Which Dystopia?

Let's cavil no longer, and admit what is clearly the case.  We live in a dystopia, a bad, harsh place according to the ancient Greek on which the word is based; a society in which its inhabitants live wretched, dehumanized and fearful lives according to Merriam-Webster Online.  Thomas More used the word "utopia" in his novel of the same name, a word meaning "no place."  His utopia was a nearly perfect society, but of course did not exist, being nowhere.  There can therefore be no utopian society, but certainly can be a dystopian one, as we have proved or may be in the course of proving.

Various authors have imagined dystopias, some famously.  But if we live in one now, which of the fictional dystopias is it most like?  Such things may concern some few of us who are citizens of this one in particular.

Some fictional dystopias commonly result from some kind of cataclysmic or apocalyptic event, such as nuclear war or natural disaster.  I find it hard to isolate the cause of our own dystopia.  There's probably no one cause.  In any case, lacking such an event I think we can't compare our dystopia to those depicted in such novels as The Road by Cormac McCarthy or The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard.

As a citizen of God's Favorite County, the U.S.A., I can imagine with relative ease a dystopia created by the machinations of a particular religious sect as in the case of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. The Abrahamic religions are inherently intolerant and exclusive, and the version of Christianity most popular here has always been particularly restrictive, though its adherents are notably flexible in their interpretation of the appropriate path whenever it suits them, which is to say for the most part whenever it limits their self-interest, selfishness and bigotry.

I doubt our dystopia can be called religious, however, as there is so much more contributing to the woeful condition of our society.  Economic inequality, for example.  I don't know that plutocracies have ever been considered dystopias, however.  Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged has been called a dystopian novel, but the plutocracy it idealizes, which separates itself from the rest of the world, is characterized as a utopia, made up of insanely wealthy geniuses some of whom seem to be aficionados of rough sex, like Ms. Rand herself.   It's unclear whether she considered a fondness for rape roleplay to be common among her super-men and women, if not a necessary condition of their exalted nature, but it figured prominently in her fiction.

The prevalence of violence in our dystopia, particular among the young, is reminiscent of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange.  Our suspicion of books and tendency to restrict what is taught brings Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 to mind.  I don't think Orwell's 1984 is similar to what we have achieved to date, as we aren't quite as regimented and regulated, or unified enough, to be compared to its version of dystopia.  Also, our society isn't as puritanical.  We love our pleasures, and are committed to them and manipulated by them.  In that sense, it may be that dystopia as depicted by Huxley in Brave New World is more similar to ours than not.

Which brings me to The Garden of Earthly Delights, the peculiar masterpiece of that peculiar artist, Hieronymus Bosch, pictured above.  Paradise is on the left, hell on the right, and in the center is our world, in which we cavort.  Bosch portrays us as engaged in a grotesque romp.  The people he painted are silly, stupid, carnal, frenzied and mad.  Hell is obviously their destination--indeed, they seem to be rushing towards it.

One thing which I think has been lacking in fictional dystopias is the fact that we're quite capable of making our world a harsh place in which we live harsh and fearful lives simply by being stupid and ignorant.  I don't think it an exaggeration to say that stupidity and ignorance are two of the primary causes of our current dystopia.  What we accept and believe today as true is remarkably preposterous in certain respects. That we accept things as true without hesitation or efforts at verification is extraordinary in itself.  It's hard to think of other times when we've been so credulous, so willing to believe what we're told, particularly when it comes to our politics.  

As elections and primaries grow close here, we're inundated with commercials so pitiful, so corny, so clearly biased that it's difficult to believe they can be taken seriously by anyone.  Do those who create these vile, pandering, unintentionally comic advertisements really believe we're so shallow, so stupid, so easily manipulated?  Are we, in fact?

We all know the saying "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."  It's been attributed to Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill.  That may well be true, but our dystopia may have come about not because we've done nothing to prevent the triumph of evil, but because we've been too stupid to recognize the evil taking place, or understand what is good, or do good.  

I don't think a novel with this theme will be forthcoming.