The Thirst to Prove Ourselves: What Post-Apocalyptic and Dystopian Fiction Promises
There has been a recent boom in post-apocalyptic and dystopian stories (The Hunger Games, The Walking Dead, [any and all zombie movies], The Divergent Series). “Preppers” are preparing for a collapse of modern society and an eventual fall into chaos and anarchy, stockpiling canned goods and ammunition, equipping their homes to be “off the grid” should power go offline.
People are thinking and planning (some are even hoping) for darker times ahead.
Why?
I’m a millenial. I grew up with the inculcation of self-esteem, stranger-danger, Smokey the Bear, the introduction of Multiculturalism, the advent of the Internet (and therefore online sexual predators), Google, Napster, mobile cell phones that actually worked outside a car and without a cable, laptop computers and…you get the idea.
Millennials are arguably the first generation exposed to a flood of tech and the brave new digital world it ushered in: instant access, “free” media, world connectivity. We were raised by overly protective baby-boomers, who believed their children needed constant coddling and protection (Read: The Overprotected Kid — The Atlantic). I was fortunate enough to live in the countryside where I played outside and without parental supervision. But many of my fellow millennials were not that fortunate. They were exposed to rubber toys, boring playgrounds, constant hand-holding.
What has resulted? Cushy lives without struggle.
Many of my generation were told as youngsters how wonderful they were when they were not. Their self-esteem was nurtured more than their competency. They weren’t allowed anywhere without mommy or daddy (usually one or the other, a lot of millennials are children of divorce). In short, they were never allowed to grow and learn who they were and what they were capable of.
We all need to push ourselves
Humans are part of nature. Obvious statement, I know, but what does everything in nature do? Look at a dandelion, that annoying weed you can never get rid of. It competes. It defies the odds. It beats out your lawn for basic resources like water and the sun. It survives.
So for the generations who had everything provided to them without effort, who got whatever they wanted on a whim (including answers to their questions thanks to the Internet), who were never allowed out of mother’s view, is it so hard to believe we’d fantasize about a world that pushed us to our limits? A world forcing us to provide for ourselves and demand our best? A world free of overprotection, of countless regulations on our behavior?
The post-apocolatpic world is free of convention, of easy access to food or resources; it is absent of digital media. They are societies without regulations. They’re dangerous environments requiring cunning, bravery, and strength.
Dystopia is a riff of the same desire for independence: to make a horrendous world better, to fight the power. For example, the dystopian land of Panem in The Hunger Games is oppressive. It puts too many limits and regulations on its people. It constantly reminds its citizens they’re unimportant and their lives are worthless. Everything is done for and by the government, and its people live and die by it.
The dystopian world itself isn’t a fantasy. The fantasy is the power of the individual against an opressive machine. How one (usually) young person can make a difference and restore freedom and justice.
Both the post-apocalyptic and dystopian worlds offer us something our first world soceity doesn’t: physical and emotional struggle.
Millennials and Generation X didn’t survive through the Great Depression. We didn’t send our men to Europe or Japan and our women to factories to build war machines during World War Two. We were not drafted into Vietnam. Life for us has been pretty good. It’s been easy. Maybe it’s been too easy.
Millennials and Generation X instead fight obesity, the possibility of identity theft, Facebook’s changing privacy settings, and the Kardashians. My point is not to trivialize or diminish the issues of our time (okay, the cracks about Facebook and the Kardashians was…); they’re real issues that need addressing—please don’t misunderstand. But they’re not great struggles requiring bravery or cunning in the traditional sense, like former generations had to face.
We play in virtual realities filled with faux danger. We think up worlds where we can use our natural human wiles, where we can be unapologetically strong in both offensive and defensive capacities, physically and mentally. Where we must fight for basic resources and even our lives. We “dream” of worlds where fear is real. These raw, brutal fictional worlds demand our best, not for approval or likes on Facebook, but because we need to perform at our peak to survive.
The real world is calling us. Zombies are just an excuse to get us there.
Random but not unrelated (in my opinion) facts: CrossFit was founded in 2000. Both the Tough Mudder and Spartan Race Series were founded in 2010. All three physically demanding ventures have reached success with millennials, and all three demand physical strength and excellence, free of artifical environments or machines.
