For our History of the Future class we have three different
stories, two of them literature and one of them film. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, William Gibson’s The Gernsback Continuum, and Things to Come focus on dystopia. Of
course each has its own unique view of dystopia. Huxley’s Brave New World has completed technological advancement to the
point where lives are predetermined from the beginning to the end. Things to Come depicts a technologically
advance future world after destructive world war. Gibson’s The Gernsback Continuum is a play on the imaginary future from the
present.
The Brave New World
is a perfect system design to satisfy all. Yet its perfection is extremely
troubling to our present day moral standpoint. Straight from the beginning life
is manipulated with various chemicals and procedures. From there the children
are influenced using auditory brainwashing placing them in preset castes in
society. Free sex allows everyone to satisfy his or her own urges and desires.
Violence is limited through use of soma and tear inducing voices. There is no
general “freedom” of people. Rather this advanced scientific utopia has place
satisfaction and happiness as its primary goals. Everyone has been robbed of
initiative to break from the mold, everyone except a select few individuals. Out
of all characters the most interesting remains Mustapha Mond who explains the
current situation of the world with clear logic: a completely satisfied world is
a safe and unblemished world. He is completely right. John can find no counter
other than moral implications, which have long since vanished in this new
utopia society.
Humans not placed in a carefully regulated environment will
always face a variety of sins and desires. Unable to satisfy these desires they
will turn to more brutish methods or suffer in agony. Conflict will flare up
periodically just as depicted in Things
to Come. In this film we see London being reduced to rubble by a world war
that has just broken out. Yet even in the rubble civilization rises again with
a tribal leader at the helm. However, it is clear that what is occurring is
simply a repeat of conflict over and over again. Even in the future brought in
by Wings Over the World, people are dissatisfied by the constant push of
progress. Conflict rises once again over the space gun and the people rise up
to destroy technology. Can there ever be a completely happy and satisfied world
without totalitarian control over every aspect of life? I think not. People as
shown in Things to Come are too
unpredictable and sinful to ever achieve complete satisfaction.
Even in the face of futility, the dream of the future forever
remains enticing to present. Our narrator in The Gernsback Continuum finds that the future remains stuck on his
mind. He can never get away from it. Yet he finds the remedy in watching
garbage media such as porn. There lies the ultimate solution. Instead of
focusing forever on the possible future and counterfactuals, focus on the
present. The present is where “reality” is a physical manifestation of the
surrounding environment. The present is where the current body remains and
stays. The present is where the world remains imperfect and ambiguous.
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