Dystopian Society

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A Dystopian Society is a society with extremely undesirable society qualities.



References

2014

  • (Wikipedia, 2014) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia Retrieved:2014-5-21.
    • A dystopia (from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος, alternatively, cacotopia,[1] kakotopia, cackotopia, or anti-utopia) is a community or society that is in some important way undesirable or frightening. It is the opposite of a utopia. Such societies appear in many artistic works, particularly in stories set in a future. Dystopias are often characterized by dehumanization, totalitarian governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society. Dystopian societies appear in many sub-genres of fiction and are often used to draw attention to real-world issues regarding society, environment, politics, economics, religion, psychology, ethics, science, and/or technology, which if unaddressed could potentially lead to such a dystopia-like condition. Famous depictions of dystopian societies include R.U.R. (which introduced the concept of Robots and the word Robot for the first time)[2]  ; Nineteen Eighty-Four, which takes place in a totalitarian invasive super state; Brave New World, where the human population is placed under a caste of psychological allocation; Fahrenheit 451, where the state burns books in response to the apathy and disinterest by the general public; A Clockwork Orange, where the state undertakes to reform violent youths; Blade Runner in which genetically engineered replicants infiltrate society and must be hunted down before they injure humans; The Hunger Games, in which the government controls its people by maintaining a constant state of fear through forcing randomly selected children to participate in an annual fight to the death; Logan's Run, in which both population and the consumption of resources are maintained in equilibrium by requiring the death of everyone reaching a particular age; Soylent Green, where society suffers from pollution, overpopulation, depleted resources, poverty, dying oceans, and a hot climate. Much of the population survives on processed food rations, including "soylent green"; and Divergent, where people must fit into one of five factions based on character traits: Selflessness, Bravery, Intelligence, Honesty, and Peace. Those people who possess more than one quality are hunted down for fear that they will not conform and that their multi-trait personalities make them difficult to control. Jack London's The Iron Heel was described by Erich Fromm as "the earliest of the modern Dystopia." [3]
  1. Cacotopia (κακό, caco = bad) was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 19th century works ([1], [2])

  2. Cf. "Dystopia Timeline", in Exploring Dystopia, "edited and designed by Niclas Hermansson; Contributors: Acolyte of Death ('Gattaca'), John Steinbach ('Nuclear Nightmare'), [and] David Clements ('From Dystopia to Myopia')" (hem.passagen.se), Niclas Hermansson, n.d., Web, 22 May 2009
  3. Fromm, Erich: 1984 (Afterword), p. 316. New American Library (a division of Penguin Group), 1977.