How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes • Hacker News Board

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#121

Post by beaconstudios » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 1:19 PM UTC

JetSpiegel wrote: post #119

beaconstudios wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to write up a big essay explaining my thinking but you've summed it up pretty neatly. Ideologies are always based on some level of faith that "if we achieve X, that will make everything better". Id rather use rational techniques to track the outcome of individual policy proposals against some sensible definition of better that could come from a rough consensus. Ideology offers easy answers but rational pr…

> Id rather use rational techniques to track the outcome of individual policy proposals against some sensible definition of better that could come from a rough consensus. That's the problem, the definition of "better" is the whole point. Say for USA, setting the marginal tax rate of 1M dollars to 100%, including for company revenues, and redistributing that money to the poor greatly increases the Gini coefficient. Th…

You're talking at a higher level of "better" than I am. Your example falls squarely under a left ideology where narrowing the income gap is an inherent good. I'm saying I don't think that is a nuanced goal and it doesn't match reality, because we've tried totally minimising the income gap with communism and it didn't work. The other extreme doesn't work either, which leaves us with trying to find the right middle ground. Instead of looking for the mid point it just swings rapidly in either direction as the left or right get into power.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#122

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 1:55 PM UTC

JetSpiegel wrote: post #120

TeMPOraL wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But fiction is about setting expectation. If popular works start to show that it is possible for political organizations to not be full of shit, people will expect that, and exert extra pressure. This beats the current attitude of "politics is a shitshow, news at 11; I don't care about this anymore".

It's not so clear cut. If fiction veers too much into "politics is great!" while "the real world" shows otherwise, it can be dismissed as asskissing. Fiction can only nudge the public opinion.

I'd say it depends on what fiction. This is actually the strength of sci-fi and fantasy - they're allowed to construct a society from grounds up, for the reader to compare & contrast with the one they live in, and consider a path from one to the other.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#123

Post by CM30 » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 2:19 PM 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…

Honestly, the optimism/pessimism common in fictional is a decade thing more than anything else. Every medium seems to go through periods of negative, dark storytelling and positive, upbeat storytelling alike, usually flipping once people are sick of how saturated the previous style has become.

Go back through TV history and note how stuff like Star Trek and Doctor Who flips between being dark and upbeat every decade or so. Or how comic books went through a cheery silver age before a depressing dark age and a more upbeat modern one.

And yes obviously there's a cultural aspect too. Compare something like Doctor Who's reboot to Black Mirror; you can tell which one started in 2005 and which one started in 2011 by the tone of the whole affair.

Still, it'll come to pass eventually. Optimistic sci-fi fiction will come back in vogue soon enough, especially when people start getting sick of the 'everything and everyone is doomed' tone that much of today's fiction seems to have.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#124

Post by CM30 » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 2:28 PM 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.

Yeah, I'm sick of it too. Which is why basically every piece of fiction I read/watch/play in game form is escapist and not tied to real world social issues or affairs.

(or is a goofy comedy that doesn't take itself seriously at all).

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#125

Post by JetSpiegel » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 3:31 PM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #121

JetSpiegel wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Id rather use rational techniques to track the outcome of individual policy proposals against some sensible definition of better that could come from a rough consensus. That's the problem, the definition of "better" is the whole point. Say for USA, setting the marginal tax rate of 1M dollars to 100%, including for company revenues, and redistributing that money to the poor greatly increases the Gini coefficient. Th…

You're talking at a higher level of "better" than I am. Your example falls squarely under a left ideology where narrowing the income gap is an inherent good. I'm saying I don't think that is a nuanced goal and it doesn't match reality, because we've tried totally minimising the income gap with communism and it didn't work. The other extreme doesn't work either, which leaves us with trying to find the right middle gro…

I would argue Communism tried to minimize the income gap, but failed to evolve into something other than a dictatorship. Not to mention "we" tried is subjective, Marx was expecting Communism to be implemented in Germany or England, societies with a developed capitalist classes. I would argue the current western societies are more similar to his predictions than 1918 Czarist Russia, the outcomes could be different.

"Finding the middle ground" is the Third Way popularized by Blair and Macron now, that has also failed, because it maintains the status quo.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#126

Post by JoeAltmaier » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 2:18 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #115

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So folks will spend their money on other things. I just don't get it - how does "people have money" lead to "I know how they will spend it, and it will be on housing and food"? In a competitive market (I can go to any grocery store I like) the prices are not set to what people have to pay but on what the other stores are selling for. The offerings may depend on that - more caviar if folks have more spendable income.…

> I just don't get it - how does "people have money" lead to "I know how they will spend it, and it will be on housing and food"? It was more of "people have more money" -> "are able to pay more" -> "prices will raise to what market full of slightly richer people can bear". But I'm not arguing that, just asking about it. I don't have enough economic understanding to make predictions here.

Its easy to choose one strand of economics and sketch together a story. I call it 'playing dot-to-dot'. But economics has many strands, all in play at the same time. Its not just here; folks post such sketches all the time.

Competition determines prices. Folks can spend money on lots of things. People can share an apartment if they are too expensive, which would drive the price down, and spend their money on other things. More money in circulation means more lending thus more development, which increases housing supply. And on and on.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#127

Post by beaconstudios » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:10 PM UTC

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #88

beaconstudios wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of it is rooted in the psychological warfare between Western liberalism and communism from the cold war onwards. Hell, postmodernism is largely based on socialist (actual socialist, not "left of libertarian") critiques of liberalism, and it seems to me that the postmodern tradition of criticising everything without providing a viable alternative is the root of a lot of dystopian ideas. Human history has…

What postmodernists are you referring to? I thought that as well, but after reading some actual postmodernists like Richard Rorty and Foucault I find it hard to support that idea any more. Most postmodern thinkers are left of center, sure, but I think that reflects a bias in academia more than a secret agenda.

I'm thinking Derrida, Heidegger, and Horkheimer. I don't think there's any secret agenda going on, more that postmodernism - being built within a Marxist intellectual framework (not a conspiracy, this is well documented) - is inherently oriented towards critiquing and bringing down Western liberalism and capitalism. It doesn't take much effort to go from deconstructionism or critical theory to the kind of dystopian imagery we're talking about. I mean, most dystopian fiction is based on effectively "late-stage capitalism" conditions, and how such a system would degrade.