#false utopia

[someawesomeamvs]

Warning: Potential seizure trigger like WHOA, potentially disturbing imagery, potential spoilers, violence

Title: False Utopia

Editor: RoseBeautyDreams

Song; Good News

Artist: Apashe

Anime: Psycho Pass, Mardock Scramble (films), Deadman Wonderland, Zankyou no Terror

Category: Freestyle

[melioredam]

The Propaganda

Long ago. Long before the peace agreements, there were tyrants! These people hated the other countries, they wanted to unite them all under their rule, and what they thought was right, rather than letting them all be united by their differences.

For millennia we were forced to fight a war that we didn’t want. The battles destroyed our lands, created a famine that lasted 50 years, and nearly wiped us out. The few that remained swore to put an end to the violence, of course, to put an end to it, they had to exceed the tyrants’ brutality.

So they did what they had to do, they executed the tyrants and freed our land of the blood curse. After cleansing their bodies of their sins, they turned the bodies of the tyrants and the fallen into compost. Then redistributed the land, dividing it into six parts. Six countries with about 1,000,000 people each, with their own purpose.

Now we live in safety and punish any tyrants that may rise as needed. We keep our business to ourselves and we respect each other, for this unity is how we have survived for hundreds of years! The weapons we carry with ourselves are a sign that we have matured and can carry ourselves with decorum and dignity! We keep the ruins to remind ourselves of our past and to make sure it never repeats itself. And we all do our part to keep the peace.

[cjargodale]

me 

photo: Marcel Alcala

[local-boob]

But the critical moment of Bloch's enterprise is an attempt - one that stands squarely within the tradition of critical theory - to illuminate the ratio of the irratio. This is of importance not simply for making sense of magic and mysticism but for understanding the 'false utopias' embedded in racism and other ideologies that privilege the intuitive and the irrational.

Stephen Eric Bronner's Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction (2011)

[fire-elemental-tomes]

Porcelain

Porcelain, everyone wanted to be porcelain. To be beautifully crafted with the up most care. To be perfect in everyone’s eyes and be treated as if they were royalty based on their appearance. No one could be porcelain, no one can be perfect. For if everyone was perfect would we really be happy? Would any of us truly be happy? I don’t think we would be, and I’m pretty sure others will agree with me as well. If our world was perfect would it really last?

No.

This porcelain world would crumble. For what would happen once we grew old? Or if we were disfigured by an injury? Would we really exist in such a beautiful world? No, no we wouldn’t. We would be deemed disgusting, revolting, a stain on this beautiful perfect world that must be removed. Once deemed imperfect we would no longer be human, but an animal that must be put down like a rabid dog. Who we once were matters not anymore, who you were matters not once your once beautiful porcelain features are cracked.

No one would want a cracked doll when they can get one that holds no imperfections. The slightest imperfections were deemed failures and tosses aside because they weren’t perfect. They didn’t fit the mold that society had set and therefore were to be pariahs and removed immediately least they crack others in their removal.

Even as she was being taken, dragged out of her home bleeding with a mark that will surly scar her face, she laughed bitterly and with a false smile and spoke like a fish out of water trying to speak. The people around stopped to stare, to understand, what was going on.

“Porcelain. We are all fucking porcelain. Easy to break and prone to crack with the slightest touch.” Her voice cracked and hoarse as she screamed startling everyone but the ones dragging her.

Maybe it was the fact that she was losing quite a bit a blood, or maybe it was the fact that she was being taken somewhere where no one will ever see her again. Whatever it was she just let her words cut through the air and burn into the minds of those who listened.

“Has no one ever questioned where those injured go? Where we go when we get old? Has no one even questioned anything at all?!” It unnerved her when she realized that she also never questioned any of this. Its Ironic that it was only when she was being taken away did she start to question.

“Those hurt, deformed, old, hold no place here in this perfect porcelain world!” She spat and grunted being thrown into the black van.

Her words were now silenced. Though the words she spoke hung and haunted the minds of everyone who stood on the sidewalk watching. The black van drove off and slowly one by one they dispersed with questions that will make them have restless nights for days to come.

[worldclassadventurer]

Alternate Ending

"Do you want to be with me?" He asked with gleaming eyes and a plastic smile.

"No, thanks." She replied. "I'm a fantasy writer. I know a false utopia when I see one."

[adventureplots]

The world you live in is practically a utopia; everyone's nice, no one has to work more than they want to, there’s always something interesting to do, and so on. You have just discovered, however, that the world you live in isn't real and nothing that you do in this world will ever amount to anything. When you try to leave, however, it won't let you. How are you going to get out and escape to the real world.

[lebangg-blog]

Anonymity on the Internet

"I am deeply in love with a man who is handsome, smart and loving. We are engaged and happy together. The problem? We met on the Internet. Abby, he thinks I am 26, but I'm not. Everything I've said to him has been a lie. I am really 12."

This quote and example in Baym by an "advice column letter-writer" regarding relationships online illustrates the internet's capability of being a double-edged sword. Although it's pros are abundant, its cons can be more frightening than many suspect. A large danger that Baym warns us about is "technological determinism", which is the power technology has to influence and change people. The Brad Paisley song "Online" depicts this influence, with a frustrated, distraught man finding and using the internet to change his mediocre life. 

Baym makes a pretty powerful point by saying that "The internet would lead to the world Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of, in which people would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin." The previous quote above however, points to the dystopian capabilities of this "internet world". The internet's ability to cloak age, gender and race hides the fact that these things are real. In a sense, it creates a false utopia. The double edged sword is defined by the utopia-dystopia dichotomy. 

Another interesting and potentially dangerous downside to the internet that Baym talks about is the network effect or network pull. This is also defined by the influence technology has over people in this day and age; if all your friends have facebook or twitter, you will eventually get one as well, even if you never wanted to. I believe the danger in this regards young teenagers trying to fit in amongst their peers. More specifically, a child falling into a trap of online cyber bullying. This has become a big issue in the past several years with the emergence of sites like facebook and myspace.