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What Utopia? I’d Pick a Dystopia any Day

January 4, 2018

change, experience, Gothic, literature, progress, society, technology

Once I gave my Gothic fiction students an exercise: I divided them into two teams, with the first team asked to argue why it would be nice to live in a utopia, and the second team asked to do the same for a dystopia. The latter team, upon hearing they needed to argue how great it would be to live in a dystopia, began to murmur – in the style of “oh man, how are we gonna argue for that?”

During the exercise, feelings changed – which had been my plan all along. The team that had to argue for the dystopia began to realize how horrible a utopia would actually be: no change, no possibility to make things better, no real progress. The other team, instead, had real trouble coming up with arguments.

utopia dystopia — Dystopias are ugly. But they can get better. Utopias can get only worse

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The Boiling Frog Problem

January 2, 2018

Society

action, change, economy, responsibility, science fiction, society

It is said that if you drop a frog into a pot with boiling water, it will naturally jump out, trying to escape. Conversely, if you place it in one with lukewarm water which you are heating gradually, the frog will remain there until it boils to death, oblivious of the situation. I don’t know if this is actually the case, but the boiling frog problem is a stunningly accurate metaphor for the state of affairs in the world today.

boiling frog — The Boiling Frog Problem: not Reacting to Subtle Changes

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Collective Responsibility in the Era of Idiocy

December 30, 2017

Society

citizen, idiocy, ignorance, reason, responsibility, society

In a previous article, I spoke of idiocy of a particular kind, that of people who are too self-centered to bother about the world around them. Of course, this kind of idiocy and selfishness also leads to mediocrity. Furthermore, there is a certain paradox in the phrase “the world around them”: it implies a certain separation between those people and their environment. This is obviously untrue. These people’s decisions and actions (or, rather, inaction), affect their environment, a fact which in turn affects them too. And still they remain apathetic and refuse to take responsibility.

The problem is, since we all occupy the same world – and in our era of globalization it is impossible to truly become isolated – even those who do think and act, and are responsible, are also affected.

responsibility — You may think you’re separate from your environment. You’re not.

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