How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes • Hacker News Board

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#31

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 6:20 AM UTC

labster wrote: post #24

Animats wrote: post #4

Interesting. "In the totalitarian-dystopian genre, the prototypical narrative content elements — e.g., setting, character, plot, and story morals — are relatively clear and consistent; thus, they are “filled in” according to widely shared genre conventions." Writers can thus write in such worlds without extensive world-building. It's like grinding out police procedurals or zombie novels. Not every writer can build wo…

One of the major arguments of postmodernism is that the "shared model" of modernist progress -- universal "progress" had some bad side effects. Destroying cultures and languages in the name of progress doesn't really empower people. And modernity brought other new large problems, from global warming to weak communities to mass propaganda. There were so many excesses that we had to put on the brakes. That said, postmo…

> Destroying cultures and languages in the name of progress doesn't really empower people.

Languages don't get destroyed by rearing children in isolation so they're left unable to speak. Languages die when their population shifts over to a language with more to offer. (Generally, the ability to participate in a larger market.)

You can go pretty much anywhere rare languages are spoken and hear parents tell you they hope their children will grow up to speak something more useful. Where do you get the idea that this doesn't empower people?

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#32

Post by freeone3000 » Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 6:42 AM UTC

ahartmetz wrote: post #23

davidw wrote: post #21

Is anyone else sick of dystopian stuff? I want to read something where... sure, there are problems, but where people are out there doing difficult, adventurous and good things. Something maybe even kind of motivational. Or at best, just nice escapist stories without all the doom and gloom. If I want to read about stressful, bad, evil things, I'll pick up a newspaper.

Try Iain Banks, though IMO the world-building is better than the plots.

A world where humans have given up free will, all desire and drive, and live out meaningless lives noticed by no one (ffs, the greatest game player of the galaxy was worried he'd be forgotten in TWO YEARS - and he was, except by people who knew him personally!)? I do not think life as a pet of a machine is a happy future for humanity.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#33

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 6:47 AM UTC

wtracy wrote: post #26

davidw wrote: post #21

Is anyone else sick of dystopian stuff? I want to read something where... sure, there are problems, but where people are out there doing difficult, adventurous and good things. Something maybe even kind of motivational. Or at best, just nice escapist stories without all the doom and gloom. If I want to read about stressful, bad, evil things, I'll pick up a newspaper.

And this is how science fiction authors have been shooting themselves in the foot. The golden age of science fiction, the era when science fiction was most popular with the public, occurred when most of that fiction had a positive outlook on the future. I don't think that's coincidence. To any aspiring authors out there: If you want to stand out and be successful, write stories that show a path to successfully overco…

[deleted]

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#34

Post by jonnybgood » Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 6:55 AM UTC

davidw wrote: post #21

Is anyone else sick of dystopian stuff? I want to read something where... sure, there are problems, but where people are out there doing difficult, adventurous and good things. Something maybe even kind of motivational. Or at best, just nice escapist stories without all the doom and gloom. If I want to read about stressful, bad, evil things, I'll pick up a newspaper.

Thinking of dystopian authors and something motivational I immediately thought of Island by Aldous Huxley.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#35

Post by opwieurposiu » Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 6:55 AM UTC

devoply wrote: post #10

> that violence and illegal activities may be both legitimate and necessary to pursue justice. Dystopian fiction appears to subtly expand the political imagination of viewers and readers to encompass a range of scenarios outside the normal realm of democratic politics, and what people then consider reasonable and thinkable appears to expand accordingly. America was founded on a revolution, and often changing the syst…

It seems kind of silly to argue that the democratic politics is legitimate and violence is not, when the whole point of the democratic state is to create a monopoly on violence.

What fiction fails to teach you is that being good at violence is a lot of work! To be good at it you need to take krav or bjj or mma classes at least 3 times a week and go to the gun range at least once a week.

I personally think society would gain vast benefits from making dueling legal again. Sadly the lawyers would never allow it because they would lose half their business!

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#36

Post by taneq » Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 7:09 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #4

Interesting. "In the totalitarian-dystopian genre, the prototypical narrative content elements — e.g., setting, character, plot, and story morals — are relatively clear and consistent; thus, they are “filled in” according to widely shared genre conventions." Writers can thus write in such worlds without extensive world-building. It's like grinding out police procedurals or zombie novels. Not every writer can build wo…

> More generally, we have a decided lack of novels describing a better future.

Maybe that's because it's hard to be optimistic about the future starting from now? The worst case is that the environment goes to hell and we die, or the economy crashes and life becomes hell, or killer robots kill us all (at the behest of some state actor or just because they loooove paperclips). The best case is we get humans to not behave like humans (so some people are less miserable), and then we either upgrade ourselves into unrecognizable transhumans or we become pets to transhumans or incomprehensible AIs.

> To a considerable extent, futurism is still stuck in the 1960s. What passes for futurism today is a minor tweak on the present.

Maybe that's just because we've picked most of the low hanging fruit that we could see in the '60s, and what remains still feels pretty far off? The best possible future that we can hope for can be summed up as "now, but don't fuck it up."

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#37

Post by ryacko » Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 7:19 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #4

Interesting. "In the totalitarian-dystopian genre, the prototypical narrative content elements — e.g., setting, character, plot, and story morals — are relatively clear and consistent; thus, they are “filled in” according to widely shared genre conventions." Writers can thus write in such worlds without extensive world-building. It's like grinding out police procedurals or zombie novels. Not every writer can build wo…

Interestingly enough, Isaac Asimov pioneered the Sci-Fi detective story. Read somewhere that Campbell thought it couldn’t be done since it requires explaining technology and would ruin the reader’s enjoyment.

Spoiler: Chekov’s Gun, and the assumption that new technologies are so seemless as to be unnoticeable or rarely commented on.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#38

Post by TomMarius » Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 7:43 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #31

labster wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the major arguments of postmodernism is that the "shared model" of modernist progress -- universal "progress" had some bad side effects. Destroying cultures and languages in the name of progress doesn't really empower people. And modernity brought other new large problems, from global warming to weak communities to mass propaganda. There were so many excesses that we had to put on the brakes. That said, postmo…

> Destroying cultures and languages in the name of progress doesn't really empower people. Languages don't get destroyed by rearing children in isolation so they're left unable to speak. Languages die when their population shifts over to a language with more to offer. (Generally, the ability to participate in a larger market.) You can go pretty much anywhere rare languages are spoken and hear parents tell you they ho…

And it's not just small, dying languages. Typical Czech parent will push their kid to learn English and German everyday.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#39

Post by TomMarius » Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 7:50 AM UTC

freeone3000 wrote: post #32

ahartmetz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Iain Banks, though IMO the world-building is better than the plots.

A world where humans have given up free will, all desire and drive, and live out meaningless lives noticed by no one (ffs, the greatest game player of the galaxy was worried he'd be forgotten in TWO YEARS - and he was, except by people who knew him personally!)? I do not think life as a pet of a machine is a happy future for humanity.

What is happy future? Is it the same for you aa for others? Should we still group ourselves to one/more big groups, or should we maybe focus on individuals more, and let people group if they want to do so?

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#40

Post by devoply » Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 7:58 AM UTC

opwieurposiu wrote: post #35

devoply wrote: post #10

> that violence and illegal activities may be both legitimate and necessary to pursue justice. Dystopian fiction appears to subtly expand the political imagination of viewers and readers to encompass a range of scenarios outside the normal realm of democratic politics, and what people then consider reasonable and thinkable appears to expand accordingly. America was founded on a revolution, and often changing the syst…

It seems kind of silly to argue that the democratic politics is legitimate and violence is not, when the whole point of the democratic state is to create a monopoly on violence. What fiction fails to teach you is that being good at violence is a lot of work! To be good at it you need to take krav or bjj or mma classes at least 3 times a week and go to the gun range at least once a week. I personally think society wou…

Poe's law. Fact is a lot of the political propaganda in the media (including movies) is used by the State to manufacture consent to use violence... usually as State intervention to liberate people and to recruit soldiers to protect freedom and train them so that they become good at violence. For instance see this, https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/9ztk4l/can...

Regardless the political imagination of individuals as to what is right or wrong has very little impact on their ability to actually do much and hurt many people as individuals or even as political fringe groups, as the control mechanisms and technology to disrupt such individuals and groups is highly effective. However, when those groups become large movements perhaps they could possibly lead to some sort of uncontrollable and undesirable violence. Does that mean we should be weary of fiction writers promoting such themes, yes we should, if we're a country like China.

It seems there is a movement to control all forms of speech these days as it's all starting to be considered dangerous... so you don't even have fiction as a refuge to express your revolution.