Topic on Forum:Literature
This page shows the changes between two versions of a post by Dai-Guard in the topic "George Orwell on utopia" on Forum:Literature.
You can see other versions of this post at its history page.
| Line 3: | Line 3: | ||
Orwell is spot on about the creation of utopia. Most writers, when they create fictional [[utopia]]s, they tend to turn into dystopias pretty fast, through things like [[Values Dissonance]] or [[Fridge Horror]]s. It's a natural extension of [[Most Writers Are Human]], as perfection means different things to different people. The idea of utopia itself is a kind of philospher's stone then -- an ultimate level of perfection that can never be created in reality. |
Orwell is spot on about the creation of utopia. Most writers, when they create fictional [[utopia]]s, they tend to turn into dystopias pretty fast, through things like [[Values Dissonance]] or [[Fridge Horror]]s. It's a natural extension of [[Most Writers Are Human]], as perfection means different things to different people. The idea of utopia itself is a kind of philospher's stone then -- an ultimate level of perfection that can never be created in reality. |
||
The same is true about political philosophies as well. I think one of my favorite insights from Orwell is simply the message of ''[[Animal Farm]]'': Communism is so bad, it's almost as bad as capitalism. Neither the communist utopia ([[The Great Politics Mess-Up]]) or the capitalist utopia (''[[ |
The same is true about political philosophies as well. I think one of my favorite insights from Orwell is simply the message of ''[[Animal Farm]]'': Communism is so bad, it's almost as bad as capitalism. Neither the communist utopia ([[The Great Politics Mess-Up]]) or the capitalist utopia (''[[BioShock (series)]]'') could ever come to pass. The modernist or fundamentalist utopias aren't gonna happen either. The romantic utopia already happened in the past, but we screwed it up, and the realist utopia -- no such thing. |
||
So we're left trying to craft a postmodernist utopia. Well, then, this seems a bit more doable. We're not trying to come up with a grand theory of that explains everything; instead we're going to try to steal from a huge jumble of theories that make society act perfect. Maybe even ''pretend'' to be perfect. But it can never be truly ideal, as the underlying humans that make up the society aren't perfect. |
So we're left trying to craft a postmodernist utopia. Well, then, this seems a bit more doable. We're not trying to come up with a grand theory of that explains everything; instead we're going to try to steal from a huge jumble of theories that make society act perfect. Maybe even ''pretend'' to be perfect. But it can never be truly ideal, as the underlying humans that make up the society aren't perfect. |
||