I want to start this blog entry off by making it known that I do believe that dystopias are interesting to hear from many different perspectives, and that (to me personally, at least) are not a monolith and they are up to interpretation in every way possible. The short preface that I just provided can also be used for almost anything in life as well! To define what a dystopia is to me (in a short sentence),I would say that it is a world/society that is only beneficial to one, not all of the participants/citizens.
My justification for the previously given definition is very simple and straightforward, especially if you live in America or a country that operates similarly to it. I first want to start off by expanding on what exactly I meant by the society being beneficial to only one person versus all inhabitants. There are many ways in which this power struggle can be seen, but one of the most prevalent factors in the United States is money. As most may know, there are rarely free things in life. While it is good for the CEOs and owners to have booming businesses and an abundance of capital, there is also a flip side that many may not realize because it now normalized and is incorporated into everyday life. When you buy something, you are losing that amount of money, and the CEO is gaining that amount of money. Staying on a general scale, when this is a constant practice you then have to be able to work to continue to be able to buy this certain service/product for yourself. Now, while you are working for money, you are also in the process of making someone else wealthy. This cycle is very familiar to the working class and to wrap things up quickly, the message that I was trying to convey is that at the end of the day, in a capitalist society it is not realistic for there to be multiple ”big-time” CEOs. This means that there are only a few that are getting enough money to support more than their basic needs and their personal pleasures, while the majority of society is either working to sustain their bare necessities or just having a little bit more to splurge on a few things that they may want in life. This can quickly cause many other interconnected issues in each the daily lives of each person, some of those being mental health issues, neglect to ones own person and even violence. As you might be able to see now, this trend spirals out and connects to many other facets of life other than just the old argument of the rich vs. the poor, which all in all creates a dystopian society in my opinion. The root issue of this was money and, relatedly, greed which is a system that should not be as serious as it is in the world. A quote from Karl Marx that I wanted to add for the audience to think about goes,” The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite.”
