established the fact during the 15th research into the major tendencies of fertility. Dr. Kunio Kitamura, Managing Director of the Japan Family Planning Association, thinks that the reason is lower communication skills between young males and females, lack of money to spend on relationships, and the digital age. “In order to maintain and enhance acquaintanceship and communication one needs to make great efforts. Modern young people are scared of suffering a setback and I feel that more and more young people refuse from relations with the opposite sex scared of being rejected by the other person… Because of income discrepancy there arises stratification into those who can afford relationships and those who cannot,” he pointed out.

Limiting access to information and other censorship-like pretentiousness? To your heart’s content. From self-censorship of a frightened journalist to censorship of the government, from banning a topic to banning a language. The word of the year 2016 according to the Oxford Dictionary is post-truth – the age when objective facts have lost their importance and the vast majority of people are unable to tell fiction from real events. Ignorance has become a standard, polemics turned into populist squeals, critical thinking is a rarity, common sense is considered to be a deviation from the social norm. Just like Orwell wrote, “The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable?” (“1984”).

Using weapons of mass destruction? The threat level is increasing. Not only because the potential member countries of the nuclear club are underdeveloped and aggressive but as a result of a swift technological progress and breaking taboos by those in power. Weather warfare? Warfare against carriers of certain genes? With modern technologies, quite a few things can be put into practice out of the theoretically possible range.

Depletion of natural resources? A rhetorical question.

Eugenics aiming at breeding new super-people? China is allegedly engaged in it.

Cloning of the human? Conspiracy theorists think that it has been successfully practiced for quite a while.

Artificial intelligence? Bot journalists, bot assistant professors, bots winning intellectual games against people. The European Parliament is deciding if they should be considered “electronic identities” and is pondering over the ways to defend people if their smarter creations will get out of control. Everything is just starting.

War? The countries that are not fighting against a certain enemy are fighting against terrorism. And the amount of “nonhot” spots is decreasing rapidly.

So our world looks like a mellow utopia not that much. On the contrary, it looks like dystopia fairly well. It becomes clear if we analyze several burning tendencies.

Unconditional Income and “The Morning After” by Robert Sheckley

That very European Parliament is debating on the issue of unemployment growth as a result of mass introduction of robots. Parliamentarians are offering as a possible way out to introduce the basic unconditional income that will be received by the EU citizens merely because they have citizenship. The Swiss have already voted against this novation at a referendum (each of them was offered to receive $ 2.5 thousand) because it would lead to the “loss of initiative and responsibility” of the population.

The filigree dystopia “The Morning After” by Robert Sheckley (1957) proves that the citizens of the mountainous country were right.

In the world described here, “Many years back, the Central Eugenics Committee of the United World Government had stabilized the world population at a sensible figure. Not in a thousand years had there been so few people on Earth, and never had they been so well cared for. Undersea ecology, hydroponics, and full utilization of the surface lands made food and clothing abundantly available – overavailable, in fact. Lodgings for a small, stable population was no problem, with automatic building methods and a surplus of materials. Even luxury goods were no luxury. It was a safe, stable, static culture. Those few who researched, produced, and kept the machines running received generous compensation. But most people didn’t bother working. There was no need and no incentive.

There were some ambitious men, of course, driven to acquire wealth, position, power. They went into politics. They solicited votes by feeding, clothing, and entertaining the populace of their districts, out of abundant public funds. And they cursed the fickle voters for switching to more impressive promise-makers.

It was a utopia of sorts. Poverty was forgotten, wars were long gone, and everyone had the guarantee of a long, easy life. It must have been sheer human ingratitude that made the suicide rate so shockingly high.”

Yet in reality the utopia smells like dystopia. The main character Piersen lives his life in free-of-charge restaurants, entertainment and distribution of goods financed by the ambitious politicians from public funds. This is what he says about his friend, “Benz was too lazy even to vote. And that was too much. Voting was the obligation and livelihood of every citizen.” In the end, this kind of existence brought our hero to a drug parlor that turned out to be a place of departure to the wild world of the colonized planet of Venus whose discovery he had not even heard of. Where Piercen survived by a miracle having acquired both initiative and responsibility and critical thinking, “While he was dying, thoughts stirred in his mind, old dreams and fears and hopes. He remembered the one job he had held and his mingled pleasure and regret at leaving it. He thought of his obtuse, hard-working parents, unwilling to accept the rewards of civilization without, as they put it, earning them. He thought harder than ever before in his life.” And where he was explained what that very unconditional income and other good intentions of the authorities had lead to, “The problems of human existence have been solved – but solved, I fear, to the detriment of the race. Earth stagnates. The birth rate continues to fall, the suicide rate goes up. New frontiers are opening in space, but hardly anyone is interested in going to them. Still, the frontiers must be manned, if the race is to survive.”

Transparent World and “The Eve of Rumoko” by Zelazny

Transparency that has long been a kind of fetish for corporations, banks, public and political organizations is swiftly stealing up to common people encroaching on their privacy. Struggling with underground economy, online declarations in the Ukrainian realities, limiting cash payments, manipulating personal databases that are left unattended. All of this reminds us of the world that was described by Roger Zelazny in his “Eve of Rumoko” (1969) long before the Internet appeared and the digital age started.

The main hero who narrates the story once found out that “the whole world was going to exist on tape”, all data about everybody got into the Central Data Bank. At first he was enthusiastic and created a computer program to simplify the process for a closed applied scientific project. And then he got scared when he understood the limitation and the relative fairness of the model as well as assessed its consequences.

“I had thought that it was going to be a very good thing indeed. I had thought that in the wonderful, electrified time in which we lived, a thing like this was necessary: any book ever written, or any play ever recorded on tape, or any college lecture in the past couple of decades. You can’t lie with statistics if everybody has access to your source, and can question it directly; every commercial and government outfit with access to your assets, your income, and a list of every expenditure you’ve ever made; every attorney with a court order with access to a list of every place you’ve ever resided, and with whom, and every commercial vehicle on which you’ve ever traveled. Your whole life, all your actions, laid out like a chart of the nervous system in a neurology class, this impressed me as good… I foresaw the coming of a Golden Era.

Crap! A friend of mine having peripheral connections with the Mafia, laughed

at me, all starry in my eyes and just up from the university and into the federal

service.

– Do you seriously believe that every asset will be registered? Every transaction

recorded?”  he’d asked me.

– Eventually.

– They haven’t pierced Switzerland yet; and if they do, other places will be found.

– There will be a certain allowance for residuals.

– Then don’t forget mattresses, and holes in the backyard. Nobody knows how much money there really is in the world, and no one ever will.

Our hero told the head of the project about his worries, “I told the gray-haired, sallow-faced, spaniel-eyed old man that I felt we might be creating a monster and committing the ultimate invasion of human privacy.” To his surprise the former shared his anxiety. Then the hero deleted all the data about himself in the Central Data Bank and became “the man in the world who does not exist”. The price of his personal freedom was the necessity to create a fake identity, to refuse from legal ways of earning money and to choose a job connected with a risk to his life in a private detective agency.

Dystopia and “A Brief History of the Future” by Attali

There exists futurology which you read like dystopia. But up to the moment you understand what a well-informed person has written the work. “A Brief History of the Future” by Jacques Attali (a member of the Bilderberg Club and the first president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) is the case.

According to Attali, the world will undergo several unpleasant transformations during the nearest 50 years. First, the American hegemony will give place to a hyperempire. Under this social order, “self-control will become the purest form of freedom limited by the horror of non-conforming to the norms. Transparency of information will become compulsory: people concealing their background, social status, health condition, or education level will a priori give rise to suspicions (remember “The Eve of Rumoko” – O.D.). States will be weakened by corporations and megalopolises.  Contracts will substitute for laws, arbitration for justice systems, mercenaries for the police. Resources will deplete, more robots will appear. Time will be fully subordinated to market objectives. Everyone will go into autotherapy, will make artificial limbs for themselves and in the end clone themselves. A person will turn into an artifact consuming artifacts, into a cannibal devouring their own kind.”

Under the hyperempire, the war of all against all will break out, “Governments, pirates, mercenaries, criminals, religious movements will raise armies, invent new means of surveillance, deterrent and attack using the latest innovations in electronics, genetics and nanotechnologies. Everybody will be a rival. People will start fighting for petroleum, for water, for the right to occupy or to leave a territory, to impose their beliefs or laws, to override others. A military dictatorship will reign the world. A most severe hyperconflict might put an end to the world. ”

And only in the second half of the 21st century at the earliest Jacques Attali forecasts – though he is not absolutely sure – the victory of “altruistic and universalizing forces” that will strike a balance between the market and democracy. He says that their actions will be aimed at creating new forms of collective living, imposing limits on exploitation and squandering of natural resources, establishing the “relational” economy that will eliminate the market one. “I do hope that the threat of hyperviolence will make the humankind change its outlook on life and relations drastically,” Attali believes.

Both the utopia and the dystopia are “the place that does not exist”. Simply the former is traditionally thought to be good (though what can be good for a rebel by trade) and the latter to be bad.

We can see dystopianists’ forecasts come true today and we understand that there are many more ideas whose authors were in advance of both their and our times. The ideas that can come true as horrors unseen hitherto…

Yet the more talented dystopias-cum-warnings and works by talented futurologists appear the less likely is the possibility of the bad future. Of course, if these works are read by the “right” public and nonpublic people – those who have expertise, authority, informal power and, what is more, those who are able to understand both the text, and the subtext, and the context.

And those who are capable of loving this world and remembering what humanness is. Because even the hero from “The Eve of Rumoko” had another way out of his situation. “But she would not give up her bubble and I would not give up my dream. I wanted the big, above-the-waves world, all of it. Though I realize now that I probably should have taken her on her own terms. But I’m too damned independent. If either of us had been normal…”

pl.com.ua/kak-sbyvayutsya-strashnye-sny/

 


Tags: