this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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Distopias can take many different forms, you haven't felt the boundaries because you haven't stretched. Also I recommend the book "brave new world" for a view of a distopia that doesn't oppress with power but softer means.
Have you read your recommended book? The whole story is about overt oppression, caste-based systems, dehumanization, not about softer means. If by different forms you are saying that dystopias are often flawed utopias, then our own isn't utopic at all, we just live in the least bad times in all history.
This argument worked in 1990 and maybe even 2000.
It does not work for 2010 or 2020. The "least bad time" in all history has come and past.
There too was a time when Romans lived in the least bad time in all history, and then it took another 400 years to get back to those levels. Read the room. The future is of collapse, not prosperity.
The 90s, when capitalism was bringing the former USSR the biggest non-war-related decrease in human life expectancy? When a million Iraqi children suffered excess deaths due to the US sanctions? When the Rwandan genocide was going on?
Yep, that's the decade. Wasn't talking about 1890 haha.
Did you have a different answer in mind? If you let me know your answer I can disingenuously list a bunch of conflicts that decade.
By softer means I ment softer than what usually people picture when they think of distopia and that in my experience is 1984 by Orwell. Yes in brave new world there is a class system and all other listed flaws, but decention is not delt with by force, but by propaganda, ridicule and endless distractions. In other words the main tool of oppression is not the stick but the carrot.
You do understand that a book is about the most priveleged caste? You can't have rigid caste society with soft oppression and carrots without sticks.
You can by using:
Also drugs. It is stated in the book, several times, have you read it?