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A dystopian future
For any of those as obsessed with Brave New World, 1984, Gattaca and the like, I am undertaking what will (hopefully) become a vast project of compiling a detailed projection of what a dystopian future (~2030). I realize there is much more of an emphasis on the present in these forums, but I am curious as to some of your thoughts on potentially dark outcomes in the future of our society.
Without constraining your thoughts too much, I am looking more for details (no detail being to small) rather than over arching themes. For example, in the movie Gattaca humans are all bred within laboratories where their genes are optimized to capture their "maximum" potential.
Thanks in advance for any input.
Can't go wrong with omnipresent, big brother angle ala 1984.
The world is getting smaller is seems and its amazing (at least to me) how physical gaps between countries almost mean nothing these days; especially in the area of political philosophy and propaganda.
To me, the Internet is the greatest source of 'cry-wolfism' (yea I made that up) there is.
One day, an important event will happen that will spread like wild-fire across the net and people will choose to be blissfully ignorant because of their numbness to yea another piece of information (or disinformation for that matter).
Will the bloated Internet vaccinate our curiosity for the truth?
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r Can't go wrong with omnipresent, big brother angle ala 1984. The world is getting smaller is seems and its amazing (at least to me) how physical gaps between countries almost mean nothing these days; especially in the area of political philosophy and propaganda. |
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| Originally posted by kush paintings While I do agree the (US) gov't will play a larger role in the future for its citizens, I don't buy the totalitarian/ big brother state. Rather, I see oppression stemming from corporations and consumerism. That is, the people enslave themselves, rather than directly through a head in the government. |
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| Originally posted by kush paintings While I do agree the (US) gov't will play a larger role in the future for its citizens, I don't buy the totalitarian/ big brother state. Rather, I see oppression stemming from corporations and consumerism. That is, the people enslave themselves, rather than directly through a head in the government. |
I would say that you need look no further than the present to get a firm understanding of how the dystopian present has come to exist, what technologies propel it forward, etc.
The supreme court continues to allow unending access to law enforcement to use incredibly undemocratic devices to monitor the public (think: audio surveillence, visual imaging through walls, heat detection, satellite monitoring, etc etc), the federal government has compiled databases of all of your private access mediums (think: cell phone records, web browsing, e-mail), the electoral process is bugged by hackable voting machines and tendencies, the power structure of the government itself has become constipated with the backup of electoral nominations, people have become complacent on TV/Internet/Prescription drugs, there are laws regulating laws regulating laws (what new powers can the president have? what can we redefine 'torture' as), the cops have street signs up (in my area at least) urging you to report your neighbors for crimes to make money (capitalist gestapo ftl), dissenters are silenced in rallies/interviews/political events, corporations both foreign and local have amassed great power through banks and monopolistic hedonism while simultaneously suppressing the little guy from ever reaching the same stature via federal gag systems like the FDA, DEA (do you really think they don't allow you to use certain chemicals because of the drug trade? or as if they care about your personal safety in a system where health care makes billions from the ill? you're a potential risk to the big pharmers if you discover something new that can actually help people, so how do they limit that possibility? at the base sources of all chemical experimentation: solvents/acids/bases), etc etc etc
I suppose, as per the usual, this doesn't matter to those who wish to just exist. But to anyone who wants to truly taste what it means to be free, we are in a rather sad state of "big brother" affairs at the moment, except that big brother has turned out to be mostly the whole family.
I'm going to paint a different picture.
2010
The US economy falls into a depression worse then what happened in the '20s. A confused population thrashes out at anything that can be called different. Xenophobia and regional distrust skyrocket because travel is heavily restricted due to the exorbanent price of fuel.
2015
The continueing economic down turn breads successionist movements as the South, the North East, Texas, and the West Coast all form multi state unions. The US federal funding for foreign fighting plummets and the returning security contractors seek work with the newly created unions.
2020
Strapped for resources the unions begin fighting and North America decends into a civil war.
2025
Nothing has been resolved but the fighting continues. Life in the cities becomes more dangerous then living any where else in the country. Not only are the cities the prime military targets but they are also crippled by speratic food deliveries and frequent power outages.
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| Originally posted by atbell I'm going to paint a different picture. 2010 The US economy falls into a depression worse then what happened in the '20s. A confused population thrashes out at anything that can be called different. Xenophobia and regional distrust skyrocket because travel is heavily restricted due to the exorbanent price of fuel. 2015 The continueing economic down turn breads successionist movements as the South, the North East, Texas, and the West Coast all form multi state unions. The US federal funding for foreign fighting plummets and the returning security contractors seek work with the newly created unions. 2020 Strapped for resources the unions begin fighting and North America decends into a civil war. 2025 Nothing has been resolved but the fighting continues. Life in the cities becomes more dangerous then living any where else in the country. Not only are the cities the prime military targets but they are also crippled by speratic food deliveries and frequent power outages. |
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| Originally posted by Trancer-X I believe that we're going to see a combined synthesis of 1984 and Brave New World. Anyway, Big Brother is already here under the guise of National Security so it's just a matter of time before they really clamp down. I'm sure we'll see roundups of political dissidents (like myself) and the like after the next terrorist attack but by that time it will be too late anyway because once Martial Law is fully enacted our government will already have taken control of all forms of communication - as is evident by all of the Executive Orders that Dubya has been feverishly signing which pertain to COG. Also, the family unit is already in the process of being destroyed and in due time people will be further conditioned to look towards Big Brother as their family unit. People are going to love him, btw. |
In the next 15 years, privacy will be dead. We will have cameras on most street corners in medium and large cities. GPS systems will be mandatory in all cars, a federal RFID chip will be planted in every driver's license. In the name of the "war on terror", the Echelon phone monitoring system will be expanded...The feds will be listening in to all private conversations and scanning all emails for key words that may indicate "questionable" behavior or beliefs.. The government will use this data to compile a list of 'troublesome' Americans to be detained if and when a grassroots rebellion starts..
what happens next...
?
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| Originally posted by Capitalizt what happens next... ? |
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| Originally posted by atbell I'm going to paint a different picture. 2010 The US economy falls into a depression worse then what happened in the '20s. A confused population thrashes out at anything that can be called different. Xenophobia and regional distrust skyrocket because travel is heavily restricted due to the exorbanent price of fuel. 2015 The continueing economic down turn breads successionist movements as the South, the North East, Texas, and the West Coast all form multi state unions. The US federal funding for foreign fighting plummets and the returning security contractors seek work with the newly created unions. 2020 Strapped for resources the unions begin fighting and North America decends into a civil war. 2025 Nothing has been resolved but the fighting continues. Life in the cities becomes more dangerous then living any where else in the country. Not only are the cities the prime military targets but they are also crippled by speratic food deliveries and frequent power outages. |
"All mass movements, as one might expect, slip with the greatest ease down an inclined plane represented by large numbers. Where the many are, there is security; what the many believe must of course be true; what the many want must be worth striving for, and necessary, and therefore good.
In the clamor of the many there lies the power to snatch wish fulfillments by force; sweetest of all, however, is that gentle and painless slipping back into the kingdom of childhood, into the paradise of parental care, into happy-go-luckiness and irresponsibility. All the thinking and looking after are done from the top; to all questions there is an answer; and for all needs the necessary provision is made. The infantile dream state of the mass man is so unrealistic that he never thinks to ask who is paying for this paradise. The balancing of accounts is left to a higher political or social authority, which welcomes the task, for its power is thereby increased; and more helpless the individual becomes.
Wherever social conditions of this type develop on a large scale the road to tyranny lies open and the freedom of the individual turns into spiritual and physical slavery."
- Carl G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self
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| Originally posted by ams.rld We begin to kill everyone.... |
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| Originally posted by Trancer-X luckily, people are quickly catching on to those plans so unless your traitorous little pansy asses start retreating rather quickly into your deep underground bunkers (or in the case of Dubya's clan - to his new 98,000 acre ranch in Paraguay), they're probably going to start killing you back. |
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| Originally posted by ams.rld Wait wait I am not a traitor in that sense. I want change. I want to see the US strong where their is actual freedom and less of a rat race. But that won't happen until there is a big war on our land and people suffer. If there is no war=than there will be no change. As long as the war is on our land.... |
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| The soul is first aroused by the stimuli of sensual pleasures; it begins to turn toward them, and then becomes more and more involved. It becomes devoted to the body, and begins to lead an intolerable life (βίος ἄβίωτος). It is inflamed and excited by irrational impulses. Its condition is restless and painful. The sensibility endures, according to Gen. iii.16, great pain. A continual inner void produces a lasting desire which is never satisfied. All the higher aspirations after God and virtue are stilled. The end is complete moral turpitude, the annihilation of all sense of duty, the corruption of the entire soul: not a particle of the soul that might heal the rest remains whole. The worst consequence of this moral death is, according to Philo, absolute ignorance and the loss of the power of judgment. Sensual things are placed above spiritual; and wealth is regarded as the highest good. Too great a value especially is placed upon the human nous; and things are wrongly judged. Man in his folly even opposes God, and thinks to scale heaven and subjugate the entire earth. In the field of politics, for example, he attempts to rise from the position of leader of the people to that of ruler (Philo cites Joseph as a type of this kind). Sensual man generally employs his intellectual powers for sophistry, perverting words and destroying truth. The biblical patriarch Abraham is seen by Philo as the symbol of man leaving sensuality to turn to reason[12]. Philo holds that there are three methods whereby one can rise toward the divine: through teaching, through practise (ἄσκησις), and through natural goodness (ὁσιότης). (Via: Wikipedia) |
I really doubt there will be any type of secessionist movement. Americans are too dumb these days to organize something like that. The continued decline of our educational system combined with dozens of new reality tv shows and other "entertainment" on the couch = ignorant, fat, lazy, and apathetic citizens who are not ready to take part in a violent revolution...no matter how bad things get.
Yes, but the fate of the masses relies on the few who are willing to do something. Once in power the authorities will do what they are told to do like now and always.
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| Originally posted by Capitalizt I really doubt there will be any type of secessionist movement. Americans are too dumb these days to organize something like that. The continued decline of our educational system combined with dozens of new reality tv shows and other "entertainment" on the couch = ignorant, fat, lazy, and apathetic citizens who are not ready to take part in a violent revolution...no matter how bad things get. |
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| Originally posted by Capitalizt I really doubt there will be any type of secessionist movement. Americans are too dumb these days to organize something like that. The continued decline of our educational system combined with dozens of new reality tv shows and other "entertainment" on the couch = ignorant, fat, lazy, and apathetic citizens who are not ready to take part in a violent revolution...no matter how bad things get. |
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| In Vermont, nascent secession movement gains traction By John Curran, Associated Press Writer | June 3, 2007 MONTPELIER, Vt. --At Riverwalk Records, the all-vinyl record store just down the street from the state Capitol, the black "US Out of Vt.!" T-shirts are among the hottest sellers. But to some people in Vermont, the idea is bigger than a $20 novelty. They want Vermont to secede from the United States -- peacefully, of course. Disillusioned by what they call an empire about to fall, a small cadre of writers and academics is plotting political strategy and planting the seeds of separatism. They've published a "Green Mountain Manifesto" subtitled "Why and How Tiny Vermont Might Help Save America From Itself by Seceding from the Union." They hope to put the question before citizens at Town Meeting Day next March, eventually persuading the state Legislature to declare independence, returning Vermont to the status it held from 1777 to 1791. Whether it's likely is another question. But the idea has found plenty of sympathetic ears in Vermont, a left-leaning state that said yes to civil unions, no to slavery (before any other) and last year elected a socialist to the U.S. Senate. About 300 people turned out for a 2005 secession convention in the Statehouse, and plans for a second one are in the works. A poll this year by the University of Vermont's Center for Rural Studies found that 13 percent of those surveyed support secession, up from 8 percent a year before. "The argument for secession is that the U.S. has become an empire that is essentially ungovernable -- it's too big, it's too corrupt and it no longer serves the needs of its citizens," said Rob Williams, editor of Vermont Commons, a quarterly newspaper dedicated to secession. "Congress and the executive branch are being run by the multinationals. We have electoral fraud, rampant corporate corruption, a culture of militarism and war. If you care about democracy and self-governance and any kind of representative system, the only constitutional way to preserve what's left of the Republic is to peaceably take apart the empire." Such movements have a long history. Key West, Fla., staged a mock secession from America in the 1980s. The Town of Killington, Vt., tried to break away and join New Hampshire in 2004, and Hawaii, Alaska, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Texas all have some form of secession organizations today. The Vermont movement, which is being pushed by several different groups, has been bubbling up for years but has gained new traction in the wake of disenchantment over the Iraq war, rising oil prices and the formation of the pro-secession groups. Among its architects: --Thomas Naylor, 70, a retired Duke University economics professor and author who wrote the manifesto and founded Second Vermont Republic, a group pressing for secession, in 2003. --author Kirkpatrick Sale, 69, founder of the Middlebury Institute, a Cold Spring, N.Y., think tank that hosted a North American Separatist Convention that drew representatives from 16 organizations last fall in Burlington. The group is co-sponsoring another one Oct. 3-4 in Chattanooga, Tenn. --author Frank Bryan, 65, a professor at the University of Vermont who has championed the cause for years. Naylor's 112-page manifesto contains precious little explanation of how Vermont would do without federal aid and programs when it comes to security, education and social programs. Some in the movement foresee a Vermont with its own currency and passports, for example, and some form of representative government formed once the secession has taken place. The cachet of secession would make the new republic a magnet, Bryan said recently during a strategy session with organizers in Naylor's home. "People would obviously relish coming to the Republic of Vermont, the Switzerland of North America," he said. "Christ, you couldn't keep them away." But there are plenty of skeptics. "It doesn't make economic sense, it doesn't make political sense, it doesn't make historical sense. Other than that, it's a good idea," said Paul Gillies, a lawyer and Vermont historian. While neither the Vermont Constitution nor the U.S. Constitution forbids secession per se, few think it's viable. "I always thought the Civil War settled that," said Russell Wheeler, a constitutional law expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "If Vermont had a powerful enough army and said, `We're leaving the union,' and the national government said, `No, you're not,' and they fought a war over it and Vermont won, then you could say Vermont proved the point. But that's not going to happen," he said. For now, the would-be secessionists are hoping to draw enough support to get the question on Town Meeting Day agendas. "We're normal human beings," said Williams, 39, a history professor at Champlain College. "But we're serious about this. We want people in Vermont to think about the options going forward. Do you want to stay in an empire that's in deep trouble?" -------- Second Vermont Republic: http://www.vermontrepublic.org/ Middlebury Institute: http://middleburyinstitute.org/ Free Vermont.net: http://www.freevermont.net (Original source) |
If you ask me, I think you will see the overall decline of the nation-state as countries give up sovereignty to over-arching transnational entities and privatized corporations that specialize in the functions of government. Corporations like Blackwater, Aegis, Halliburton, etc. will become providers of security, welfare, healthcare, and education and will replace the state as semi-autonomous entities within an over-arching global governance system. This could be highly problematic because the corporate entities will have no loyalties or accountability to anything other than their board of directors who are motivated completely by profit. In places like Africa, you are already seeing corporations move in on week governments and civil societies and replacing critical components of governance - privatized security in Liberia, nationalized industries in Zambia being outsourced to international conglomerates, social welfare being conducted by NGO's and now for-profit private corporations like Booz Allen Hamilton and Chemonics all across the continent: and all of these have serious implications. Is a private security firm really accountable to the government of Liberia that they are contracted to protect, and can they resist the incentives behind plundering the country of resources and ignoring human rights, like the national military did? The foreign privatization of domestic industries in Zambia has led to a collapse in worker's rights and the elimination of domestic competition. And when someone profits in the humanitarian industry... at who's expense does that come? Only a matter of time before the West follows these trends.
A slightly different, and more apocalyptic, picture of the future:
The Coming Anarchy
Robert D. Kaplan
Tagline... how scarcity, overpopulation, tribalism and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet.
http://dieoff.org/page67.htm
One of the most thought-provoking, controversial reads in the last 20 years. I personally think a lot of it is bollocks and very Orientalist, but nonetheless there are some concerns to be addressed.
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| Originally posted by Capitalizt I really doubt there will be any type of secessionist movement. Americans are too dumb these days to organize something like that. The continued decline of our educational system combined with dozens of new reality tv shows and other "entertainment" on the couch = ignorant, fat, lazy, and apathetic citizens who are not ready to take part in a violent revolution...no matter how bad things get. |
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| Originally posted by Capitalizt In the next 15 years, privacy will be dead. We will have cameras on most street corners in medium and large cities. GPS systems will be mandatory in all cars, a federal RFID chip will be planted in every driver's license. In the name of the "war on terror", the Echelon phone monitoring system will be expanded...The feds will be listening in to all private conversations and scanning all emails for key words that may indicate "questionable" behavior or beliefs.. The government will use this data to compile a list of 'troublesome' Americans to be detained if and when a grassroots rebellion starts.. what happens next... ? |
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| Originally posted by DJ Shibby The only escape, a sanctuary really, is to embrace a little bit of chaos in your day to day. |
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