The Danger of Dystopia - Pt. 2

The brighter side of dark tales.

Before we dive into it - with Fahrenheit 451, the Underland Chronicles, The Lord of the Flies and The Hunger Games making an appearance, our dystopian tone is about to shift dramatically - I’d like to announce my 1st Paid Subscription Weekend Essay is on its way!

But, March! What’s the topic? Subject? Focus? Or point?

What! You want spoilers? Hmm. How’s this?

The truth will out. It’s inevitable, and (another hint) I would never want to face Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or his team, in a court of law, which is exactly where some people will find themselves. It’s just a matter of time.

And now, on with the show!

In 1954 (notice a post-WWII theme here?), William Golding wrote The Lord of the Flies. What people rarely hear about the author, is that he was a profoundly unhappy man who perceived his own upbringing and the violence of his adulthood to be emblematic of the species as a whole. That’s fine. He was a man with a brain, and it worked! He wrote his truth, as a fictional story, an allegory, and then…something interesting happened. Western society took his novel to be more psychology and sociology than story and, across the land, almost all school-aged children were handed this slim, terrifying book, instructed to read it, write reports on it, be tested on it, and generally accept it as predictive of human nature.

Wow. Talk about bleak, right? And, who could disagree or argue? It wasn’t like boatloads of kids were washing up on isolated islands on an annual basis, and (thanks to the Nuremberg Trials & the Nuremberg Code) the world had recently adopted ethics and values that limited experimenting on human beings against their will. So, dumping kids on an island was out. Darn!

Tangent #1:

It goes without saying, and yet must be repeated as often as possible, that every single government mandate designed to force human beings to agree to a Covid injection directly contravenes the Nuremberg Code and eliminates (for everyone) the ability to give Informed Consent. This is because Informed Consent requires an absolute lack of coercion (physical, emotional, economic or perceived). If YOU support vaccine mandates, you are walking in lock step with the German citizens of the 1930’s who supported violent acts against every person opposed to the Nazi Party, including political dissidents, medical doctors refusing to euthanize disabled children, religious leaders, political opposition leaders and everyday people who spoke up against the increasingly violent and intolerant “One Way Only” mindset of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

So, coming back from that tangent…we couldn’t test the accuracy of William Golding’s assertions by tossing kids on an island and studying the results. Darn. Stupid Nuremberg Code. It’s interfering with our lives!

Tangent #2 (sorry):

Do you think I’m exaggerating? I mean, who would ever question the sanctity of those horrifically learned lessons from WWII? How about “Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, who told the press that she believes it to be both "understandable and appropriate" for EU member nations to consider mandatory vaccinations. This after it became clear that a full third of Europeans have yet to undergo the jab, according to the BBC.”

Okay, okay. Back to The Lord of the Flies.

William Golding’s story was fascinating, alluring and emotionally evocative for a generation that had just lived through mind-numbing, heart-breaking, city-leveling, human soul-shattering horrors like none other! Although, wait? I think Rome, Persia, the Mongols and the Russian Czars were pretty awful, along with those Aztecs and the colonists who wiped out an entire hemisphere of humanity, and, um, there was that Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade thing, so…um…er…well, okay then. I guess modern history isn’t worse, but it was in our faces and managed to catch our all-too-fleeting attention. Yay?

The result was a dystopian novel used to suggest, even insist, that human nature is innately flawed. But, was Golding correct, in his view of HUMAN NATURE? Or, was he only correct about the nature of boys raised in the culture of his birth? I don’t know for sure, but this story, is as close to a “temporary utopia” as I’ve ever come: depicting the survival of a group of boys marooned for 15-months on an island near Tonga. How these boys, of mixed ages, worked together and supported one another suggests that we may have severely wronged our children by adopting The Lord of the Flies as a primary reader for our youth.

Okay…enough of the “fly guy,” right? Let’s move on to the herculean efforts of Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games! I’d like to start by flashing back to Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. Did you catch that last sentence? What does it mean, that a full one third (1/3) of all Europeans have SPOKEN with their actions? They have chosen, despite massive pressure to choose otherwise, to categorically refuse to comply with the totalitarian dictates of the current, elected officials who are twisting themselves and everyone else into pretzels, trying to force these injections into every living human body they can.

How can these democratically elected officials IGNORE 1/3 of their population, you ask? How can the government of Austria - the homeland of Hitler himself - be moving toward a nationwide Covid Injection Mandate? How, one might ask, can Austria’s political class survive the coming repercussions, as they blatantly disregard the Human Rights of their own people? If you need more proof that Austrians are desperate to retain their individual freedom, and largely opposed to the One Way Only narrative, look to the thriving “black market” in Covid Vaccine Cards.

The Hob, in Katniss Everdeen’s District 12 wasn’t a new idea: it was unavoidable. Every totalitarian government in history has produced vibrant counter-economies & black markets. The proof in the dictatorial pudding: Hello! Your constituents do NOT agree!

Blatancy is an extremely dangerous red flag. And, it’s cropping up everywhere, which suggests we are much further down the deadly whirlpool than we realize. Consider The Capitol, in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy. President Snow and his allies blatantly disregarded 12/13th of their population, but that’s not all Suzanne Collins brings to the world of fiction! If you haven’t read her Underland Chronicles, DO SO!

Buy this book series for every child you know. Today. Make it hit the Bestseller List (again)! Spread the word. My son? He loves this series so much, he re-reads it almost every year. As a parent, do you want powerful, meaningful bedtime stories with your kids? This is your hole in one.

Toss out The Lord of the Flies, Disney stories (although anything by Hayao Miyazaki is golden!) and pick up Gregor the Overlander. Then, come back here and tell me what you (and your kids) gained from the story. And, yes. What happens to the mice is, well, Suzanne Collins doesn’t pull her “history allegory punches,” does she?

When you read any of these dystopian novels, the parallels to how we’re living today are everywhere…but, for a moment, consider this century’s new & brazen dismissal of “the people” and ask yourself one very important question.

Where do you think we’re headed?

And…what role will you play in our trajectory? All societies that slide into Tyrannical Dictatorship share two things in common:

• a small group willing to do anything to achieve their goal

• and a compliant population willing to follow

• (Psst…it’s that 2nd group that allows the 1st group to succeed)

Okay! I’m sitting out here on my neighbor’s porch, using his Wi-Fi, and the sun has gone down…my fingers are numb, and I just can’t type anymore. LOL! So, I’ll leave you for today! But here is a promise.

The Danger of Dystopia, Part 3 will arrive on Monday, concluding my analysis of the effects of Dystopia on the Real World. In particular, I believe The Hunger Games and Fahrenheit 451 do a beautiful job of leaving us with a sense of two things:

• how we can be our worst enemy and, once we understand that;

• how we can turn it all around

Hope and resiliency, are the gifts we receive from the best that the dystopian world has to offer. They are the threat that Big Brother fears. The key to unlock the chains being wrapped around us. Sound exaggerated? You try being locked in your home, arrested for walking your dog, molested at the café, tossed into a paddy wagon, fired from your career and forced to move your beautiful children away from their friends and home…to a Free State…if one is even available? Europeans feel like they have nowhere to go, unlike Americans who can flee to Florida or Texas or Idaho or Montana, etc.

Sadly, I’m not exaggerating.

While I pray, sincerely, that we do not continue to fall down a twisted, black hole of human ineptitude, forgetfulness, and fearful clinging to leaders who promise it all if we just give up our minds to them…it may get worse. If we don’t succeed, this year.

2022 is a bellwether year for the people of Earth. We stand up, or we fall to the wolves.

Definition: We usually think of sheep more as followers than leaders, but in a flock one sheep must lead the way. Long ago, it was common practice for shepherds to hang a bell around the neck of one sheep in their flock, thereby designating it the lead sheep. This animal was called the bellwether, a word formed by a combination of the Middle English words belle (meaning "bell") and wether (a noun that refers to a male sheep that has been castrated). It eventually followed that bellwether would come to refer to someone who takes initiative or who actively establishes a trend that is taken up by others. This usage first appeared in English in the 15th century.