Dystopian Societies in Literature

The arena that is reality is a house of balance. With gain comes inherent loss. As the world is imperfect, so too are its inhabitants. With this imperfection, however, comes the meaning of life. The gift of choice granted to man is the trait separating him from the instinctual animal. The belief that choice composes the essence of man is common to many traditions. Through the ability to be flawed, springs man's perfection and his greatest triumph of all: the capacity to elect good over evil, love over hatred. Without the freedom to choose, the vitality, sanctity, and beauty of life must surrender into nonexistence.

+-Enabled by the advances of the Industrial Revolution, the manufacturing trend moved towards production uniformity. Intellectuals of the time began to consider the prospect of applying this sleek homogeny to governance. With the advent of mass production and the dissolution of the skilled craftsman, the literary archetype of the "dystopia," a flawed social attempt at perfection, became a mainstay of novels set in the future. Authors warn that while driving out the plagues of dissention and violence can appear to be an absolute victory, the counterbalancing loss of emotion and mercy is too great a tragedy to absorb. Unfortunately, when the ugly specter of Hatred disappears, on its heels rides away its fraternal twin, Love. With cold utility, these utopias steal mankind's most precious spiritual treasure, that of freewill.

Freewill is a divine manifestation, the facet of man created in the image of God. What God giveth, only God may taketh away. In all of the literary dystopias, some earthly entity takes upon itself the divine responsibilities of God. As is expected, in each respective world, the system fails due...

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...h disgust, unable to tolerate his former love. Burgess suggests that the same soil in which the callus atrocities of man's cruelty are rooted, the flowers of love and beauty bloom.

Heady and difficult is the Circus of Heaven for man to understand. On this cloud, God juggles deftly the blue whale of divine omniscience with the hydrogen bomb of man's freewill. With such agility, the Holy One walks the tightrope of Creation and Destruction, using only the pole of Love and Judgment to keep Him balanced, all without a net. Come one, come all and see the Ineffable swing effortlessly from the trapeze of space and time, only to finish with a dismount through a flaming hoop of skeptical science. Now remember utopias, this is a trained Deity, don't try these stunts in the world of tomorrow or you are liable to destroy the essential fibers underlying the tapestry of man.