
Four Kinds of Dystopia - penfold
http://expressiveegg.org/2017/01/03/four-kinds-dystopia/
======
Apocryphon
Cool taxonomy, but are there really _only_ four types? Let's try with some
examples.

Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut - imagines a future where mechanical automation
and IQ-optimized hiring leads to mass unemployment, but extensive welfare
systems keeps the mediocre masses well-fed, just demoralized and without
dignity. Combination of Huxleyan with Kafkaesque?

The Handmaid's Tale - Orwellian with a pronounced patriarchal-religious
emphasis

Anthem by Ayn Rand - generic Orwellian with a primitivist/preindustrial
Luddite version of Phildickian.

(Actually, we run into a convergence there. Isn't Orwellian thought control
simply the overt forcible version of Phildickian thought control, the latter
is more indirect, subtle, and possibly not even enforced by the state but
private actors and individuals? Both involve rewriting your mind to reject
liberty.)

Fahrenheit 451 - similar Phildickian rewriting of reality through both
Orwellian (the firemen, the unspecified war in the background) and Huxleyan
(parlor walls, overload of useless factoids) means.

Atlas Shrugged - world/U.S. in the beginning is not totalitarian, but a
generic degenerate socialist bureaucratic state in decline. Whether or not
Galt's Gulch is totalitarian, and what type it is, can be left as an exercise
to the reader.

Neuromancer, Snow Crash, other classic cyberpunk works- not totalitarian, but
heavy on the Huxleyan decadent consumerist society coupled with Phildickian
distortion of reality themes.

Brazil by Terry Gilliam - perfectly Kafkaesque.

Would appreciate classification of some other classic dystopian _totalitarian_
works, such as We by Zamyatin or even Animal Farm. Do any of them express
totalitarianism in a way that breaks the four-type classification system?

~~~
notahacker
The most obviously missed type would appear to be dystopians characterised by
extreme disparities between rich and poor, where the dystopic regime is
generally so much better off than the underclass it doesn't need to bother
with enforcing or influencing worldviews beyond basic security measures (much
of cyberpunk, for example). Call it _oligarchic_ dystopia; I'm not sure which
author I'd give the credit to. Arguably there should be _[post]apocalyptic_
dystopia in which the system of organization is the least of people's
troubles, of which _Anthem_ and whole subgenres of other books about a future
humanity regressing to earlier technological and social states should belong.

Don't think there's too much danger of _We_ breaking the OP's classification
system though: it was more or less the template for _1984_ (Orwell did read
it, and with hindsight his lukewarm review seems rather uncharitable) and as
such is one of the earliest and purest examples of Orwellian dystopia.

~~~
citruspi
> The most obviously missed type would appear to be dystopians characterised
> by extreme disparities between rich and poor, where the dystopic regime is
> generally so much better off than the underclass it doesn't need to bother
> with enforcing or influencing worldviews beyond basic security measure

In Atwood's Oryx and Crake, we learn of a society where the better off live in
employer-owned compounds while the less fortunate live in cities referred to
as "pleeblands":

“The house, the pool, the furniture – all belonged to the OrganInc Compound,
where the top people lived. Increasingly, the middle-range execs and the
junior scientists lived there too. Jimmy’s father said it was better that way,
because nobody had to commute to work from the Modules. Despite the sterile
transport corridors and the high-speed bullet trains, there was always a risk
when you went through the city.”

“Jimmy had never been to the city. He’d only seen it on TV – endless
billboards and neon signs and stretches of buildings, tall and short; endless
dingy-looking streets, countless vehicles of all kinds, some of them with
clouds of smoke coming out the back; thousands of people, hurrying, cheering,
rioting. There were other cities too, near and far; some had better
neighbourhoods in them, said his father, almost like the Compounds, with high
walls around the houses, but those didn’t get on TV much.”

“Compound people didn’t go to the cities unless they had to, and then never
alone. They called the cities the pleeblands. Despite the fingerprint identity
cards now carried by everyone, public security in the pleeblands was leaky:
there were people cruising around in those places who could forge anything and
who might be anybody, not to mention the loose change – the addicts, the
muggers, the paupers, the crazies. So it was best for everyone at OrganInc
Farms to live all in one place, with foolproof procedures.”

“Outside the OrganInc walls and gates and searchlights, things were
unpredictable. Inside, they were the way it used to be when Jimmy’s father was
a kid, before things got so serious, or that’s what Jimmy’s father said.
Jimmy’s mother said it was all artificial, it was just a theme park and you
could never bring the old ways back, but Jimmy’s father said why knock it? You
could walk around without fear, couldn’t you? Go for a bike ride, sit at a
sidewalk café, buy an ice-cream cone? Jimmy knew his father was right, because
he himself had done all of these things.”

“Still, the CorpSeCorps men – the ones Jimmy’s father called our people –
these men had to be on constant alert.”

Excerpt From: Atwood, Margaret. “Oryx and Crake.” Anchor Books, 2004-03-30.
iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Check out this book on the iBooks Store:
[https://itun.es/us/f5Qiz.l](https://itun.es/us/f5Qiz.l)

I'd highly recommend reading it, it's a great book.

~~~
igravious
> This material may be protected by copyright.

Posting a longish excerpt to give people a flavour of the book is covered by
fair use. Otherwise literary criticism would grind to a halt.

And I don't see why you say it _may_ be copyrighted, it was only written in
2004 therefore it's undoubtedly copyrighted. But so what, it's perfectly fine
to post snippets without the author's explicit permission. I suspect 99.99% of
authors would give you their eternal blessing for disseminating and praising
their work.

> I'd highly recommend reading it, it's a great book.

A dozen times this.

~~~
citruspi
> Posting a longish excerpt to give people a flavour of the book is covered by
> fair use. Otherwise literary criticism would grind to a halt.

> And I don't see why you say it _may_ be copyrighted, it was only written in
> 2004 therefore it's undoubtedly copyrighted. But so what, it's perfectly
> fine to post snippets without the author's explicit permission. I suspect
> 99.99% of authors would give you their eternal blessing for disseminating
> and praising their work.

When I selected and copied the selections from iBooks, the "Excerpt From:..."
and "Check out this book..." lines automatically appeared in my clipboard
along with the selections. I figured I'd leave 'em there instead of deleting
them.

But thank you for the fair use information, I'll keep that in mind in the
future.

~~~
igravious
Great. I've never used iBooks so I don't know how it functions.

------
ivraatiems
An interesting and thorough categorization, but I take issue with the
defeatism inherent in the concept.

When the author says "I would like to suggest that all modern societies are
both Kafkaesque and Phildickian with either a Huxleyan or Orwellian
overarching framework; modern, western, capitalist societies tend to be
basically Huxleyan (HKP) and pre-modern, eastern, communist countries tend to
be basically Orwellian (OKP)," that is a premature conclusion, and one that
should be challenged.

Yes, many societies have aspects of various kinds of dystopias. Does that mean
all those societies _are_ dystopias, or that all technology which may enable
certain kinds of dystopia is inherently bad? Further, are all forms of life
which involve being an active participant in one's society or culture so
necessarily just a way of explaining away one's participation in a dystopia?

When we start categorizing the United States, for instance, as Phildickian-
Huxlian-etc., we're doing so without answering the bigger question: Is the
modern US a dystopia? Why or why not? If not, is it becoming more like one,
and if that is so, what can we do to stop it?

I think the author is using the term "dystopia" to describe "flawed modern
societies," which is not really what it means. I'd be curious to know what the
author thinks an ideal human life _ought_ to look like.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>When we start categorizing the United States, for instance, as Phildickian-
Huxlian-etc., we're doing so without answering the bigger question: Is the
modern US a dystopia? Why or why not?

Well, compared to where Americans would once have told you the country ought
to end up, yes, it's a dystopia, particularly for the young. I've heard
teachers say that _Push: a novel_ accurately describes their students' lives.

For many of us, well, there's this joke. In the '80s you were told that under
Russian Communism, everyone would have to pack themselves into overcrowded
apartments and nobody could own their own car. Now, in the 2010s, under
American capitalism, we young people all have to pack ourselves into
overcrowded apartments and nobody can own their own car.

Living standards have declined. Personal freedoms and privacy have retreated.
Politics has grown more authoritarian. Science is being rejected rather than
advanced. Education has stagnated.

It's a low-grade dystopia.

~~~
ivraatiems
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I don't think that makes the US
a dystopia. I think it makes the US a society in a regressive slide _towards_
dystopianism. Admittedly, this is a nitpick of your point, but it's an
important distinction because a dystopia is supposed to be _the absolute worst
anything can be._ The US is just nowhere near that.

I also think that when we analyze the direction of a society, we should be
looking on a larger timescale than between 1980s and 2010s. If you zoom out a
little, to, say, the 1910s to 2010s, it's hard to make the argument that
people are worse off on average. There's a lot of doom-and-gloom forecasting
that suggests that not only is our society regressing, it is regressing so
quickly and to such a low point that this cannot be countered. I don't think
that's true. I think there is still time for positive change and that our
society still provides us avenues for achieving it. It isn't easy, and it
isn't getting any easier, but it is possible. While that possibility exists, a
state cannot be a true dystopia.

I'm also curious as to how old you think I am. I have a feeling I'm much
younger than you may imagine. I also think I should point out that while I
haven't read _Push_ , it looks like it has a relatively uplifting ending that
is a counterexample to what you're claiming.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
> I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I don't think that makes the
> US a dystopia. I think it makes the US a society in a regressive slide
> towards dystopianism. Admittedly, this is a nitpick of your point, but it's
> an important distinction because a dystopia is supposed to be the absolute
> worst anything can be. The US is just nowhere near that.

I mean, fair enough, but if we zoom out, well, global warming is a thing.
We're going to be too late to do much about it, and we may not be able to save
ourselves or anyone else among humanity. Most non-human life is now going
extinct. Multicellular life as a whole may go extinct if the clathrate gun
turns out to be a real thing.

We have declining living standards and the expectation of mass death. Oh, and
a rather evil government.

~~~
BjoernKW
> global warming is a thing

So is the heat death of the universe, yet we don't feel existential angst
about that. Global warming is a serious problem and it'll have a tremendous
impact on human life. However, this will happen in a timeframe of several
generations.

While the consequences are certainly dire global warming won't mean the
extinction of mankind, or most non-human life for that matter. Life will
adapt. Mankind will adapt. We can't prevent global warming anymore but we can
do something to slow it down and temper its effects.

There's no reason to be defeatist about this. In the 80s sometimes the notion
was floated that by now pretty much all of Northern Europe should be below
sea-level due to global warming. This shows both that things don't always have
to work out as badly as predicted and that a change for the better is
possible.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>So is the heat death of the universe, yet we don't feel existential angst
about that. Global warming is a serious problem and it'll have a tremendous
impact on human life. However, this will happen in a timeframe of several
generations.

Several generations, my foot! The real nasty stuff will be coming to a head
_just about_ when I'm starting to hit retirement age.

>While the consequences are certainly dire global warming won't mean the
extinction of mankind, or most non-human life for that matter. Life will
adapt. Mankind will adapt. We can't prevent global warming anymore but we can
do something to slow it down and temper its effects.

This is a stupid thing to say to people. "Oh, sure, _you_ might die, or your
_personal_ prospects might get a lot worse, but _humanity as a whole_ will
_probably_ persist!" Oh joy? Look, it's very nice that humanity might survive
in some form, but _I_ was hoping to survive in some form, into my natural old
age.

~~~
E6300
What are you talking about? The most pessimistic estimates predict a sea level
rise of 2 m by 2100. Just when are you expecting to retire?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Around 2050, when major climate crises and extinctions will be coming to a
peak and affecting economies, food supplies, and other human necessities, I'll
be about 60 years old.

~~~
E6300
Source?

------
quantumhobbit
I was going to complain about the absence of Bradbury's dystopia in Fahrenheit
451, but I guess it could be a combo of Huxleyan and Orwellian. Citizens were
pretty free in a Huxley way to consume empty media but would get an Orwellian
crack down if they stepped to far out of line and read literature.

~~~
MichaelMoser123
At some point Bradbury said that Fahrenheit 451 was all about trying to not
offend special interest groups. During the fifties he said that it is about
the politics of the era. Go figure what a writer really had in mind.

------
germinalphrase
I read PKD's "The Man in the High Castle" years ago, but that clearly doesn't
fit within article's description.

Can anyone recommend a novel/story that most clearly represents this version
of dystopia?

~~~
penfold
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. A mind-blowing masterpiece of virtual
dystopia, unbelievably prescient.

~~~
sjbase
Fantastic novel that'll continue aging well I think, esp. if we get more
serious about putting civilians on Mars.

------
dpweb
From the political point of view, would note the influence of war, which has
decided the global winners and losers, more than just the idea the optimal
systems always win. Particularly striking the idea among some smart military
leaders that the post WW2 order is clearly breaking down, and its
disintegration is unstoppable. That resulting instability is the most
terrifying thing if you're a pacifist.

~~~
paulpauper
This is something I hear a lot, but the evidence of collapse and
disintegration, imho, doesn't really bear itself out. Rather then there being
more unrest, social media and the media is amplifying unrest wherever it
offers, whereas in the past , generations ago, such unrest would have gone
unreported [http://greyenlightenment.com/why-isnt-there-more-civil-
unres...](http://greyenlightenment.com/why-isnt-there-more-civil-unrest/)

When WW2 ended, America, Britain, an Russia were on top...Britain's position
has fallen, but China and Japan are now 2 and 3 but America is still solidly
#1. As shown by Pinker, the evidence since WW2 suggests more peace (the Long
Peace)and less conflict, not more.

Trump's rise to power is more symbolic of national angst than in terms of
substantive change in policy. I predict there will be some disappointment by
former Trump voters who think that Trump is going to be this huge reformer.

~~~
rangibaby
> Trump's rise to power is more symbolic of national angst than in terms of
> substantive change in policy. I predict there will be some disappointment by
> former Trump voters who think that Trump is going to be this huge reformer.

Literally Obama. This election really burned me out on US politics to be
honest. Seeing smart people I generally respect instantly taking the opposite
position to Trump no matter what has been a big bummer. It's a bizzaro mirror
image of the last 8 years and is really tiring and disheartening.

~~~
chillwaves
Which positions have been taken by Trump that you feel are so good that it
should cut cross all biases etc?

I mean, some people get it wrong sometimes. Sure. And Trump seems to get it
wrong a lot. I'm not so sure there should be any position by Trump that can be
seen as indisputably good.

Sounds like false equivalence on your part.

~~~
true_religion
Indisputably good? No. But his stances aren't indisputably evil either as is
often said. I find myself in the curious position of agreeing with some of
Trump's actions but vehemently disagreeing with his reasoning behind them.

------
Animats
The dystopia we're getting is the one where most of the population can't
generate enough wealth to justify their continued existence. Those are the
people who voted for Trump. This is close to the Huxley model, but the 1960s
writers who foresaw this future assumed it would come with a heavy dose of
welfare. In many countries, it didn't. Think of this as the favela model. The
poor are not exploited, merely irrelevant.

Johnny Mnemonic (1995) rant on this.[1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1okpAj7Fhw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1okpAj7Fhw)

------
cryoshon
the concept of totalitarian democracy best reflects the present state of the
US and a few other countries within the west.

the US has elements of huxley, elements of orwell, elements of kafka, and
increasingly, elements of the phildickian dystopias.

there bottom line isn't quite captured by any of the above, though. the modern
dystopia is defined by individual paralysis as a result of being overwhelmed
the engineered political spectacle. it isn't that people are too happy to want
change, nor are they too scared of death, nor are they immersed in paperwork,
nor are they lost in cyberspace. they're too addled to envision a better world
as anything other than a fantasy.

people have been conditioned to think of the world as a stable equilibrium
that is managed by their betters. in the mass imagination, the default is that
the world runs itself as a result of the actions of power players who are
unreachable by any of their individual or group actions-- the powers that be
are on another planet, and raging against the machine on the planet that the
masses live on doesn't accomplish anything. the gap between the individual and
the top is simply too large to bridge in a single lifetime, and most people
wouldn't have the first idea about where to start even if they were interested
in reaching the "control room".

that's what the impression is, anyway. the result of this passivity gives way
to a culture of disconnection. politics are compartmentalized as "stuff that
someone else does", and then compartmentalized even further into "stuff that
happens that we as individuals shouldn't quarrel over because we can't effect
it". these nested compartmentalizations within the public mind result in
little action despite complaints and low standards of living. it's simply too
much cognitive work to tear down the walls that are constantly socially
enforced.

south korea recently dumped their government via swarming the streets with
millions of people until their demands were met. a similar strategy is
unlikely to be executed in the US, however. the public is divided between
those who still believe that they are politically empowered (the ascending
right wing) and those who believe that the power elite are acting against
everyone's best interest and there is no political force that can stop them
(no political orientation has the monopoly on this group's membership).

~~~
preordained
I think you've got some good insights there...a lot of it rings true for me,
anyhow. Not sure why the downvotes. They're just some thoughts, and it's the
type of article that invites whimsical musing moreso than rigorous debate.

------
SFJulie
The true dystopia is edotopia (edo = here in greek)

\- huxley: forcing on people to pretend to be happy and calling trolls
everyone emitting a critic CHECKED \- orwelian: the cloud & IT jargon is so
1984 I will not start on it: CHECKED \- PkD: media manipulation and
institutional lies: CHECKED \- Kafka: well, because of scanners the stamps on
my files get erased, and they ask my originals they loose, I will say personal
CHECKED (and no Pratchett optimism to save the day) \- Gulliver's travel: very
underrated scifi dystopian precursor, but CHECKED too. \- Vernor
Vinge/Heinlein: conservative schlerozed regim where birth gives wealth and
power: CHECKED

SciFi as a critic of the modern world was born in the XIXth to overcome
censorship (Montesquieu, diderot, voltaire, swift). The fact that once again
fiction is more critic than intellectuals is a bad sign.

The fact that it is obvious unemployment rate are ~25% in OECD (canada and USA
included) when you take into consideration all the people that cannot pay for
food, rents, heath without social help even when they have a job is WTF.

And the fact people think that poverty, corruption is not their problem is
really a new dystopia and it's there upon us.

Fear edo-dystopia more than mytho-dystopia.

------
fvdessen
Sometimes I think that we are seeing so many conflicting dreams of utopian
societies, and so many conflicting dystopian descriptions of our existing
societies that it makes us think our world is much worse than it really is,
without any path on how to actually improve it, and that's why everybody's
gloomy without a reason to be.

~~~
ahartman00
I think the media has a lot to do with it. [1]

"For mass media, insurance companies, Big Pharma, advocacy groups, lawyers,
politicians and so many more, your fear is worth billions. And fortunately for
them, your fear is also very easy to manipulate. We're wired to respond to it
above everything else. "

1\. [http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/why-were-
livin...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/why-were-living-in-
the-age-of-fear-w443554)

------
AlexisDT
Not sure if these are meant to be accurate, complete summaries of the
dystopias presented in each author's works, but if they are, these are
woefully lacking.

Key distinguishing features of Orwell's dystopia, for example, have been left
out, such as utter lack of privacy; induced hatred of [fictional] common
enemy; etc.

Similarly, for Huxley, they left out state control of reproduction;
cultivation of distinct/discrete social classes via genetic engineering and
conditioning; elimination of meaningful interpersonal relationships via
promotion of promiscuity and the demonizing of any non-surface-level
interactions; etc.

I'm sure there are more but these are just the first few that come to mind.

------
mtgx
> _modern, western, capitalist societies tend to be basically Huxleyan (HKP)
> and pre-modern, eastern, communist countries tend to be basically Orwellian
> (OKP)._

Let's not jump to conclusions. It's not too late yet for countries like the
U.S. or UK to become Orwellian. Unless you want to argue that modern societies
can regress to being pre-modern, and that's when they become Orwellian...

~~~
zzzcpan
Yeah, you can't really classify a state by any of these dystopias. All states
have the elements of all of them and can always shift from one to another.
Kind of fluid dystopias.

------
rainhacker
I like the authors writing style. He describes himself in these 100
interesting points here: [http://expressiveegg.org/2016/06/01/100-things-
about-me/](http://expressiveegg.org/2016/06/01/100-things-about-me/)

------
api
Our society is something between Huxleyan and Kafkaesque. Ironic since most
civil libertarians are mentally stuck on fearing Orwellian models.

------
known
Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), Narcissism
(egotism and self-obsession), Psychopathy (lack of remorse and empathy),
Sadism (pleasure in suffering of others);

------
tangue
for those who're seeking something else I would recommend Frank Herbert's Dune
-which doesn't get much love on HN but fits perfectly in an AI post truth
dystopia

~~~
radicalbyte
Well said. Trump reminds me a lot of a certain character.

------
novia
Can someone suggest the books to read to experience a kafkaesque dystopia and
a phildickian dystopia? I love dystopian novels.

~~~
rainhacker
kafkaesque : The Trial by Franz kafka

~~~
novia
Thank you! In school we read Kafka, but it was The Metamorphosis. Any clue
which Philip Dick books are dystopian?

~~~
cturner
Almost all of pkd is dystopian, but he really nailed brain-in-a-vat paranoia
in a way few others had. That is what the writeup goes for.

phildickian reads: ubik, andoids dream of electric sheep, time out of joint
(kinda), scanner darkly, maze of death (kinda).

Other: dr bloodmoney (post-nuclear), high castle (alternate history), radio
free albemuth (kafkaesque becoming orwellian), screamers (robot conquest, with
a paranoid twist)

~~~
novia
Fantastic! Thank you!

------
edblarney
"Communism is to blame for their foodbanks and breadlines, but capitalism has
nothing to do with ours (or vice versa)"

Just read 10 or more pages of detail from Stalin's 'Communist' Russia, or
visit Eastern Europe today where you see that it is still 'defrosting' from
that era ... and you can safely dismiss this kind of moral relativism rubbish.

The debate is long over: Capitalism with some degree of social intervention
has won, hands down, over and over again. So many failed 'communist' states
have embraced a degree of free markets, and have in almost every case improved
the standard of living of _most_ of their citizens.

Most Western nations have some negative attributes of all of these 'Dystopias'
surely, but none of us live in 'Dystopias'. :)

------
danharaj
Omelas deserves an honorable mention: a dystopia where a small minority are
abused and forced to suffer in an otherwise pleasant society. It's already
here.

~~~
atrendyguy
In the west minorities and outsiders are treated as morally superior to
natives. It's a pathologically "benign" civilization.

How long do you think an Arab would last in Han dominated China if he
constantly criticized the Chinese for "Han supremacy" and called for an end to
their way of life?

How long would a Han Chinese survive in Qatar behaving the same way?

Ironically, the openness of western society has led to its constant attack by
disgruntled minorities. Who realized long ago that complaining loudly wins
them resources and privileges.

~~~
chillwaves
The values of inclusiveness and free speech bring inherent stability and
progress to society. This is a feature, not a bug.

~~~
atrendyguy
> bring inherent stability and progress to society.

I would classify this sort of thinking as "whig historiography." It's a
popular meme, but there's no evidence that it's a good model of reality.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history)

Embracing "diversity is strength" feels good in an abstract sense, but it
seems to fly in the face of evidence. The chaos and conflict brewing now are a
direct result of this motto being played out over the last fifty years or so.

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1280266...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12802663)

