Of Dystopia

Literature and video games might seem to be from different ends of a spectrum, but both have one thing in common - dystopian societies. Dystopian societies are often futuristic societies that has degraded into a repressive or controlled state, often under the guise of being Utopian. Whereas literature works use dystopian societies in order to warn others of authoritarian control, video games use the exact same things as settings for the games.

One can easily imagine the horrors of a dystopian society: A world filled coloured in black and white, military police patrolling the streets, ready to shoot anyone, anything, ruined houses and buildings and security cameras all around, at any corner, any turn, there's always someone watching your every move. This is where people are led to believe that they actually live in absolute comfort, through propaganda and fear. We would never want such a thing to happen to our world, or our countries, right?

But what most people don't get is that a dystopian society is more subtle than they think. If we already live in a dystopian society, how are we to tell if it is a dystopian society? To us, we might think our living standards are high, but how are we truly to know, when there is noone else to compare to?

Of course, there has been the existences of what we call 'true' dystopian societies such as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. But from all those countries we can see how the people actually responded to their authoritarian governance - obedience. They have been brainwashed into believing that their own societies was the pinnacle of Utopia; nothing could be better than that. But of course, when compared to other countries such as the USA, it is easy to see how Nazi Germany/Soviet Russia has fallen into a dystopian society with authoritarian governance.

Therefore, the question I would leave you with, is how, if ever, are we able to tell if any of our current societies are dystopian societies? A coutnry might by democratic or Communist, but either way, the people of that country are constantly subjected to daily propaganda promoting their own country in order to garner control over the population. Being born and bred in Singapore, of course I'd think Singapore was the pinnacle of economical success, but that is also due to the very fact that all the newspapers ever print and everything on the Wikipedia site on Singapore is beneficial to Singapore's image.

Know that Singapore has itself been called a hybrid-regime. But we don't know that. And we don't want to know.

Because the government doesn't want us to know.