The Big Four Dystopias

Intro:

People often like to talk about the apparent march toward dystopia in their society. The most popular take often is that we are heading for some Orwellian nightmare whenever apparent breaches of free speech or speech are compelled. Whether this is hyperbolic Twitter (whoops I meant X) nonsense or real, people are often scared of the dark future that lies ahead for us all. But people tend to focus on the Orwellian but never the other big four horrors. Where are the fears of the Kafkaesque dystopia? Or the Huxleyan dystopia of mindless pleasure? Maybe it’s cause Orwell is the most influential out of all in the pop culture scene or that state control is the most overt in that scenario. Regardless, I want to give an overview of what makes each type of dystopia special and what to look out for.

The Orwellian Eye: Orwell

One important factor of Orwellian dystopias, one that is often missed by the general pop culture interpretation of Orwellian dystopia, is the destruction of language. While the overbearing surveillance and government oppression through force are apparent. That doesn’t make an Orwellian dystopia (to paraphrase Ted-Ed). The key feature of Orwell’s horror is the manipulation of language and thought itself. This is no better summed through Doublethink: The act of simultaneously holding two conflicting opinions and believing both of them to be true. See for example these slogans.

And Animal Farm

In both stories, Orwell examines how powerful institutions influence reality to control the populace. The bright ideals of Animalism are corrupted as the powerful control the rules, and the simple black-and-white framework is dissolved to provide the ruling elite with get-out-of-jail-free cards. 1984 is chock full of examples, from Newspeak, the official INSGOC which waters down words and meaning in such a fashion it makes any thought against the party impossible. Words like science and democracy are completely foreign concepts to the occupants of Oceania, words that have double meanings or alternative meanings are removed, and language is simplified to stuff ungood (as opposed to bad) to uncold (as opposed to warm). The fact that the Newspeak dictionary becomes smaller with each edition offers a sinister implication of words disappearing from the human consciousness. Newspeak serves the purpose of being designed “to diminish the range of thought” (Britannia).

Orwell understood that while the boot-stomping onto a human face forever was always there. If people couldn’t even properly express what they feel or even think what they want to think. The party basically controls reality. Orwell’s dystopia is all about the brutal party doctrine being the only thing that is there. Where words and concepts like love, truth, and plenty are the total opposite of each. You are made to love Big Brother, truth is whatever the party needs it to be. Orwell’s dystopia is the party’s control over every single aspect of the citizen’s mind, body, and soul. They must believe whatever the party wants them to believe cause the party is god.

Orwell was inspired by Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. You can Examples of unpersonaing people, thought police, and room 101 torture methods were inspired by Stalin while the Ministry of Truth, newspeak, and doublethink can be traced back to Nazi Germany. Orwell was a very politically aware man, serving in the Spanish Civil War which first exposed him to the dark side of humanity. This would lead him to become something of a disillusioned socialist, he would work with the then-secret propaganda department Information Research Department fighting communist influence within the UK. Signs to look out for the Orwellian dystopia:

1. Abuse of language, designed to limit thought or expression or words that are erased in favor of what the party wants to erase facts and concepts.
2. The state is controlling more of your life. This can be anything from the media to mass surveillance to even the movies you consume. Everything must be controlled by the state.
3. No privacy, even in the peace of your home, you will never be free of Big Brother’s watchful gaze.
4. Any dissent is stamped out with brutal efficiency, to the point where no one cannot speak out without fear someone might report them to the police. The citizens are turned against each other ensuring Big Brother is always watching
5. Reality is absolutely controlled by the state. Anything that paints the ruling party in a negative light, or simply shows the party was incorrect is erased. He who controls the past controls the future-Orwell

Pleasuring us into slavery: Huxley

Aldous Huxley: a teacher to Orwell, writer, and drug experimenter had different ideas about his eventual prodigy. While Orwell believed that dystopia would come around with absolute control of everything and everyone. Huxley believed that dystopia could come about with the consent of the people being oppressed. While this idea wasn’t entirely lost on Orwell, you can see this with how INGSOC treats the majority proles the population with a constant supply of bread and circuses. Huxley took a a slightly different approach, believing that technology and ultimately mindless pleasure could bribe the populace to accept their overlords.

Entertainment, drugs, and sex were some of the means of keeping the majority populace compliant. People can go on what are called SOMA holidays, which basically involve them getting blitzed on drugs for days or weeks at a time whenever stressed.

Everyone has sex with everyone else, it is considered weird, and taboo for people to have only one or two partners. Sex is merely a means of pleasure-seeking, which is encouraged by the government to ensure compliance. Books that encourage thought or conversation such as Shakespeare’s The Tempest (from which Brave New World gets its name) are not banned but are never demanded. The citizens within Brave New World are not interested in reading books, but rather watching.

While eugenics and brainwashing from birth are the primary means of controlling the population. Children are encouraged to join in with erotic play to erase any sense of modesty and encourage polyamory. Mother and father, family units are completely alien concepts. Children are trained (or poisoned) to become certain people based on what society at the time demands. It is important to mention that while Huxley’s dystopian government is by no means democratic, that doesn’t mean it can’t be.

Unlike Orwell’s government which by its nature has to be totalitarian. Huxley’s doesn’t have to be. In fact, by bribing the citizens with endless drugs, porn, and every other mindless pleasure. You can be as democratic as you want. The people allow themselves to be enslaved. The people want to be enslaved because they get endless pleasure without having to think. Wouldn’t you want that? You would never have to worry and all you need to do is accept the brainwashing and eugenics.

You can have the most secure elections in history but if the opposition cannot come up with a better plan of action that doesn’t involve things getting worse for the citizens. Why would they vote for anything else? This is the genius of Brave New World’s dystopia. You are happy and content. Any dissent is threatened with violence as opposed to being enacted harshly such as in the Orwellian dystopia. You want to be a slave for drugs, porn, and sex.

You will never want to read Shakespeare cause there is never any desire to educate yourself. Individuality, much like in 1984 is also erased from the citizens, but rather than brutally enforced after the emergence of said individuality, the populace is trained from birth to not know individuality. Huxley saw a world where everyone was gently pushed into the roles and beliefs most beneficial to society.

The populace doesn’t feel the oppression you’d think they would experience because they have been trained to be happy with the oppression. The oppression doesn’t register until the outsider John ruins everything. John: The member of the uncultured (cause they don’t conform and read Shakespeare) tribe who is introduced as an outside perspective, exposing the absurdity of worldbuilding and just how suffocating it is to live in a place where conflict or stress doesn’t exist.

Where intellectualism has been snuffed out in favor of mindless pleasure. He is viewed as a freak by society because he reads Shakespeare, he quotes passages from The Tempest, including the book’s namesake. John reveals what the other POV characters fail to see. How the removal of conflict, hardship, and individualism results in a stifling environment that would drive any reasonable person mad. Pretty much what happens to John at the end of the book. Things to look for in a Huxleian dystopia:

1. The populace is bribed with distractions, everything is for the mindless pursuit of pleasure and joy, ideally without enriching them.
2. The government democratic or no, is heavily involved in the lives of the citizens, normally in the form of supportive functions to provide the citizens with an easy unthinking life.
3. Intellectualism and curiosity are discouraged. Nobody wants to read or be challenged.
4. Collectivism is the bedrock of society, everyone shares with everyone else.

Hell is bureaucracy: Kafka

Franz Kafka had a hard life. Not only was he considered a disappointment with his dad, a sickly person throughout his life, and trapped in a horrific job as an insurance clerk. He would die in his forties, never having published a single story thinking he was an absolute failure at everything.

However, his only friend, Max Broc, disobeyed his dying friend's orders and didn’t burn the unpublished manuscripts, which would include The Trial, Metaphorosis, and The Castle among others. Kafka’s dystopia was heavily influenced by his own life. The emotions of being born into a confusing and needlessly cruel world that treated him like a disposable insect. The Kafka dystopia examines the horrors of the work environment and the chaos of reality itself when attempted to be controlled by bureaucracy. Let’s talk about bureaucracy kids! What makes something Kafkaesque?

Well to quote Merriam-Webster, Kafkaesque is characterized as Kafka's work is characterized by nightmarish settings in which characters are crushed by nonsensical, blind authority. Thus, the word Kafkaesque is often applied to bizarre and impersonal administrative situations where the individual feels powerless to understand or control what is happening.Kafkaesque reflects the emotions and worldview of Franz Kafka, who felt that he was trapped in a world where the authority (his dad and the workplace) were governed by such confusing maddening leaps of logic and processes that he was crushed by it. Like many a great artist, his work is a gateway into what Kafka was thinking in his time.

Kafka as a dystopian force is best summed up in The Trial, where John K is arrested for an unknown crime, against an unknown person and is made to solve his own crime against the judiciery that doesn’t even know the case he has been charged with. This is only the start of a strange and confusing labyrinthine of trying to figure out what he did while everyone has no idea what crime he committed.

Every lead demands him to go to some other person who asks him to do something before he talks to them and that can’t be done before he fills out something else etc etc. Bureaucracy is weaponized against the populace, forcing them into endless labyrinth structures that turn humans with autonomy into numbers on a sheet. Rats in a maze are to be shuffled along according to what is ordered by the bureaucracy.

Kafa’s dystopia also doesn’t have to be totalitarian, any bureaucratic system can become tyrannical without the exact oppression of the state towards the individual. You can see this type of system from government bureaucracy to book publishing.

Systems of bureaucracy are so confusing and labyrinthine that you can’t even begin to understand them as an outsider. While these systems are not weaponized, in fact regardless of the dehumanization that comes with such torturous bureaucratic processes they are not designed primarily to oppress the populace. In fact, The Kafka model hasn’t been used in a manner that weaponizes bureaucracy against the populace.

The real-world examples one can find, like going to the bank and getting shunted through dozens of systems just to get one question answered (Not foreshadowing a story I am planning). Indeed Kafka himself tends to show how the dystopia happens with the implicit consent of those oppressed. Poseidon for example is a short story about the Greek god of the seas who is so utterly consumed by the workings of his kingdom that he will never explore his own kingdom. Too prideful to delicate, Poseidon is a victim of his own ego, creating the bureaucracy oppression that cages him inside.

(Thanks TedEd) The Hungar Artist, while not traditionally about bureaucracy, does have the hallmarks of the kafkaesque scenario. With a circus performer who fasts for extended periods. But is ultimately dissatisfied with the art due to limitations. When his act loses popularity he is allowed to starve himself to death, The twist comes that he was a fraud because he didn’t stave himself out of force of well, but because he never found a food he enjoyed. Nobody cares then and he is replaced with a panther which is very popular cause he is happy with performing what the populace wants.

This is an example of society different from a man’s self-destruction, enabled by his own strange skill set, and replaced by a literal animal that performs exactly what society wants them to do. We have the confusing dehumanization of the person and unclear demands on the person which reward sheer coincidental appeal to the masses. It is Kafkaesque in the traditional sense. Kafka’s dystopia is all about dehumanization, either inflicted on the populace or upon ourselves. We build the cage of dystopia around us by allowing ourselves to become oppressed.

And sometimes the dystopia is about some freak accident/misfortune. An example one can be The Metamorphosis. Where Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to discover that he has turned into an insect. In a typical Kafkaesque line of thinking, his first thought is how he is going to get to work on time in his current state. What happens next is how he becomes a burden on his ridiculously needy family, gets neglected, and eventually staves to death. Much to the relief of his family who are now free to live their lives without him.

A life where one is not always working through no fault of their own is less than human. A burden whose removal from life is celebrated as a triumph. This follows the basic aspects of a Kafkaesque dystopia, dehumanization, and indifference to humanity. Confusing and arbitrary rules make the POV character realize how utterly helpless they are against systems/ societies that are cruel and indifferent. Gregor is the victim of circumstance, treated like a burden to society (his family ), and wants nothing more from him than to die and get out of the way.

The Kafka dystopia is cruel in a detached way, it isn’t direct like Orwell or even to an extent like Huxley but one that only thinks about efficiency and the bottom line. The people in this dystopia are just cogs, mice in the maze that cannot do anything aside from their predestined role. Work is your life, bureaucracy is your god. And if god decides you are guilty or worthless, then what else is there to do but die? You need to remove yourself from life to be replaced with what society needs be it a cool new panther or releasing your family from your burden. Things to look out for in the Kafka dystopia:

1. Systems of government are increasingly confusing and nonsensical, the people are forced to traverse seemingly endless systems that never solve anything and are ultimately pointless.
2. Government systems that dehumanize the populace into expendable blips on a chart, life, and individuality are never considered against the processes of bureaucracy.
3. The indifference to humanity and life within society, people who don’t fit in are treated as freaks and allowed to self-destruct.
4. Scenarios that seem surreal or dreamlike, nightmarish situations where you have no control over your life and are at the mercy of uncaring systems or government structures.

Reality is malleable: Dick

This form of dystopia is probably the least well-known and not very well-understood. When I first came across this type of dystopia I thought it was just a variation on the Huxley dystopia. It was only after reading and studying the dystopian models that I would find the key difference that sets Phillip K Dick’s dystopias from the rest. And that is the focus on the disintegration of reality itself. The Phillip K Dick Dystopia is described as a Rule by replacing reality with an abstract, ersatz virtual image of it.

(Darren Allen) Or pseudo realities, simulated humans, drug-induced epiphanies, techno-surveillance paranoia, and an occluded god. (Phildickian offers multiple similar definitions). Unlike all other dystopias listed here. The government isn’t a necessary requirement to bring about this dystopia. Often the dystopia is brought about by the misuse of technology by us for our enjoyment. The state is sometimes involved but often in a nebulous capacity. A Scanner Darkly is drenched in the horror of 60s drug culture but also has an ever-increasing overreach in their surveillance.

The protagonist in particular is an agent of the police force undercover in the drug den but is slowly getting hooked on the drugs and losing his own sense of reality. We don’t know how serious the surveillance state really is because the protagonist’s POV is so screwed up he can’t tell what is real anymore. The druggies are prisoners in their own reality, there could even be an overlap with the Huxleyan dystopia where the state is allowed to overreach without the people knowing because they are drawing in their drug-induced hallucinations and later having their brains utterly ruined from the drugs.

The state can step in to alter the personalities and the perceived realities by providing new names and roles to the drug addicts, robbing them of their bodily autonomy by twisting what they believe they are.

There is also the scrambler suit, a contraption where the appearance of the wearer changes constantly, This is to help protect the undercover officers but it also lends to the dystopian destruction of reality as undercover officers could have arrest warrants put out against themselves. Reality itself is always in flux, always in some sort of questionable state at all levels.

However, A Scanner Darkly is somewhat of an anomaly for the PhillipKDick Dystopia. The way Dick expressed this anxiety was through the metaphors of the holodeck, virtual realities, and robotics. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (sensibly renamed into Blade Runner when adapted into the movie) involves androids starting to figure out that they are sentient before getting hounded by blade runners who believe that they are defective and a danger to society. Electric Sheep explores differences in reality between humans and androids, and how the two often blend to where it is difficult to tell one another apart. Even the protagonist struggles to tell if he is a human or an android.

This is a common element of the Phillip K Dick dystopia, people struggle or are unable to tell if their reality is real. If they are who they believe they are to be. The lines between reality and virtual reality are blurred. The Minority Report is a novella where three mutants can predict crime before it has occurred. This has allowed the state to arrest people before they have committed crimes. Minority Report explores the nation between a free-will-based universe or a determined universe.

The question about reality here is how one fights against their supposed predetermined fate, and if we have any agency in pursuing our own desires if everything is pre-determined. Is our reality fixed or can it be altered? Plus the state can decide what reality is most likely if they want to ensure the safety of the population and arrest innocent people under the pretense that reality will always be on their side.

I think you should be seeing a pattern now, PhillipKDick was very concerned about how we use primarily technology to discombobulate ourselves from reality, or how the state weaponizes technology against the population to influence reality.

While this is hardly new, Orwell and Huxley explored this within their own fiction but what sets Dick apart is how we often enable the destruction of reality, or the state weaponises reality-altering tech against the population. Reality is not in the control of the party like in Orwell through language nor is it constantly upheld with the consent of the populace like with Huxley. But rather enabled without or used by the state. Reality itself is malleable, a state of being constantly in flux that can be abused or degraded. The state can use it but it doesn’t uphold it utterly. To me out of all the dystopias, The PhillipKDick dystopia is the scariest, While the competition is stiff, I find it a dystopia that seems to grow more real with each year.

We have deep fakes shattering the common reliance on video evidence. We have people attempting to put the words into the mouths of politicians and popular figures. We have to keep second-guessing ourselves.Or we adopt a rigid and unchanging perspective of reality. A reality where your enemies are always the literal devil, and your friends are always good. Your news feed constantly and persistently aligns with your worldview. You only choose what you want to hear and that in turn influences reality itself. The echo chamber is a PhillipKDick dystopia, a pseudo-reality enabled by technology and filled with simulated realities.

Dick never could have predicted the power social media could have on the populace, nor could he have predicted the extent AI girlfriends would have over lonely men. He did explore sex robots in Electric Sheep but he didn’t fully grasp how men would replace real-world relationships with simulated humans designed to peddle to basic urges. Dick’s fascination with reality and how technology and substances influence the perception of reality is something that we as a society are struggling with now.

AI is continuing to blur the line between humans and robots. We are at higher risk than ever of being misled, misinformed, and lied to by the state. We are coming up with more and more ways to simulate human interaction and relationships without committing or experiencing the real world. We don’t even have to leave the house to interact with people.

We can emulate an expression of the real thing very well. It is also important to note that the PhillipKDick dystopia has an occluded god, meaning hidden or concealed. This can take the form of anything like the flower used in substance D, which is referred to at the end of A Scanner Darkly as a god for drug users.

This can be seen in Electric Sheep, where the gods (creators of the robots) are hidden from the robots themselves. Same for Minority Report, where the precogs are godlike figures that nobody sees in person but are ruled by their pre-cognition. God is nebulous much like reality, something that exists in the background. Enabling the destruction of reality but often indifferent.

Unlike the state being a god in a tangible way like in the Orwellian, Huxley, or (to an extent) Kafka dystopias, the god in PhillipKDick is akin to a cosmic horror entity. Indifferent, uncaring but utterly destructive. Things to look out for in the PhillipKDick dystopia:

1. Technology or substances, be it AI, Robotics, or drugs used to distort or call into question reality.
2. The state weapons technology that can trick or influence the populace into believing a version of reality
3. A simulated depiction of reality replacing the true reality. This can be brought on by the people themselves or the state somehow.
4. Simulated humans becoming so convincing they are almost human. Human interaction is replaced with a simulated version of the real thing.

Conclusion:

The cold reality is that if we are not careful, we will end up in a dystopia that mixes and matches elements from all four dystopias. Technology has brought upon us a version of the PhillipKDickian dystopia. Governments and companies make their internal systems so complex and complicated that we can barely understand what we are signing up for. Government overreach is a persistent problem, along with the destruction of language. Huxley was correct in part about how media can manipulate us and how the complicity of the population can be won over with cheap sex and mindless entertainment.

The observant reader will note that there is often an overlap between the dystopias, especially in how reality is controlled and how the state is often involved. The methods are different and the execution can yield different results but I do believe that there is common anxiety all four dystopias explore, chiefly how the perspective of the populace can be controlled or influenced. It is important to not despair and to not become lazy. These dystopias were warnings to us, they help us recognize the flaws in our society and how we can avoid them. How we can hold our leaders accountable.

However, beware of the insidious nature of the PhillipKDickian dystopia. If you can’t tell what is real, if you are only hearing what you want to hear, you might just be the ones enabling the dystopia. Have a nice day.

Sources:

Four Kinds of Dystopia - Darren AllenDystopian Fiction — Damn It, I Love America! What is Dystopian Fiction? Definition and Characteristicshttps://unherd.com/2022/08/welcome-to-philip-k-dicks-dystopia/What makes something "Kafkaesque"? - Noah Tavlinhttps://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/78617 The Essence of 'Kafkaesque' - The New York Times Neil Postman : The Huxleyan Warning Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans - Boston ReviewWhat Inspired Philip K. Dick to Write "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" | Galaxy Press Newspeak | Doublethink, Thoughtcrime, Big Brother | Britannica Rewriting The Past: The History That Inspired Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four | HistoryExtraThe Information Research Department: Britain's Secret Cold War Weapon Revealed Politics and the English Language | The Orwell Foundation https://www.britannica.com/topic/Brave-New-World The 24 Best Amusing Ourselves to Death Quotes Review of Aldous Huxley: The Political Thought of a Man of Letters - VoegelinView. The Use of Satire in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World Phildickian - A Definition | Philip K. Dick https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Kafkaesque#:~:text=Kafkaesque%20•%20%5Ckahf-kuh-,complex%2C%20bizarre%2C%20or%20illogical%20quality