carbontwelve

This is day twenty-one of my attempt to write something, anything, every day for 365 days in a row. I haven't been very good at the continuous posting this year...

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When looking at a shortlist of my favourite films: Blade Runner (1982), The Fifth Element (1997), Alien (1979), Brazil (1985), Total Recall (1990), to name but a few; I notice one theme, a Dystopian future runs throughout them all.

“Everyone pulls a bad card. What matters is how you ultimately play it.” – Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Legacy

This alongside current world events got me thinking that a Dystopian future is quite possibly humanities best bet. That's not to say its humanities only choice, we also have mutually assured destruction left on the table.

One might be rightfully outraged at the suggestion that humanities only future lies in extinction or becoming through corpocracy as dehumanising and unpleasant as possible.

However it can already be seen how the illusion of a perfect society is maintained through corporate and bureaucratic control. In America you have Corporate Power resulting in corporations showing ever-increasing control over the legislative process through a variety of methods. While in China an almost totalitarian regime is increasingly using technology to rank its citizens by a “social credit” score.

“There will come a time when it isn't 'They're spying on me through my phone' anymore. Eventually, it will be 'My phone is spying on me'.” – Phillip K. Dick

While a Dystopian future may not be humanities only future it is most likely the path of least resistance. Take Brexit for example; after the referendum the rhetoric changed from stay or leave to leave with a deal or leave without a deal.

The amount of work that needed to be done for the U.K to leave the EU with a deal is greater than that needed for it to crash out without one. The former required the whole of government to function like a well oiled machine when the reality is that its very far from that and unlikely to become so before the deadline.

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Humanities journey towards dystopia will not be without those with good intentions trying to hold us back from the brink, the problem is that the forces at work pushing us over the cliff need do very little to actually achieve their goal while those fighting the good fight have to become almost sacrificial.

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