It’s normal because we kinda live it…
No. Because if you look at numbers, compared with various benchmarks in the past, many things have gotten better or worse.
Maybe they would have been scared of the society in the past.
Depending on where you stand in a socio economic racial stance, yes they would have a right to be afraid of the society at almost any time before now and even now. Amazingly a lot of people in this situation would not go compare things generally like this but explicitly tell you where things are problematic. Everything from micro aggression to abuse of power in great detail.
And then you have the people who may have always been privileged but occasionally something bad happens to them. So they will incur a lasting trauma to something happening to them and decide nothing good ever happens to them and would discount anything good.
And then you have the do good doomer gloomer. They will surf the internet for material to strengthen their resolution and decide every video where there’s questionable material hasn’t been staged and is the absolute truth. They’ve decided the world is ending. They claim what they are doing is for the better. ‘Open your eyes sheeple’ . But they do absolutely nothing but post general bait like the OP did just to get a reaction.
But then you have the 15yr old gamers who have all the technology and privilege at their hands and have no gauge to measure suffering. So they decide the moment someone merely doesn’t clap for something they just posted and compare it to being oppressed/holocaust/dystopian nightmare. And of course you can’t possibly know the exact detail they are talking about they would never give it up. You can’t possibly understand their ‘suffering’.
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.
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.
Bullshit.
Please, for the love of God step outside and connect with your community.
I definitely do.
All the time
What’s the alternatives? Depression & Suicide? Rise up in revolution out of general malaise? Or just post memes and hope something happens to change the status quo? Covid showed us that another world was at least possible, but it also brought on a lot of the ridiculous greed we’re seeing now too.
GO FUCK OFF
Bro you need to touch grass like a lot haha
I think this vision usually comes to be when people aren’t aware of how much worse other people have it, or how much worse was in the past.
Sure nowdays there are a lot of terrible things happening, but we have the best tools ever to fix them.
The world needs a bit more of optimism, the only way we can start fixing our problems is acting like we can.
How do you know how bad many of the people have it here? Also, in general, I reject the premise of your comment.
Just because people may be suffering more elsewhere, doesn’t mean we don’t have a right to be frustrated by our current systems. This is especially true in a society that allows absurdities like billionaires to exist.
It is Nice not having to worry the black lung.
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.
UhOh did mum forget to buy Doritos when she went to the shop and you’re comparing your life to the holocaust …again?
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 :)
That whole article you linked is about convincing you to be optimistic.
Yes, the world is awful. But it is so much better than it ever was before, and we have proven that we have the means to make it so much better still.
Even if all we did was get everyone up to the standard of living where they experience first-world problems, that still means making the world so much better than it was. And we can make the world even better than that. Even if you’re pessimistic, you should still be optimistic.
I totally agree with your assessment. I think it’s just that maybe something inherent in me is hopeless/pessimistic that I can’t bring myself to see/have this positive outlook, also in my personal life. Maybe it’s just a phase or something
Well, I don’t know your life, but I do know that even if you feel that way, it can still get better. Even if you’re pessimistic about their chances for success, there are resources and people available to help. I have hope for you, even if you don’t.
Thanks for the kind words! I am actually trying to get somewhat rid of these patternes of thought. It’s a long journey, though
You’ve got this.
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!
Ppl in the comments proving OP right
Most of yall are to cought up in your own delusional world of bliss to acknowledge what’s actually going on
Most humans have always valued comfort over truth.
do we tough?
maybe get off the internet and enjoy your life a bit.
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.
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.
I’ve read history. I know what actual dystopian nightmares look like. We’re not in one.
Someone in Gaza would disagree right now.
Yeah, and Jews in WWII would disagree with you.
It’s always easy to find a very specific group of people that are having a horrible time, that doesn’t mean that on average, humans live better and safer than in the entire history of humanity. Sure, the last 10 years saw a bit of a down turn, but thing are still way better than, say, 40 years ago.
I guess it’s hard to remember how really hard life could be
Sure, the last 10 years saw a bit of a down turn, but thing are still way better than, say, 40 years ago.
What’s funny is if you don’t include the improvements in China which skew the average then the rest of the world has gotten noticeably worse than it was forty years ago.
Idk man it’s really not a competition. AI powered automated genocide and industrialized genocide are both horrible in their own way and to me absolutely dystopian nightmares. Same way how China uses AI to track every aspect of their citizens lives + also genocide.
The Uyghurs are absolutely living in a dystopian nightmare. China uses technology to track their citizens. You can’t blame it on AI, although AI has improved their technology. Their tracking predates AI. Also our current “AI” is just self-improving algorithms, not true AI.
That’s just authoritarian abuse. That’s the same kind of horror humans have been facing throughout history.
To me, a “nightmare” is artificial life extension for the purpose of torturing people, and non-invasive mind control and neural reprogramming from a distance.
Don’t get me wrong we’re going there. We’re not going to be able to turn back from that course. The nightmare stage is when the ability to off oneself is gone, because the machines or other people own your body at a cellular level, and it can detect and paralyze you when you’re acting against their interests.
On average, I think humanity’s experience will rise. For the majority things will get better.
But for some unlucky ones (and unfortunately, because it will soon be as easy for a kid to do as pulling the wings off a fly, eventually there will be countless trillions of those people), all the usual stops and limits to suffering will ne raised only to usher in a continual flow of pain beyond anything they can imagine, for orders of magnitude beyond their normal lifespan.
But even if that only happens to one person, that is an indescribable nightmare.
My sincere hope is that in the long run, during the war for control of the galaxy, the resources necessary to maintain these eternal torture cloud instances will be reallocated to the war effort.
That’s the only eventual escape I see for those people, now that I know the depth of sadism that exists in the world.
I think we’re headed for a nightmare, but we’re not there yet.
Their situation could easily be the setting of a dystopian novel written 30 years ago. Your nightmare future is essentially the Matrix.
By the way, people have been kept alive and prevented from killing themselves to allow further torture for a long time. It’s why there’s doctors at Guantanamo Bay. And suicide watch in prison.
Can you explain why 40 years ago was worse, as a whole?
I look at the 80’s and I see affordable housing, the fall of the Berlin wall, the birth of the internet, and a ton of economic upturn for the US (including way higher wages if you adjust for inflation.)
This decade is popularly referred to as the “decade of decadence.”
The fall of the Berlin Wall was the end of the 1980s. It was such an amazing and joyous event specifically because of the level of mastery generated by the previous arrangement of Berlin being split in half and people in East Berlin needing a wall and razor and armed guards to block them from moving out of the area.
40 years ago people were literally living in 1984
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.
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
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.
Even a poor person in any EU country lives much better than any king a mere 200 years ago. Healthcare, painkillers, food safety, clean water, indoor plumbing, freedom of religion and expression, and in the palm of your hand all the knowledge, pr0n and memes you heart desires. Probably a few items less on that list in freedom land, but still not that bad.
They eat cleaner food and have more amenities than a King, but they certainly don’t live better. The point of the article is that the rising tide is floating a few boats wayyyy higher than the rest, and the overall growth does not justify the fact that people still die of hunger, get evicted while working multiple jobs, fall ill and are saddled by medical dept for life (US only), and shit like that.
I don’t think anyone dies of hunger in the developed world, even the US. No evictions in many EU countries either, even if you don’t have a job at all you get unemployment that is high enough for a reasonable apartment.
I can only speak about the US, but sadly, the unhoused die of hunger, preventable disease, and exposure all the time here. And unemployment does not cover a 1 bedroom apartment in major cities, nor does it qualify you for the outrageous requirements of most leases. You may be right about the status of the poor in the EU though.
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!
“Things can always get worse” is a pretty shit justification to say things aren’t bad now.
No-one is saying that all is fine. Yes, there are loads of big issues right now, but we’re still living better and safer than 99% of all the humans that have ever lived. We are not living Ina dystopian world.
- “We are not living in a dystopian nightmare”
- ”The fact that things can always get worse justifies a lack of effort to make things better”
- ”All is fine”
These are three different statements. Not the same thinfs.
Can we fucking stop with the sloppy quoting? Nobody in this thread is responding to what anybody else is actually saying.
I literally didn’t quote anyone
Things are NOT bad now.
