Dystopia

 George Orwell. Aldous Huxley. Margaret Atwood. 

Interesting choice of authors. These are some of the people that create dystopias. 

Sure- one might think - I like reading about dystopias!

I do too. But one has to notice, that all these stories begin with a dystopia and end with "free will" being exercised. Well, what about how they are created? How could such a scenario possibly exist where nobody rebelled against an obviously horrible/ mind-numbing system or way of life?

Look no further. We have been steadily proceeding to one. The decades we have spent have ALL been geared towards a dystopian future. The mindless drones that we are introduced to? Those happen to be us.

Allow me to demonstrate:

You are born. You are delivered screaming in a hospital that is determined by your parent's economic standing, who were offered the right opportunity at the right time. A few formative years pass by with you either having servants at your beck and call or with your mother being the primary care-giver. 

After this, your separation anxiety not withstanding, you are sent off to school. For the sake of brevity let us assume you fall into the second category of people. The ones with not much to their name in the grand scheme of things. So you are sent off to school. Your parents spend hours waiting in line, to get an admission, sometimes even scouting for schools when you haven't learnt to walk. The people with larger economic means do not have to go through this, however a pecking order does exist.

 At school you are taught a generic curriculum that doesn't cater to anything that should matter - the interest level in said subject matter, the method of learning, the students learning pace etc etc.

You have to choose a career path that will determine your life for the next 30-40 years or so based on where the majority of employment opportunities lie. Anything unconventional? You better have backup in the form of economic support for a much longer, extended period of time. All of this is smoothened and the ride is nice if you have begun with an existing amount of resources at your disposal and your parents haven't had more children than they can afford. It also helps if nobody has fallen sick and you dont have a debilitating mental health related problem. It also counts on the fact that everyone is pleasant to each other to foster an environment of good learning. 

In the mean-time the 1%, i.e., the people with the real power, the unicorns etc, (which , let me remind you, although they are amazingly romantic to read about are STILL the 1%) decide to squeeze more, extract more, exponentially increase their resources to ensure (on the offhand chance that they end up immortal) have absolutely NO SHORTAGE of resources of ANY Kind. They do this by expecting more from the people who I just wrote about- fresh , unwittingly innocent faces that think everything that is being asked of them is to be expected because "This is how it always is". More importantly for the overwhelming majority, if you dont agree to the terms put out by the 1% you can be replaced by a million (yes a million) other people just like you with a very similar skill set (identical even). And you agree to these terms because you have HOPE. HOPE that you too will climb the ladder, and you too will become the 1% against all odds.

So we end up with A LOT of people, who for some reason continue to perpetrate the cycle in the hopes that they or their offspring will one day be the 1% (because that's a power trip NOBODY wants to give up on) and accept whatever comes their way. This my friends is how a dystopia begins. Slowly all signs of "free will" (which in itself is a very subjective concept) begin to melt away until you are truly, just a cog in the machine, everything you consume is propaganda to make you think everything is perfect, and everything is pneumatic. Once your offspring and their offspring are truly integrated into the system - that's when there will be some mistake, some cog in the machine will realize they can do better for themselves and will break free. And promptly a bunch of authors will "write about it".

Welcome to the Brave New World, Gilead - Circa:1984

Until next time,

DragonRider