Cyberpunk: The Dystopian Version of The Reality

The genre of cyberpunk slowly impacted me to realize the dystopian reality of our life. It did not come straight to my mind and make me realize how this dystopia hides in our life. Instead, cyberpunk is like the comparison table that helps me see the world and myself clearly by noticing the similarity between what is going on in the cyberpunk world and our world.

Cyberpunk emphasizes “high tech low life.” It often starts with a society with highly advanced technology but people still live with turmoils and riots. It creates an anxiety-ridden society, which emphasizes the “low life” reality in the settings. Most of the people struggle to live their life and they seem abandoned by society as it keeps updating itself and people can’t accept the drastic changes and some of them become the bad guys and some of them become the heroes to save the world.

All the cyberpunk movies I have watched did not impact me by being significant like milestones on the path. All of them Impact me by deepening my realization of how the world is evolving and how I am struggling to comply with its changes.

My archives:

Akira(1982) directed Katsuhiro Otomo

Cowboy Bebop(1998) directed by Shinichirō Watanabe

Ready Player One(2018) directed by Steven Spielberg

Alita: Battle Angel(2019) directed by Robert Rodriguez

These four cyberpunk movies all have the same setting that the villains and heroes are marginalized by society. In these movies not only those villains are marginalized, most of the innocent citizens are marginalized as well, which is pathetic but real to life. The drastic changes in society create a great gap between normal citizens and society as a whole. Which is also a line drawn to exclude these citizens and put them on the outer range of the community.

These settings threaten me into being a person that is afraid of being left behind. I regard this dystopia of “high tech low life” as a result of incompatible progress between social changes or other aspects that create a trend and people’s adaptation to this new trend. This trend includes new theories and ideas, new lifestyles, or new definitions of wealth and social status. When I say “trend,” I am referring to changes in society. In the movies, if you are left behind because you miss the trend, you deserve to live in the slum. In reality, if you miss the trend, it will become a chronic disease that kills you when you finally realize its harm, like the inability to comprehend society and get used to it. Or, you will be unable to understand those people around you because they start thinking differently.

I identify my intellectual identity as a trend catcher who is urged by the scariness of being marginalized by society, but at the same time, my identity still has uniqueness by having intellectual and critical opinions. To be more specific, our society is involving at the rate that basically new stuff comes out every day. If we miss new things, these things will just be piled up and create obstacles or barriers in our interaction with the world. What is more detrimental to the evolution of hardware facilities of the society, is the new ideas or new concepts people come up with that either challenges the existing theories or breaks new ground of knowledge. When this is the case, reserving our ideas and comply with the new and popular perspectives is always a better choice. In other words, following the trends and just keep the doubts to myself is always a convenient and relatively better choice. It might sound pathetic that not everyone could change the world. Convincing others of my knowledge or opinions in order to change the trends is costly and is a highly risky investment of my time and energy. Announcing that I agree with the public is always a convenient and comfortable choice even though I don’t agree with them. However, I am not saying that I just follow the trends blindly just to prevent being marginalized. I am saying that following the trends is just a way to prevent myself from being marginalized, but my unique identity is also preserved when I still view these trends objectively and subjectively and have my own opinions or doubts though I just keep them privately. Honestly, I will still be a happy guy trying not to be marginalized while I still don’t agree with the trend I am following.