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asakiyumeI was musing on different styles of dystopias in fiction, and then in the real world, too. I came up with the following handy-dandy graphic:
It seems to me that in some stories, pretty much everyone is oppressed and miserable. There may be a superthin sliver of society that's privileged, but mainly everyone is miserable. Like in 1984 . . . which I haven't read in ages, so maybe there was a larger-than-superthin sliver that was living it up, but my impression was that it was pretty miserable. Wartime societies, or societies that operate with a permanent wartime mentality, are like this--we're all sacrificing and giving up our freedoms For the Cause. I imagine North Korea is like this. (I could be wrong though. Biased reporting/news sources and all that.) That's one end of the spectrum.
At the other end, you've got LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" and Dostoevsky's tortured child in Chapter 4 of The Brothers Karamazov. Everybody is happy/saved . . . at the expense of one sufferer.
In between, you can move the slider up and down. Minorities oppressing majorities is the pattern in, for example, The Hunger Games. Or New World slave societies. ... Or the whole world, in fact, at present, if you want to be polemical and political about it (which Vigilante Espresso does. This entry is brought to you by Vigilante Espresso.)
But you also get majorities oppressing minorities. That, I'd say, is the pattern in the Harry Potter books, where the lives of the wizards and witches are made more comfortable by house-elf slaves. This is also the pattern of persecuted minorities in the real world. (So, on the one hand, I just said the real world, at large, fits the pattern of a minority population persecuting a majority, but if you go smaller scale, and look at individual nations or cultures, you get lots of cases where the overall comparatively well-off society benefits from the exploitation of a minority--lots and lots of examples of that to choose from.)
I have to go pick up some things for supper, [Brrr, no; it's too cold--I'll make supper from what's on hand] but yeah. That's my thought for the day.
It seems to me that in some stories, pretty much everyone is oppressed and miserable. There may be a superthin sliver of society that's privileged, but mainly everyone is miserable. Like in 1984 . . . which I haven't read in ages, so maybe there was a larger-than-superthin sliver that was living it up, but my impression was that it was pretty miserable. Wartime societies, or societies that operate with a permanent wartime mentality, are like this--we're all sacrificing and giving up our freedoms For the Cause. I imagine North Korea is like this. (I could be wrong though. Biased reporting/news sources and all that.) That's one end of the spectrum.
At the other end, you've got LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" and Dostoevsky's tortured child in Chapter 4 of The Brothers Karamazov. Everybody is happy/saved . . . at the expense of one sufferer.
In between, you can move the slider up and down. Minorities oppressing majorities is the pattern in, for example, The Hunger Games. Or New World slave societies. ... Or the whole world, in fact, at present, if you want to be polemical and political about it (which Vigilante Espresso does. This entry is brought to you by Vigilante Espresso.)
But you also get majorities oppressing minorities. That, I'd say, is the pattern in the Harry Potter books, where the lives of the wizards and witches are made more comfortable by house-elf slaves. This is also the pattern of persecuted minorities in the real world. (So, on the one hand, I just said the real world, at large, fits the pattern of a minority population persecuting a majority, but if you go smaller scale, and look at individual nations or cultures, you get lots of cases where the overall comparatively well-off society benefits from the exploitation of a minority--lots and lots of examples of that to choose from.)
