
How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes - jeffreyrogers
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/its-the-end-of-the-world-and-they-know-it-how-dystopian-fiction-shapes-political-attitudes/3853105561CB840EAB79258DC2575849
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Animats
Interesting.

 _" In the totalitarian-dystopian genre, the prototypical narrative content
elements — e.g., setting, character, plot, and story morals — are relatively
clear and consistent; thus, they are “filled in” according to widely shared
genre conventions."_

Writers can thus write in such worlds without extensive world-building. It's
like grinding out police procedurals or zombie novels. Not every writer can
build worlds like Charles Stross. It's also easier for readers. Reading Ian
Banks is hard work.

More generally, we have a decided lack of novels describing a better future.
We have no shared conceptual model of what a better future should look like.
We did once, up to 1970 or so. To a considerable extent, futurism is still
stuck in the 1960s. What passes for futurism today is a minor tweak on the
present.

 _( "Futures: 1) Utopia 2) Dystopia 3) the future in which your cell phone
takes slightly better pictures.")_

~~~
taneq
> More generally, we have a decided lack of novels describing a better future.

Maybe that's because it's hard to be optimistic about the future starting from
now? The worst case is that the environment goes to hell and we die, or the
economy crashes and life becomes hell, or killer robots kill us all (at the
behest of some state actor or just because they loooove paperclips). The best
case is we get humans to not behave like humans (so some people are less
miserable), and then we either upgrade ourselves into unrecognizable
transhumans or we become pets to transhumans or incomprehensible AIs.

> To a considerable extent, futurism is still stuck in the 1960s. What passes
> for futurism today is a minor tweak on the present.

Maybe that's just because we've picked most of the low hanging fruit that we
could see in the '60s, and what remains still feels pretty far off? The best
possible future that we can hope for can be summed up as "now, but don't fuck
it up."

~~~
TeMPOraL
Honestly, the first part of your response sounds pretty much like the very
symptom of the problem discussed here. You presented a very bleak outlook, no
doubt informed as much by dystopian fiction (and the culture enjoying it) as
it is by rational analysis.

If everything seems destined to hell, with no one capable of doing anything
about it, people just give up and live their lives focused on short-term
needs. This ends up directly contributing to those world problems we're all
worried about. Maybe an influx of positive fiction could help change the
overall mood towards the idea that the brighter future is both possible and
worth fighting for?

\--

Honestly, everyone here owes themselves to watch Disney's "Tomorrowland". Yes,
it's a bit clichéd. But it's also heartwarming, and for me it was the first
thing since many years that left me smiling and full of energy. The movie asks
some very pointed questions about the state of the world, and covers this very
topic: that our obsession with dystopias is forming a self-fulfilling
prophecy, and that this is a kind of dumb thing to do to ourselves.

~~~
another-one-off
Cheerful concurrence. It is worth remembering that most of history and indeed
the present can be described in very bleak terms given a little bit of effort.

Humans have good reason to fear the future. The future is very scary. However,
the future has always been very scary, and it isn't any scarier now than it
has been since the invention of record keeping, where basically the same
threats were present. The past is also very scary to anyone who sits down and
realises that the people in the past are basically the same as the people in
the present.

The future isn't going to be any bleaker than the past, it will be just as
full of hope, success and vibrancy.

~~~
krapp
Well, any dystopia you can conceive is probably going to be utopia to someone.

------
mirimir
It's an interesting study for sure. But, as part of the background, it would
have been useful to point out that much dystopian fiction is intentionally
political. Rod Serling had initially proposed a program of political
commentary, but CBS said "no way". So we got _The Twilight Zone_. George
Romero's _Night of the Living Dead_ series was also intentionally political.

In other words, much dystopian fiction is actually long-form propaganda.

~~~
emiliobumachar
Interesting take. Are there any works of dystopian fiction that someone here
thinks could be considered anti-democracy propaganda?

~~~
mirimir
Democracy isn't too popular with Azimov, I think.

And now that I think of it, Banks also doesn't like it. Humans and AI Minds
have equal rights. And they exist in a state of benevolent anarchy. There are
organizations, but decision making is not at all democratic. Maybe closer to
consensus-based.

Also, humans and other organic beings come off as limited and irresponsible.
Needing guidance. So the Minds are really running things.

Indeed, the Culture is rather a civilization of Minds, which keeps humans
around for moral and sentimental reasons. It creates stuff for them without
effective limit. For example, any Culture citizen can have their own planet,
orbital, ship or whatever. Abundance has destroyed the concept of money. And
the Minds keep them safe, from themselves and from others.

------
davidw
Is anyone else sick of dystopian stuff? I want to read something where...
sure, there are problems, but where people are out there doing difficult,
adventurous and good things. Something maybe even kind of motivational. Or at
best, just nice escapist stories without all the doom and gloom.

If I want to read about stressful, bad, evil things, I'll pick up a newspaper.

~~~
wtracy
And this is how science fiction authors have been shooting themselves in the
foot.

The golden age of science fiction, the era when science fiction was most
popular with the public, occurred when most of that fiction had a positive
outlook on the future. I don't think that's coincidence.

To any aspiring authors out there: If you want to stand out and be successful,
write stories that show a path to successfully overcoming the obstacles
society faces today. If you can successfully do that in a way that doesn't
come across as trite and condescending, then you are onto something.

~~~
AstralStorm
The difference is that this future was never delivered. Pessimism is expected
after that.

Worse, showing how obstacles are overcome and _not seeing it applied in real
world_ is soul crushing.

This is often because politics turned from initially being a way of solving
problems to a popularity ascend machismo contest - and it infects everything.

~~~
beaconstudios
I look forward to the day when I can place my vote in the ballot box for a
party that tries to integrate the best ideas from different schools of thought
to maximise human well-being rather than advocating their chosen ideology and
denying that any benefit could come from the other side of the aisle.

~~~
bambataa
What is 'best' if not ideological?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Whatever actually works to make things better.

The difference is applying science and rational thinking vs. soundbites and
reasoning from ideology.

~~~
beaconstudios
I was going to write up a big essay explaining my thinking but you've summed
it up pretty neatly. Ideologies are always based on some level of faith that
"if we achieve X, that will make everything better". Id rather use rational
techniques to track the outcome of individual policy proposals against some
sensible definition of better that could come from a rough consensus. Ideology
offers easy answers but rational practises could offer answers that can be
proven to work.

~~~
JetSpiegel
> Id rather use rational techniques to track the outcome of individual policy
> proposals against some sensible definition of better that could come from a
> rough consensus.

That's the problem, the definition of "better" is the whole point.

Say for USA, setting the marginal tax rate of 1M dollars to 100%, including
for company revenues, and redistributing that money to the poor greatly
increases the Gini coefficient. That's just increasing a number that is widely
agreed to be a "sensible definition of better", can't get more "rational" than
that. You can write a bulletproof proposal that can't be rationally argued
against.

Ideology is not just a series of individual policies, it's a lens through
which you can evaluate every possible policy proposal.

~~~
beaconstudios
You're talking at a higher level of "better" than I am. Your example falls
squarely under a left ideology where narrowing the income gap is an inherent
good. I'm saying I don't think that is a nuanced goal and it doesn't match
reality, because we've tried totally minimising the income gap with communism
and it didn't work. The other extreme doesn't work either, which leaves us
with trying to find the right middle ground. Instead of looking for the mid
point it just swings rapidly in either direction as the left or right get into
power.

~~~
JetSpiegel
I would argue Communism tried to minimize the income gap, but failed to evolve
into something other than a dictatorship. Not to mention "we" tried is
subjective, Marx was expecting Communism to be implemented in Germany or
England, societies with a developed capitalist classes. I would argue the
current western societies are more similar to his predictions than 1918
Czarist Russia, the outcomes could be different.

"Finding the middle ground" is the Third Way popularized by Blair and Macron
now, that has also failed, because it maintains the status quo.

------
omnimus
Lately I have seen term Solarpunk on reddits, tumblrs and scuttlebutt thrown
around. I think people start to realize we need positive ideas for future.
Solarpunk is future where we make it, clean energy wins, automation will
empower us instead of enslaving us.

Maybe its time for some of that.

~~~
beaconstudios
post-cyberpunk is pretty positive too. It's basically near-future tech in a
society not that far from our own, and the conflict comes from the exact kinds
of conflicts we're starting to think about now around privacy, economic
advantage, AI going wrong and so on. But it's not inherently dystopian like
cyberpunk is.

~~~
jhbadger
Even traditional Gibsonian cyberpunk isn't really as dystopian as it is often
presented as. I remember an interview with William Gibson where he said the
fact that he assumed that there would be a civilization, even a flawed one, in
the mid 21st century, was optimistic given that he was writing in the 1970s
and 1980s when it was widely assumed that we would likely nuke ourselves into
extinction in a few years.

------
gerdesj
"In political science" \- they assert this is science.

This is how they decide what to test:

"In formulating hypotheses, we draw from several theoretical traditions. The
majority of our hypotheses flow from the nature of the content shared across
dystopian narratives. We take each theoretical tradition in turn."

This appears to describe the difference between fact and fantasy:

"Scholars in the narrative persuasion tradition distinguish narrative from
rhetorical persuasion, where the latter is characterized by advocacy of a
position through arguments, reasoning, and evidence (e.g., newspaper
editorials and political speeches). By contrast, narrative persuasion involves
attitude change driven by cognitive and emotional engagement with a story."

This is experiment three:

"Finally, we test two key folk hypotheses, loosely connected to cultivation
theory."

Science is hard:

"Yet an experimental manipulation involving an entire story narrative can be
difficult to unpack and interpret."

Overall, I found this paper hard to read (to be fair, I'm not used to seeing
this style of thing but I have put some effort in - I read it!) and rather
vapid.

~~~
aesto
Perspectives on Politics isn't exactly a top-drawer journal. It's the sort of
outlet where articles (often more on the philosophical side) end up that lack
the scientific rigor necessary for the top-tier journals.

Also, FYI, political science has a pretty contentious divide between people
who favor a scientific approach and those who prefer a normative/philosophical
approach. The two sides basically hate each other. So to claim that "In
political science - they assert this is science" pretty much misses half of
the story.

~~~
Emma_Goldman
I don't like the paper and think it's horribly crude.

But _Perspectives on Politics_ is a good journal.

------
sudofail
This is something I've argued about a lot recently, and I think it's very
important to be aware of. All too often in political debates, the subject of
some dystopian scenario from fiction will come up. Fiction serves an important
role in helping you to see other points of view, but it's even more important
to keep in mind that it is just fiction.

When people point to Atlas Shrugged or 1984 and cite some real world event
that seems to back it up, it reaffirms the belief that we're heading towards
that fictional dystopia. When in fact this is merely selection bias.

Dystopian fiction is entertaining, but we cannot draw any real world
conclusions from the fictional narrative. The world is much, much more complex
than the fictional straw man world the author creates.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _we cannot draw any real world conclusions from the fictional narrative_

“Any” is too strong. At the very least, fiction offers a lens into a society’s
worldview.

------
Leary
This is very topical. If i had a dollar every time someone used Black Mirror
as an argument against technology...

~~~
anon2775
It's important to both suspend disbelief to enjoy fiction from reality and
take fiction with a big grain of salt that it's often missing considerations
of reality. It's when people confuse and conflate fiction with reality _minus
critical thinking_ that hobgoblins of the mind get let loose to draw
unrealistic conclusions.

Reality and fiction slightly intersect as a fuzzy Venn diagram, to a degree,
but their more often echoes of imagination than of experience.

~~~
krapp
>It's important to both suspend disbelief to enjoy fiction from reality and
take fiction with a big grain of salt that it's often missing considerations
of reality.

Ironically, this happens in the utopian case with Star Trek, which gets
invoked as an example of a valid and functioning "post scarcity" society based
on fabrication and automation, despite the technology in that series being
essentially magic.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The core of the Star Trek post-scarcity is a) near-free energy, and b)
ubiquitous access to matter replicators. The replicator is kind of magic, but
not total impossibility, and rough approximations are within realm of
conceivable "future technology".

But I think first and foremost, Star Trek is being brought as an example of
post-scarcity so often because it's pretty much the only story that presented
such society and reached general audience. It's pretty much a lone beacon of
hope in the sea of dystopia.

Still, I agree with your point. Star Trek is a nice dream, but not a good
source of information for reasoning about reality.

~~~
ctchocula
_Trekonomics_ is a nice non-fiction book about the utopian ideas presented in
Star Trek and especially TNG. There, they treat the replicator as more of a
metaphor for post-scarcity rather than recipe (i.e. Star Trek technology is
sufficient but not necessary).

I would say I'm more optimistic than you about post-scarcity. Bertrand Russell
makes a case for the insanity of modern society by noting that during WWI half
of British populace was sufficient to produce enough for all of Britain. Even
if we allow for some margin of error in his statement, since that time
productivity in the US has increased 4.5x since then.

To me the show is increasingly relevant. For example, it presents a clear
answer to a popular criticism to UBI: what is to prevent everyone from staying
home to play video games and leeching off society?

The optimistic answer is that once society can produce enough goods for
everyone, the traditional value system of society (material wealth => proxy
for contributions to society => virtue) loses meaning and will be overtaken by
new ones (contributing to society => virtue).

I agree with most of your summary except the end. What if the problems in the
US and around the developed world are more due to how society is organized
rather than technological? I think the Star Trek value system is appealing and
IMO something we ought to strive for.

~~~
TeMPOraL
My comment didn't present my full view on the topic - I was seconding the
warning that "don't reason from fictional evidence" applies to both dystopia
and utopia visions. In truth, I am more hopeful about the post-scarcity
scenario than that comment might have implied.

I am (currently) in favour of UBI, though there are two things that I'm not
sure about. One, what's to prevent prices immediately rising to eat the entire
UBI, returning everything to status quo but with no welfare budget? Two, how
to deal with migration from countries with no UBI to countries with UBI?

As for Star Trek itself (the TNG/DS9/VOY timeline, at least), I do consider it
a good vision of what the world could be like. The question that's always in
my mind is "how do we get there". I dream humanity can get to a post-scarcity
era; the trick is surviving the transition.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
As for prices rising - increased demand in a flexible commodity do not result
in prices rising, but falling. Economies of scale, right? So many of the
things that folks spend UBI money on, will get cheaper.

~~~
TeMPOraL
But will there be increased demand? For the basics - food, shelter - the
demand is pretty much proportional to population. With more money around and
same demand, will competition on commodities be enough to keep the prices
where they were? My naïve expectation is that they'll in fact rise, and tie up
most of the UBI.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
So folks will spend their money on other things. I just don't get it - how
does "people have money" lead to "I know how they will spend it, and it will
be on housing and food"?

In a competitive market (I can go to any grocery store I like) the prices are
not set to what people have to pay but on what the other stores are selling
for.

The offerings may depend on that - more caviar if folks have more spendable
income. But that's called Standard of Living, and if it goes up well that's
the whole purpose of UBI

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I just don 't get it - how does "people have money" lead to "I know how
> they will spend it, and it will be on housing and food"?_

It was more of "people have more money" -> "are able to pay more" -> "prices
will raise to what market full of slightly richer people can bear". But I'm
not arguing that, just asking about it. I don't have enough economic
understanding to make predictions here.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its easy to choose one strand of economics and sketch together a story. I call
it 'playing dot-to-dot'. But economics has many strands, all in play at the
same time. Its not just here; folks post such sketches all the time.

Competition determines prices. Folks can spend money on lots of things. People
can share an apartment if they are too expensive, which would drive the price
down, and spend their money on other things. More money in circulation means
more lending thus more development, which increases housing supply. And on and
on.

------
sn41
I think additinonally, conversely, dystopian fiction is reflective of
political attitudes - if you're in a repressive country and want to criticise
the government, then you can write a fictional work criticising some other
government - examples include "Memoirs found in a bathtub" by Stanislaw Lem
and "We" by Zamyatin.

------
nreilly
Is anyone aware of any good utopian fiction?

~~~
wtracy
I would argue that the main reason Star Trek has had such enduring popularity
in spite of its failings is that it is a rare example of utopian science
fiction in television. (Deep Space 9 took a dystopian detour by focusing on
several alien societies that were held up as "bad" examples. I'm also
withholding judgement on Star Trek Discovery.)

As for written science fiction, I really can't think of anything recent other
than the already mentioned Banks novels. There's plenty from the fifties and
sixties, but not all of it holds up well today.

~~~
nreilly
Thanks. I think this might be the motivation to give watching Star Trek a go.

~~~
krapp
The thing to remember about Star Trek is that it was never _that_ Utopian
except on paper.

The original series wasn't much at all, it was basically the US Navy _in
space._ It does have a lot of moralizing and positivity, but the future
depicted is also very much a product of its time. I wouldn't describe it as
Utopian because the Federation as depicted is still clearly not intended to be
seen as ideal.

TNG was a constant struggle between Gene Roddenberry to showcase his Utopian
ideals and the writers to actually have some human drama (which he forbade,
because humans were supposed to have evolved beyond that,) so it's the most
optimistic of the series, most of the time, sometimes (IMHO) to its own
detriment. One of the most hated characters in Star Trek, Wesley Crusher, was
Gene Roddenberry's vision of the Ubermensch, but he came across as an
insufferably perfect Gary Stu.

Further series deviate from the Utopian vision with... mixed results. I
personally think DS9 is the best of them because, being an arc-driven series,
it gets to flesh out its characters and cultures to a degree other series
couldn't. However it's also a series about how a self-described Utopian
society can abandon its ideals and morals when faced with a brutal adversary.

I think it's best to approach Star Trek as sci-fi (light on science more often
than not) drama first and morality play second.

------
devoply
> that violence and illegal activities may be both legitimate and necessary to
> pursue justice. Dystopian fiction appears to subtly expand the political
> imagination of viewers and readers to encompass a range of scenarios outside
> the normal realm of democratic politics, and what people then consider
> reasonable and thinkable appears to expand accordingly.

America was founded on a revolution, and often changing the system from within
for anything other than the most trivial issues is seen to the cynics seems
impossible.

The fact is that in the present mode of existence the only revolutions that do
happen can only happen in fiction. Like for instance see the movie They Live!
The protagonist finds himself completely alienated by his newly perceived
reality and decides to chew gum and kick ass to get to the bottom of it, only
to find that he's in a much deeper hole than something he can do anything
about, the aliens run a galactic economic empire of which earth is just a
small part -- which could be a pretty apt metaphor for individual existence or
maybe the human condition -- even the most powerful can do little about the
system. Who controls us? Maybe it's money or technology or a conspiracy, or
God, or bacteria and viruses?

So the message is one of revolution because those who are unhappy with reality
as it is, can only rebel against it on the screen or in books... and do so
idealistically without any sort of heavy handed intellectual exercise which
might cause revolution in a hundred years -- like for instance Communism.

The truth is that these days revolution can only be televised. And that is
itself cathartic for both the author and for the audience.

~~~
opwieurposiu
It seems kind of silly to argue that the democratic politics is legitimate and
violence is not, when the whole point of the democratic state is to create a
monopoly on violence.

What fiction fails to teach you is that being good at violence is a lot of
work! To be good at it you need to take krav or bjj or mma classes at least 3
times a week and go to the gun range at least once a week.

I personally think society would gain vast benefits from making dueling legal
again. Sadly the lawyers would never allow it because they would lose half
their business!

~~~
devoply
Poe's law. Fact is a lot of the political propaganda in the media (including
movies) is used by the State to manufacture consent to use violence... usually
as State intervention to liberate people and to recruit soldiers to protect
freedom and train them so that they become good at violence. For instance see
this,
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/9ztk4l/can...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/9ztk4l/cant_wait_for_the_beta/)

Regardless the political imagination of individuals as to what is right or
wrong has very little impact on their ability to actually do much and hurt
many people as individuals or even as political fringe groups, as the control
mechanisms and technology to disrupt such individuals and groups is highly
effective. However, when those groups become large movements perhaps they
could possibly lead to some sort of uncontrollable and undesirable violence.
Does that mean we should be weary of fiction writers promoting such themes,
yes we should, if we're a country like China.

It seems there is a movement to control all forms of speech these days as it's
all starting to be considered dangerous... so you don't even have fiction as a
refuge to express your revolution.

~~~
TomMarius
> However, when those group become large movements they perhaps they could
> possibly lead to some sort of uncontrollable and undesirable violence.

There is a lot of news about the US police doing exactly that, and not just
violence per se, also things like NSA...

