Dystopia and wellbeing
By Papa Akuffo for Curate Magazine Issue 4: Well
After everything that’s happened, how can the world be so beautiful? Because it is. — Jimmy the Snowman from Oryx and Crake (one of my favourite dystopian novels).
As soon as I was able to understand that maybe there was more to life than computer games, riding my bike and sweets, I realised that I liked stories that were a little darker than what I watched on CBBC.
There was one moment in particular that crystallised this self-knowledge — the day I first watched Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The film blew my pre-teen worldview apart. I still think it is one of the best action films ever made — all the critics agree (okay, one does). For anyone that hasn’t seen it Terminator 2 is a tale of a cyborg with a conscience, travelling back in time to protect the potential saviour of mankind from AI powered obliteration in the future. Clearly high drama, and at 9 years old beyond anything I considered — it was a revelation.
Could the world end this way, are we at risk from liquid metal assassins? Can robots talk? I had many questions to be answered. But all questions aside this film had opened a door I wouldn’t have thought I would want to walk through — the door of fictional impending doom.
I have continued to enjoy these dark dystopian fantasies for 20 plus years and I never asked myself why?
It’s not something I could have put my finger on when I was 9 or even in my 20s but as I have gained a real sense of my own mortality in my mid 30s it’s given me a theory. For me (and I suspect for lots of people) dystopian fictions are a cathartic outlet for my darkest fears and deepest worries about people I know, people I don’t know and the world we all live in. They make it okay to explore the dark potential of life at a safe distance.
Conducting research around the topic made it clear that the discussion of the effects of dystopian tales has been part of public discourse for some time. In part due to the mega-success of teen dystopias like the Hunger Games trilogy and Divergent. Unsurprisingly the current conversation revolves around the impact these tales are having on ’the children’ (won’t somebody please think of them).
Are these stories having a negative impact on their happiness? Can these tales make them scared of technology? Are these teen fantasies a vehicle for subversive and effective capitalist rhetoric (yes, really). I have no doubt that all these arguments contain some truth (even the capitalist agitprop) but why are so many people drawn to these stories? We can’t all be gluttons for punishment wanting to wallow in our fears of mortality. If not that, then could these dark tales also offer something else, something positive? Is it possible that dystopian fiction might actually help improve our wellbeing?
Let’s look at how well-being has been defined:
Well-being is most usefully thought of as the dynamic process that gives people a sense of how their lives are going, through the interaction between their circumstances, activities and psychological resources or ‘mental capital’… high levels of well-being mean that we are more able to respond to difficult circumstances, to innovate and constructively engage with other people and the world around us.
From the New Economics Foundation’s National Accounts of Wellbeing
Implicit in this definition of wellbeing is an idea that it is more than being happy all the time. It is an embrace of the breadth of human experience, good and bad. It means understanding what makes you happy as well as what scares you and keeps you up at night. I think that dystopias can help us understand our fears at arms length by looking at them through another’s eyes.
A Safe Space
It’s surprising more people don’t break out into a cold sweat when they watch the news. Even a cursory look over the headlines warns of our immediate demise — terrorism, global warming, cancer, too much bacon — all are threats. Dystopian tales often allow us to explore these potential extremes of these threats without having to truly deal with the consequences.
Let’s take a well known example The Hunger Games. The main heroine, Katniss, comes from a deeply poor town in a totalitarian state with no opportunities and barely any food. On top of this she is forced to enter a death match with a set of deadly peers that she’s unlikely to win. So far, pretty shitty. And yet, once she is launched into the killing of other young people she finds love (maybe) and makes friends. Predictable, obviously, but for most people that’s not their primary experience because they are seeing themselves in the character.
So why would this be important for us and our wellbeing? Because despite the apocalyptic shit show taking place the great moments of human existence can still happen. It give us hope — we hope she will succeed, we hope she can be happy. We end up reconnecting with the most positive of emotions despite the darkest setting. So conversely a bleak tale can help us recognise that even in the most dire situations there is always hope to drive us forward — without having to go through it ourselves.
And whether it all works out for Katniss or her dystopian peers we (if you are lucky enough to live in the calmer part of the world) can ultimately put the book down or turn off the film and have a cup of tea, safe in the knowledge we are not being threatened by annihilation. We can take relief in contrasting the darkest fiction with our comfortable non-threatening sofas. We can call it a win and a reason to recognise that could be far far worse. The rumours of our impending deaths suddenly seem a little more exaggerated.
An early warning system
Obviously I’d like to say that all dystopian tales ultimately offer lightness and hope but that would be wildly incorrect. Often the real value to us is in the warning they give us about the future.
Understanding the many ways in which we as a species could destroy the world we have built can make us feel, rightly or wrongly, like we have more of grip on what the life can throw at us. Dystopian classics such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World, offer us a pretty clear steer on what happens when we let the powers that be take to much power from us. Books like Nexus show us the terrible potential of collective human thought and Dave Egger’s The Circle highlights the potentially insidious influence of Silicon Valley.
None of these are life affirming tales so how does a “no one is bigger than the system” message help us feel more equipped to deal with life? By allowing us to plan for the worst.
Here are some real life examples:
The UK Government tried to establish a national ID card system in 2004 — not the most threatening idea in the short term. But there were cries of outrage by the public and it led to Bill Cash (a Member of Parliament), addressing the house, copy of Orwell’s 1984 in hand, warning of a “sea change” in the relationship between state and citizens that shouldn’t be excepted. 10 years later the ID cards have still not been introduced and probably won’t be.
Or you could look at Max Schrems’ data privacy case against Facebook, no doubt influenced by paranoid late 90s hacker fantasies like err… Hackers. Having read Facebook’s terms and conditions he reasoned they may have far more data on him than they would like to admit. He took them to court and the case resulted in him receiving over 1,200 pages of his personal data from Facebook. He currently has two more cases pending.
Even the recent emergence of advanced Artificial Intelligence has been offset by our memories of Terminator 2 and Skynet and how that could turn our world into robot wasteland. Google’s AI project, DeepMind, is aiming to solve general intelligence and make machines capable of learning things for themselves. The consequences of which could range from benign to world ending. It was recently announced that the security team around the project are working on implementing a ‘killswitch’ incase there is a “harmful sequence of actions”.
We will never be able to predict where every threat will come from or even the impact these things will have. But I think we can all take comfort in the fact that dystopian fortunetelling does give us a chance glimpse our failures and make evasive maneuvers when the time comes.
Not all dystopias
All of the above said, I know that not all dystopian fiction can help us learn to deal with the world in a healthy rounded way. There are many that spin conspiracies that only make us feel helpless to change the world we live in (see David Icke). Nevertheless, the best dystopias, no matter how frightening, help to start conversations about how we would cope, what we can do to avoid these situations and what the tell-tale signs could be.
Dystopias try to answer all the questions we have at a safe distance, so that we can switch off and focus on the lives we lead, all the while having a little better understanding of who we are.
