The Utopian vs. the Dystopian

Crime. Pollution. War. Climate change. Corruption. Lies. Overwhelming, isn’t it?

It’s easy to be cynical these days. Reading the newspaper or watching the news on television informs us all of the myriad ways the country and the world are going down the tubes. And watching your favorite entertainments on your beloved media devices shows you all sorts of dystopian futures and worst case scenarios that you’d rather not be in the middle of in a few years time.

It’s easy to get discouraged. It’s easy to feel disenfranchised and helpless by the onslaught of problems that we are facing every day, every week and every year. It’s hard enough to manage our own issues and get through the day without feeling like we’ve lost ground to disorder and entropy. It’s hard to be happy about a future that will be hardly worth catching up to, a future less happy and less hopeful than we thought we had earned and even deserved.

Utopianism is out, and Dystopianism is in. Nobody seems to want to hear about bright and shiny possibilities for everybody. It’s either pie-in-the-sky or it’s flat-out impossible. Human nature and economics collude to block us from hoping for better days, for a sustainable progress in our quality of living, learning, and planning. No words to the contrary, because that’s not being “realistic” of how the world works, or how it is run. All we can do is wait for ruination.

Happy reading and watching!