Circle of Dystopia

Through collaborative discussion in class, we ended with defining a dystopia as “an imaginary or real place whose people may lead a restricted and oppressive existence under some form of authority.” Although this definition is inclusive of those societies that are both created from human thought or reality for some people, it does not consider all the organisms existing in these environments. To edit this definition, I would change “people” to “organisms.” Considering that we all exist in one big circle of life, if one organism is suffering from oppression and that disrupts the natural order of things then everywhere else that disruption will eventually arise. For example, the technological and societal advances in the last 50 years have moved us (humans) forward in various ways but at the costs of extreme detriments to the environment. One could say that this dystopic world that seems to be approaching was kickstarted long ago, but only now are humans feeling the impact and really fearing the future. In this case, the dystopia switches from being the reality of plants and animals to everyone and everything. The authority flops from humans taking advantage of and mistreating natural resources to mother nature being the oppressor/punisher and having many natural disasters that people suffer from. Keeping in mind that everything natural is connected through one big circle of life, a dystopia for one is eventually a dystopia for all and”organisms” should replace people in our definition.