Dystopia(s)

[sabotabby]

Just came back from a really interesting lecture at the Reference Library called "Bill C-51 and Dystopian Literature" by Allan Weiss, whose classes I now regret not having taken at York.

I found nothing to dispute in the content of the lecture, which traced the pattern of the classic dystopian novel and applied it to the recent thievery of our civil liberties in this country. In particular, he talked about the essential problem of happiness (in the Epicurian/Utilitarian tradition) versus freedom, and the willingness of citizens—and ultimately, the morally cowardly protagonists—in dystopian fiction to surrender the latter to avoid having the possibility of the former challenged.

This said, my brain went on a weird tangent that I couldn't quite put into words during the Q&A*. Early on, Weiss drew a distinction between classic dystopian fiction, which is about a totalitarian state (e.g., We, Brave New World, and of course 1984), and modern dystopian fiction, which is about the absence of a state or a state supplanted by corporate interests (e.g., cyberpunk, Mad Max). He talked about Bill C-51 in the context of classic dystopian literature, which, yes, makes more sense, but I kept thinking about the parallels with modern dystopian fiction, which are much less obvious.

It occurs to me that the disintegrations of our freedoms in the modern Western world are less a problem of totalitarian governments than a crumbling of the state itself. After all, the Tories were elected out of anti-government sentiment; fear of a state, not desire for a strong one. The oppressive provisions of Bill C-51 arguably support corporate interests more than those of a traditional state—data mining may be used to toss a few people in black sites, but it is far more broadly useful to sell to private companies to market to and/or sue private individuals. Even the state's coercion can be outsourced to private prison contractors. The enemies of the state as defined are as likely to be those who interfere with economic interests—trade unionists, environmentalists, First Nations activists, and the like—as they are to be ISIS fanatics with IEDs.

Or put another way: Are the traditions even actually separate?

One young woman in the audience raised the issue of Facebook, and how much of their privacy her generation has willfully given away, and this resonates with me a great deal. As we move towards unified online identities under real names, abandoning the pseudonymous anarchy of the internet's early days, as we move from programs that required expertise to use to apps that anyone can use but few can alter, as my students read classic dystopias and don't see what the big deal is, after all these people all have jobs and aren't starving and besides, they have nothing to hide, it seems doubtful to me that privacy rights will be anything anyone bothers to fight for anymore. It reminds me of what a prof said in one of the classes I did take at York: There are coercive and consensual ways of controlling and oppressing a populace. The coercive government is the one that's easier to overthrow.

It astounds me that, just because Canadians don't understand statistical risk and don't understand legalese, we can meekly put our heads down and accept, even embrace, such a brutal attack on basic freedoms. Only we've done it before, we do it all the time, and so why would I expect any different? Ask someone if they're willing to accept a decrease in their freedom, and they will say no; ask them if they'll vote for Harper or Trudeau and they won't see the inherent irony at all.

One woman in the audience actually said, "I'm an ordinary citizen, the government already knows everything about me, what do I have to fear from this?" The mostly educated audience took delight in Weiss's takedown of her ("so was Maher Arar") but I think her attitude is more common than mine or most of the people who go to Tuesday night lectures at the Reference Library.

Sometimes I fear that I won't be able to finish any of the dystopian novels that I start (I have started many) because politics descends into entropy faster than I can predict it. But I don't think there's a bottom to this well.


* I almost never ask questions at Q&As for that reason; the second there is the threat of a mic near my face, my brain turns to mush.

Comments

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

It's the same over here, too; and I've heard many times, "If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't worry about your privacy being violated."

[sabotabby]

I think people must have really dull lives and especially sex lives if they aren't worried about their privacy.

[kryss-labryn.livejournal.com]

I would get calls from people wondering why their Internet usage was so high, asking what sites people in their house had visited when, and what always astounded me was not how many people expected that we could see that (we can't; Canadian privacy laws still forbid us from tracking more closely than the total used each 24 hours, broken into uploads and downloads, but it's not an unreasonable assumption to make), but how many people were really upset that we couldn't. People seem to feel it comes under the same sort of category as cell phone calls, and that we should have a list of which device went where when, which of course is HUGELY invasive.

I point out that I certainly don't want MY ISP tracking MY usage, and then some agree, but a lot more say they have nothing to hide and get very put out that we don't have that info.

Really, people? You WANT Rogers to know about your weird llama porn? We already can see all the porn channels you're subscribed to (even in Internet tech support); you want us to be able to see that too? Hey, your spouse/mother-in-law/kid is authorised on the account too, you want them
to be able to see everything you do online too?

Dumbasses. Also, my tablet's auto-fill recognises I'm trying to type 'dumbasses' but not 'Internet'? Fail.

Sad thing is that you can get software to track it, which works particularly well on third-party routers (which you then don't need to install on each individual device), but we aren't allowed to mention it, because then they'll want support for it and we don't do that. But, see, there's a difference between tracking the info yourself for your own use, and a corporation tracking it for THEIR use.

Canadian Tire is moving to a rewards card instead of the money, and I've activated the card, but Mike stopped me from registering it, because, as he pointed out, they will use it to track our purchases. WHICH IS BAD.

Dumbasses.

[sabotabby]

It's amazing how much freedom we will give up, not for safety or security, but for convenience. Even me. I have rewards cards and shit.

One of the reasons I went with my ISP is that they've been pretty vocal on opposing usage tracking and such.

[ironed_orchid]

My ISP has been very vocal about how data retention is a stupid and unworkable idea. And they went to court over demands that they share details about all their customers. It helps.

[sabotabby]

So did mine. They lost, but it still makes me think well of them.

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

I dont think theres gonna be an apocolypse. Things are just gonna keep getting shittier, slowly, bit by bit until you wake up one day and its like "holy shit, everything sucks." "Walking Dead" is gonna be real, but its gonna be poor people instead of zombies.

[sabotabby]

I agree.

[ironed_orchid]

Your thoughts make a lot of sense to me. I've been reading novels about Thatcherism this week¹, and the dismantling of state institutions in favour of corporate apparatus is a strong recurring theme. But then the Torys (under all names and in all countries) are very big on state surveillance, even if they outsource the actual work to corporations or if they establish government agencies which are treated as autonomous entities, without the scrutiny or transparency which would usually apply to govt. departments.



1. What a Carve Up! and The Rotters Club, by Jonathan Coe, totally recommend What a Carve Up! It's brilliant take on the rich and upper classes in the UK during the 80s.

[sabotabby]

It's a blended type of dystopia, I think. Totalitarianism is simple and easier to dismantle.

I'm reading The Circle by Dave Eggers right now, and it's all about consenting to have your privacy rights removed.

[ironed_orchid]

Tangentially related, but of interest to you, I just started season two of Utopia.

[sabotabby]

Wheeeeee! Isn't it great?

[ironed_orchid]

So, so great.

[ironed_orchid]

Six hours later I just finished Utopia, and fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

[sabotabby]

DID THEY HAVE TO NOT RENEW IT? REALLY?

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Which one? Google shows three different series with that name - I assume it's not the reality show one?

[sabotabby]

It's a Channel 4 UK show, not the reality show! This one. It's about a group of fans of a weird, obscure comic book that get drawn into a conspiracy and saying any more would ruin a lot of the fun. But there is some spectacular cinematography and great characters and diverse casting and all of the colours are oversaturated and the soundtrack is a masterpiece. Also it's one of the more viscerally disturbing and upsetting shows I've ever seen.

[ironed_orchid]

The UK 2013 one.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2384811/?ref_=nv_sr_1

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that the disintegrations of our freedoms in the modern Western world are less a problem of totalitarian governments than a crumbling of the state itself.

Most of whatever I ever read by the two Tofflers (usually only https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler is mentioned, but they work together; I heard them both o-tone: "we play ping pong" at Stockholm University ages ago) has come true or been at least sound in basic analysis but they are, interestingly, no true Dystopians (at least, I don't get that impression, or didn't, rather;) but in fact Futurists! Off course, they now work for governments and corporations...gotta make a living.

Best anti-dystopian (my Mollberg reading;) satire I can currently (coffee time, just got up) think of, stays Lem's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurological_Congress which is not only hysterically funny (besides wherefrom the Wachowskis stole the idea of blue or red reality pill for The Matrix; which narrative they basically 'sampled' from Gibson's Neuromancer trilogy and then they even took away the black bakelite phones to change realities from the Zone in Tarkovsky's Stalker, everyone knows that; I just like pointing it out occasionally especially when the Wachowskis are called Geniusses) but also disturbingly accurate, as if one were living in a reality where a certain Professor Trottelheimer (Trottel means fool in Mordor Speak and 'heimer' evokes homely, rather wherefore it is 'reiner') is waiting for one just around the corner to secretely deal one a bite of reality; only which one?

There are coercive and consensual ways of controlling and oppressing a populace. The coercive government is the one that's easier to overthrow.

So when everyone complies consensually (cybersex included and for free) by their own 'free' will, it all works just so much better. I've sometimes wondered why on earth my parents ever bothered to flee from the tyranny of the late GDR but they were dreamers, they thought Sweden was 'Utopia'...and then it was.
I just got my birth certificate from there after applying for one for six months roundabout but now it is no longer the Church that does the people production registrating but the State Tax Company, where all are invariably friendly yet noone knows what so many other hands do behind their back but they did send me one after all this time as I said, I don't care whether they recognise how I married (in Italy) thirteen years ago, Took His Name (sic!)k and got divorced three years ago but still keep His Name for I can't imagine going to Berlin to get bothered about name-changeing because Mollberg personality (my nationality stays Mordoresque); but I noticed how they have noticed how my mother died in 1989 but somehow missed that so did my father in 1997 (he is buried there; I mean his ashes are, alongside hers) which makes him one of the two kinds of people on this planet the Swedish Tax System recognises:
1. those obliged to pay taxes in Utopia
2. those potentially obliged to pay taxes in Utopia
(wherever they're from or live or what nationality they may have, say indigenuous people like me, for instance so then I saw how I must re-read Lem and get Being There with Peter Sellers on DVD, I still love that film! Mr. Chance was not afraid of microphones and his attitude so practical!

Just saying, to assure none of that is particular to any one state, it's most international but as long as everyone is happy with it...let's go shopping. Btw, did you see this? https://theintercept.com/2015/09/28/death-athens-rogue-nsa-operation (found it at skimming through Spiegel Online yesterday)

[sabotabby]

In fairness, Sweden is pretty utopic in many ways.

I should read more Lem; it's not his fault that the Matrix ripped him off and then MRAs ripped that off and I could barely put a picture of Laurence Fishburne on my class site without cringing.

I did not read that about that NSA thing, but I'm not surprised.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I don't have this fully worked out but I think we are heading for a new feudalism. The state will not be strong enough or willing to protect individuals from powerful interests so they will be forced to seek protection from those interests at a high cost; economically and in terms of personal freedom. A vestigial state may "hold the ring" but generally won't be able to touch the really powerful. A small indicator may be the Brooks trial where the UK state couldn't even win in its own courts against News International's resources. The extent to which core state functions has been privatized too is interesting. Right now it's multi year contracts but what when the incumbent claims the right to the function in perpetuity?

[sabotabby]

Right now I'm obsessed with the Neoreactionary movement. I mean, largely because I wanna write all the dystopic fiction about them, but they actually seem to be right about most things, taking Marx's basic critique of capitalism and saying, "Yes, this is why we root for the capitalists." It's diabolical.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

Disagreeing with your position that the state is crumbling - I think you're overstating the condition of the state. But it is being challenged - and I think we've lived through and belonged to a rising tide of post-state aligned people. The state is beginning to face challenges from decentralized, ideologically aligned groups. These latest conflicts have an endless well of causes but the crises themselves are fired & driven by these internet sodalities.

[sabotabby]

The state in any positive sense is crumbling in most places. Its authoritarian aspects are not, but those are largely outsourced to private corporations, or can be.

But the social functions of the state? Fucked, unless we do something.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

So it's uncomfortable to argue with you at your diary, and that's not what I want to do - but maybe(?) you've not considered that the whole function of the state has always & ever will be to serve private interests by granting them access without authority?

Maybe it's because I'm in the right-center US while you're in the center CA that you see the social functions of the state as benign instead of... well, cynical & corrupt.

[sabotabby]

Oh, you can argue!

To some degree, I agree that the function of the state is to serve private interests. However—and this is where I differ from the anarchists—I believe that the state has both a coercive and a constructive function. I remain unconvinced that a stateless society can provide transportation infrastructure, universal healthcare and education, urban planning, etc. I still believe in some form of government, just a radically different government than the one either of our countries have.

Whereas the coercive functions of the state merely exist to entrench the property rights of an elite, and this is what we ought to be fighting against.

The constructive functions of the state had their flourishing from just after WWII to the 70s, and I agree with many analysts that this may be the exception rather than the rule. Since then, we've seen a strengthening of the coercive functions (prisons, armies, and so on) but largely in the hands of the private, rather than the public sector.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Something really interesting here.

Stephen Donaldson's (problematic in many ways) Gap quintet, has this merging of the two dystopia models, the privatized tyranny of the hollowed-out state...

Traditional totalitarianism, real or fictional, tends to rely, for it's long-term survival, on providing the majority of the population with at least basic public goods. ("Panem et circenses"). Is this necessary for the privatized, outsourced tyranny, or can it rely on people blaming the wrong target? Hating the government (because everything is shit), but therefore also rejecting any suggestion of the government controlling the private interests? Or if things get bad enough, does this misdirection eventually crack?

[sabotabby]

That's why I think the classic dystopian model doesn't really apply. No one starves in the classic dystopia. That's why no one revolts.

[whatifoundthere.livejournal.com]

I love this post, but I think you might be overstating the uniqueness of our cultural moment w/r/t to privacy. Every new technological advance has created a culture-wide panic about privacy for more than a century now -- it happened with the invention of photography, with the invention of the telephone, with the invention of sound recording, with the invention of video recording -- and then, only after several of these go-rounds, with the invention of the Internet. I hasten to add that I do think that Facebook etc. is in some ways "worse" than those other things, and that the sheer scale of something like Reddit's creepshot collections are absolutely something to worry about. But I take some hope in the fact that we survived, e.g., photography, which BY ITSELF did not make us into the vulnerable always-visible permanently-humiliated creatures the alarmists thought it would at the time.

Mostly I'm counting on bit decay to protect me. God knows it's destroyed so many of the things I wanted to keep.

[sabotabby]

Good point. I don't think technology is the driver of the cultural shift, at least not entirely. One could have the same technology in a less reactionary climate and it wouldn't be anywhere near as terrifying.

[begundan.livejournal.com]

One young woman in the audience raised the issue of Facebook, and how much of their privacy her generation has willfully given away

I learned all the real names of your lj friends back when the facebook friends list was public by default. I even wanted to send Nate a postcard.

[begundan.livejournal.com]

The fun part was reading his description of things he sees on his route home from the university while looking at a map of the city, piecing it together.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

What the fuck is your problem?