In Robinson’s “Dystopia’s Now” essay, we get a glimpse at four different types of thinkers. Robinson believes that the dystopias created now focus on what we fear the future to be. Meanwhile, utopias are focused on what we hope the future will be. In the essay, Robinson mentions four types of thinkers, utopian, dystopian, anti-utopian, and anti-anti-utopian. I resonate most with what Robinson describes as anti-anti-utopian, you can not be overly optimistic or pessimistic when it comes to the future. Robinson quotes Romain Rolland’s “ pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” This means that whatever way we decide to think when it comes to utopias and dystopias, we must understand that one characteristic of each world is the output of another. What I mean by this is to be an optimist you must be willing to put in the work to make the future what you would like it to be. If you’re pessimistic there’s typically an intellectual point of view that you have about the world. You must be academically knowledgeable about your current state and the negative effects it’ll have on the future. The other types of thinkers Robinson describes fall on either extreme sides of the spectrum (dystopia and utopia) or too close to the pessimistic side. Dystopian thinkers typically think of the worst when it comes to the future. They fear that the world will become everything that we would not want it to be. Utopians are on the opposite side of the spectrum. Utopian thinkers are optimistic about the future, having hope that the future will be exactly as they would like it or even better. Meanwhile, anti-utopian thinkers are the people who believe that utopias are wrong and “…any attempt to try to make things better is sure to wind up making things worse creating an intended or unintended totalitarian state…” (Robinson). What kind of thinker are you?
