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Poll: Which Dystopian Future/Apocalyptic Scenario are We Most Likely Heading Towards?

Discussion in 'General Chat' started by Warden, Dec 23, 2022.

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Which Dystopian Future/Apocalyptic Scenario are We Most Likely Heading Towards?

  1. Blade Runner

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  2. Matrix

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  3. Metropolis

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  4. Hunger Games

    2 vote(s)
    33.3%
  5. Idiocracy

    3 vote(s)
    50.0%
  6. I Am Legend

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  7. The Purge

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  8. Soylent Green

    1 vote(s)
    16.7%
  9. Wall-E

    5 vote(s)
    83.3%
  10. Waterworld

    3 vote(s)
    50.0%
  11. Logan's Run

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
Multiple votes are allowed.
  1. Warden
    Slann

    Warden Tenth Spawning

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    Like it says on the tin:

    ac80f093813beb13ac21cadedeca375b.jpg

    I feel like a combination of these are possible, so feel free to vote for your top 3 or keep it at your top choice as you prefer.
     
  2. Scalenex
    Slann

    Scalenex Keeper of the Indexes Staff Member

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    I have voted for Idiocracy, Wall-E, and the Hunger Games in that order.

    I believe stupidity is and will be the primary driver of societal decay. I believe we will get fat, unhealthy and increasingly unable to perform basic tasks for ourselves. I believe at the end stage, our corporate overlords are aiming to create a vague sort of neo-feudalism and that they will treat poor people as game pieces for their amusement, especially good looking poor people.

    I never saw Metropolis.

    I only saw parts of Soylent Green and that was ages ago. Maybe a future society would
    recycle corpses into food for poor people
    but that won't actually make a large impact on things. I cannot imagine it would impact food supplies by more than a percentage point or two.

    I think the Matrix is a cool premise, but is not practical though I suppose one can argue that it is a good metaphor in that society will create grand public lies we are all supposed to believe in, I think it's a lot more subtle than the Matrix. Also, the science aspect of the science fiction of The Matrix is very weak in my opinion. I would call it Science Fantasy.

    Zombies could arguably be Science Fantasy too, so that takes out I am Legend, as much as I liked Will Smith in that era of his career. His famous slap aside, I believe the turning point for his career was After Earth.



    Even if society's overlords had no morality at all. The Purge makes no sense from an economic point of view. There are better ways to thin the population of "undesirables." I think it would look more Logan's Run. Before things get as obvious as Logan's Run, I believe we are going to see some old people "accidentally" exposed to high mortality risks. Like the government housing Covid patients in a retirement home filled with at risk elderly people though only in an authoritarian regime, not a free country like the United States.


    I think we might see aspects of Blade Runner but I don't think artificial organisms that look just like people are in the cards. Too many special interests would oppose it. I cannot imagine a religious society not being staunchly opposed to it. I cannot imagine a "woke" society not being staunchly opposed to it. That leaves Communist countries as only true place where such artificial people could be invented but they cannot come up with groundbreaking innovations, they can only steal it.

    Maybe, an independent batshit crazy inventor with a lot of time and money on his hands could make a breakthrough. That said, has Elon Musk made any really progress on any of his grand visions? Since the days of Nicolas Tesla and Alexander Graham Bell, has any small scale inventor managed to rock the world? It would be interesting if a failed attempt to make artificial humans led to a major breakthrough that advanced society such as synthetic organs that can enhance the human lifespan.

    You know, Alexander Graham Bell came up with the telephone while experimenting with ways to cure deafness. His mother and wife were both deaf, so that is why he dedicated his life to studying the transmission of sound to recognizable speech. I find his story heart warming and bittersweet.

    I'm not sure if human-like robots would be a good thing or a bad thing for society as a whole. I just don't think it will happen in the next two hundred years.


    Waterworld is interesting. There is a huge middle ground between "Global Warming isn't real!" and "We are going to be come Waterworld!"

    If 10% of all land was claimed by the ocean, it would be really bad, and there would be a ton of bad secondary effects. Less farmland, lots of dead fish, crazy weather. That said, we would not be living on oil rigs and fighting off "Smokers".

    If anything, I can roll Diet Waterworld effects of global warming into the category of "generic environmental devastation" which is present in Wall-E, Hunger Games, and Blade Runner and I suppose Soylent Green and Logan's Run.

    I'm using my moderator powers to put Logans Run on the list.
     
  3. Krox_v.2
    Razordon

    Krox_v.2 Well-Known Member

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    I'm disappointed Mad Max isn't on there. Went for Idiocracy, Wall-E and Waterworld, though the last 2 only in a general environmental disaster/degradation sense. Idiocracy due to Trump becoming president in 2016 meant we, as in the USA, are already pretty much there. As H. L. Mencken said "as democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." * Interesting side note, my maternal grandfather and my aunt on my mom's side are both buried in the same cemetery as H. L. Mencken, which also contains the graves of 2 members of Napoleon Bonaparte's family.
     
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  4. WildColonial Boy
    Bastiladon

    WildColonial Boy Well-Known Member

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    I always thought 'Soylent Green" would be a good name for a professional recruitment business... "Soylent Green is People!"
     
    Scalenex likes this.
  5. Killer Angel
    Slann

    Killer Angel Prophet of the Stars Staff Member

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    I went for Ideocracy, Wall-E and Waterworld (alphabetical order), not because i believe we are really heading toward them but because i think they show (albeit increased by several order of magnitude) actual possible scenarios: a sort of programmed mass stupidity, growing problems in dealing with waste and global water level increase.
     
    Imrahil likes this.
  6. Scalenex
    Slann

    Scalenex Keeper of the Indexes Staff Member

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    If you every dealt with a temp agency while unemployed, the name fits.

     
  7. Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl
    Slann

    Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl Eleventh Spawning

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    What an interesting (if pessimistic and doom-laden) question.

    I have only seen one of the above films (and have little interest in seeing the others), so I'm going to cheat and include two other works that aren't on the list but I feel could certainly become relevant.

    My nominations are Wall-E, H.G Wells' The Time Machine and Phillip Reeve's Mortal Engines, in that order.
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]


    Wall-E is such a quietly intelligent film that goes well beyond just being about a cute little robot finding love. It's incredible to think it was actually made by Disney/Pixar, given the route of mediocrity that both of those are heading down now. The dystopian future Wall-E showcases is certainly one that feels as though it could emerge from our current time period:
    • Earth is so choked with rubbish and pollution that is has become uninhabitable by humans, forcing humanity to evacuate and leave Wall-E and his fellows to clean up, and the vast majority of Earth's wildlife seems to have gone extinct. The most obvious dystopia, I know. In some ways we are improving given our attempts to change to renewable and non-polluting sources of power, but we still have a long way to go (we seriously need to get a move on in replacing all landfill sites with incinerators, which can also act as a source of renewable power in themselves, and some companies are still getting away with disposing of waste illegally even today, mainly due to corporate corruption).
    • Humanity is ruled by one supercorporation, Buy 'n' Large, that has a monopoly over everything - supermarkets, railway stations, the new starships that host the surviving remnants of humanity. The leader of humanity is not a monarch, a president or a Prime Minister, but the CEO of Buy 'n' Large, who has adopted all the trappings and mannerisms of a President. Companies should not have more power than countries by any means. Countries enrich humanity by promoting culture and traditions, while businesses with the same or greater amount of influence take away such culture and replace it with corporate greed. Something needs to be done to curb the power of billionaires and their regimes, or else they will find ways to seize control of the world through whatever means they have at their disposal. Amazon is a particular threat that could feasibly be the Buy 'n' Large of our universe, unless we can boycott it as much as we can. I certainly do, by buying as much as I can from local retailers, and everyone else should too. Also we should all increase our standards and learn that morals are superior to money, because the chief weapon these Ferengi scum have at their disposal is being able to buy individuals into doing anything, such as Jeff Bezos bribing people to write positive reviews for Rings of Power. Stick to your principles, and turn down any money that is offered to make you go against them. Show a backbone and make it known that your loyalty cannot be bought, that you're not a low-life mercenary. If we don't, I can feasibly see the future being controlled by these greedy lesser life-forms hiring private armies to conquer nations and enslave their peoples. Hmm, that sounds like a good idea for a dystopian novel in itself...
    • Humans have become corpulent and lazy, reliant upon robots to do everything for them and becoming increasingly incapable of living independently and without assistance. Of course it's simple to avoid becoming like this - cut down on junk food, perform physical and mental exercises regularly, and don't become dependent on increasing levels of technology, in particular the Internet in our case. Analogue methods, where still available, work perfectly fine and allow us to remain independent. Only by rejecting modernity and re-embracing past traditions and attitudes can it be possible for us to avoid becoming enslaved by technology.


    H.G. Wells is probably my novelist hero. As well as being the first known miniature wargamer, he is the grandfather of the science-fiction genre and it is extraordinary how he was able to predict events such as the World Wars and the development of nuclear weapons. The Time Machine is one of his shorter works, but it certainly has a dark feel to it as the Time Traveller of the story witnesses what happens to humanity.

    The majority of the novel and the 1960 film both take place in the year 802,701 AD (further into the future than any other sci-fi work I can think of), where humanity has degenerated into two subspecies - the dim-witted, herbivorous Eloi and the savage, nocturnal Morlocks. The Eloi are similar to the humans in Wall-E, in that they are indolent and reliant upon everything being provided for them, and in general behave like many herbivorous animals that exist today, showing little regard for one of their own when they are killed or hurt and being entirely focused upon the basic functions of eating, drinking, sleeping and mating, with no drive to improve themselves or develop an advanced society. The Morlocks are no better, being no different to any non-human animal predator today, driven only to kill, eat and kill again. Very much like Lord of the Flies, The Time Machine illustrates what will happen to humans if they trust too much in their base instincts and ignore their higher thinking and conscience - they will ultimately lose the intelligence that brought human societies to such grand heights in the first place and degenerate back into animals. This is a more important warning than ever in modern society as more and more people deludedly think it is a good thing to have casual, 'liberal' attitudes to sexuality and more 'forgiving' attitudes toward criminals and other dysfunctional individuals. The rules that past generations established in society were there for a reason - to keep society orderly, respectable and safe - and the more the people of today attempt to tear these rules down, the more humanity will return to a pathetic, animalistic past. The Time Traveller in the novel believes that the world's aristocracies become the Eloi and the lower-classes become the Morlocks, but I personally believe that the Morlocks are descended from the murderers, rapists and gangsters among humanity, while the Eloi represent the offspring of the peaceful majority that becomes more and more afraid and unable to defend themselves against them.


    Mortal Engines is more fanciful than my other two choices, but its post-apocalyptic setting resulted from one of the most likely potential apocalypses in this day and age - America and China fight a nuclear war that annihilates America and eradicates all the political and military infrastructure of China - and the whole theme of cities consuming one another harks toward the rampant urban sprawl that has occurred in Europe over the past 50+ years and threatens to get worse with more immigration and the continuing increase in population of our nations.
     
    Last edited: Jan 3, 2023
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  8. vemaniks
    Skink

    vemaniks New Member

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    We're already living through brave new world aren't we?
     
  9. Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl
    Slann

    Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl Eleventh Spawning

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    I wish I could like this twice.

    I reckon Huxley would be both amused and appalled that his literary work would predict the degeneration modern society is suffering.
     
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  10. Killer Angel
    Slann

    Killer Angel Prophet of the Stars Staff Member

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    with a generous sprinkle of 1984
     

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