I don't understand why it's so terrible to film Chipotle employees if it gets you a better burrito. I don't understand why you think this practice is "anti-social" and proof of the "hopelessness of humankind." Maybe people who do this just want a better burrito. I find this to be an example of the anti-tech paranoia that is so rife on substack.
I don't know what kind of work you do, but imagine that while you were working someone, without your permission decided to record (or livestream) your actions while commenting on wether or not they thought you were doing a proper job based on their individual desire to get something for themselves.
If you want a world where you can "get a better burrito" I think the long term sustainable answer is to create the conditions under which people can and want to do a good job for their own sake and the sake of the people they serve. My stance is anti-technology, it's anti-surveillance, pro-privacy, and pro human dignity.
But sure, if you're prepared to be watched and judged constantly while you do your work, by all means continue to inflict this harm on others. At least you won't be hypocrite.
I replied to this once, but the reply seems to have disappeared. I wonder why you're concerned only about the workers here and not the customers, who may not be getting what they paid for. What about the customers' dignity? Also, if you think people are going to do their jobs without anyone keeping tabs on them, I think you suffer from delusions about human nature. If you ran a business, I don't think you would take this view.
No offense, but this is a truly absurd ethical/moral position. There's no human dignity involved in the purchasing of a product. It's a straightforward consumer exchange with many mechanisms in our capitalist system for responding to substandard service like not going to Chipotle anymore, which would become the responsibility of the management of the corporation to remedy, rather than surveiling the workers while they make your burrito. All kinds of people do their jobs without anyone "keeping tabs on them," primarily those who are wealthy enough to absent themselves from the need to work for an hourly wage.
You still haven't said what kind of work you do and whether or not you'd consent to similar monitoring.
I obviously have no delusions about human nature given that here is a person in the comments on my newsletter who believes they have the right to intrude on the basic dignity of others in order to get a better burrito. That's truly dystopian thinking.
I think that if you order a burrito, and the employee makes it wrong and doesn't fix their mistake, then they're treating you disrespectfully, which offends our dignity. In any case, no law is being broken, as far as I can see, so why shouldn't people record the employees making the burritos? You can say that there should be a law to prevent the recording, but what would the law be? If you can't name a law that's being broken or you can't come up with a law that would amend the indignity that you perceive then what you're saying is just sentimentality.
I've had a lot of jobs and was always subjected to surveillance and evaluation. I was also on camera pretty much all of the time, as security cameras are ubiquitous. People are monitored by security cameras all the time and few complain about that. Even if the Chipotle workers weren't filmed by customers, they would be filmed by security cameras. Do you object to security cameras too? Why is filming with a cellphone worse?
You have a very warped notion of ethics, laws, responsibilities, society, etc...
Maybe it's been warped by your experience being monitored and you've normalized what should be seen as an intrusion on your rights to dignity and privacy. Maybe you were never taught the golden rule in school.
What I do know is that your willingness to capitulate to this society is the best evidence of the dystopia one could hope for. I appreciate you providing an object example.
I actually was taught the golden rule, but I have no idea how you think it applies here.
I think surveillance has mixed effects that need to be evaluated. All I was doing was pointing out that the example you gave was more complicated than you were making it out to be. Please be open-minded about the complexity of reality rather than lobbing silly insults at people who point it out.
For pandemic dystopia, I'd go with either "The Plague" by Camus or more recently, "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel. For dystopia caused by a sociopathic brilliant maniac, I'd go with Atwood's "Oryx and Crake," as you mentioned... I think about its warnings often, but then nobody listened to the warnings of "The Handmaid's Tale" either.
Oryx and Crake is disturbingly on point with all the corporations being the only remaining source of order/shelter. Station Eleven really gets at the human dynamics that could be unleashed by societal breakdown on that order. Two of my favorites.
I don’t know that it’s the Best in terms of literature, but Scott Westerfeld published a YA series called “Uglies” in the early 2000s that had an outsized impact on myself and many of my friends (kids at the time). The fourth book, Extras, is about a future city where every citizen competes to be famous on a digital leaderboard. Some people livestream 24/7, some get bizarre plastic surgery, some perform dangerous stunts, some are genuinely talented. Beauty and outrage are rewarded in equal measure and everyone’s life is empty of meaning, save the pursuit of fame for fame’s sake. I haven’t read it since I was a kid but I think about it all the time. Too real!
Infinite Jest got a lot of things right - the whole aside about how people don't want their faces shown on video calls was borne out by people's experiences on Zoom during the pandemic. The corporate naming of the years and exporting America's garbage were fairly low-hanging fruit, but the central premise, that we create things as "entertainments" that prove to be actually horrible addicting, sums up the smartphone age almost too neatly.
I enjoyed reading ‘How High We Go in the Dark’ by Sequoia Nagamatsu, although I don’t think it’s exactly a dystopian novel. It’s more of a fairly plausible near-future with some pretty hairy aspects but also not without some hopeful aspects too.
PS My own dear old dad was born in Rockford, Illinois
Usually a lurker, but felt compelled to comment this time. Love your perspective on Dystopia and these recs. This is actually the type of list I would recommend to my Rebel MFA Degree readers and will be adding this post to their resources guide and I also agree with you on the Lincoln Michel MFA piece.
The classic dystopia which is too close to coming true is Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. I don't think we need to worry much about the high tech taking over, and people being tracked everywhere, because I expect the electrical grid to fail and satellites to be lost as in World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler. Although The Warehouse by Rob Hart has an alternate view which is a little too believable. The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks Dalton seems to me to be most immediately possible, at least the beginning of it. When I was teaching high school lit, I would have students read Rash by Pete Hautman because it sparked such good discussions about just how far we are willing to go in trying to make ourselves "safe." This was in the days of the rise of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act. These days, I'd probably assign Sordidez by E.G. Conde. For adults with "resilience" and "grit" (as they keep telling us we need to instill in students), I'd recommend The Ministry For the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson, or The Deluge by Stephen Markley.
"The Children's Bible" by Lydia Millet is one I have recommended over and over. She is such a good writer and this book paints a pretty stark picture. Oh, and if you want a better burrito, make one at home and film yourself.
Have you watched any episodes of Black Mirror? It’s about people rating each other's actions and interactions on a five-star scale using a social media platform and augmented reality. These ratings contribute to a user's social score, which determines their eligibility for jobs, housing, and benefits. It’s terrifying and very applicable!
I liked The Bear by Andrew Krivak. It’s about the last two people on earth after some unnamed apocalypse, so it doesn’t have the usual conflicts that most dystopian novels do.
As temperatures here in the southwest routinely soar over 100 degrees - - in June! - - I think a lot about Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry For The Future. It is especially relevant since a key theme is the ineffectiveness of social and governmental systems as the climate crisis spirals out of control.
Yes, and his New York 2140 is sort of terrifying looking at a period a little past that. His books make me deeply uncomfortable, which is the point, I think.
On a related note, I really loved Stephen Markley's The Deluge. Where Ministry for the Future feels optimistically strategic, The Deluge is more like an attempt to simulate the next few decades in novel form (and while there's a glimmer of hope, it's mostly grim).
Super Sad was one of those books that I enjoyed so much that I have permanent goodwill toward the author. Shteyngart will always get the benefit of the doubt from me!
I don't know where the line is between dystopian and apocalyptic, but I think a lot about American War... Not so much the plot but the possible climate-disaster future that the author builds. In fact, it's kind of like Super Sad in that I can't really remember too many plot points, just the world that the author constructed and the ways it demonstrated insight into our own.
I don't read dystopian novels. The world we live in is bad enough.
Also, congratulations on finishing your manuscript.
Same!
I don't understand why it's so terrible to film Chipotle employees if it gets you a better burrito. I don't understand why you think this practice is "anti-social" and proof of the "hopelessness of humankind." Maybe people who do this just want a better burrito. I find this to be an example of the anti-tech paranoia that is so rife on substack.
I don't know what kind of work you do, but imagine that while you were working someone, without your permission decided to record (or livestream) your actions while commenting on wether or not they thought you were doing a proper job based on their individual desire to get something for themselves.
If you want a world where you can "get a better burrito" I think the long term sustainable answer is to create the conditions under which people can and want to do a good job for their own sake and the sake of the people they serve. My stance is anti-technology, it's anti-surveillance, pro-privacy, and pro human dignity.
But sure, if you're prepared to be watched and judged constantly while you do your work, by all means continue to inflict this harm on others. At least you won't be hypocrite.
I replied to this once, but the reply seems to have disappeared. I wonder why you're concerned only about the workers here and not the customers, who may not be getting what they paid for. What about the customers' dignity? Also, if you think people are going to do their jobs without anyone keeping tabs on them, I think you suffer from delusions about human nature. If you ran a business, I don't think you would take this view.
No offense, but this is a truly absurd ethical/moral position. There's no human dignity involved in the purchasing of a product. It's a straightforward consumer exchange with many mechanisms in our capitalist system for responding to substandard service like not going to Chipotle anymore, which would become the responsibility of the management of the corporation to remedy, rather than surveiling the workers while they make your burrito. All kinds of people do their jobs without anyone "keeping tabs on them," primarily those who are wealthy enough to absent themselves from the need to work for an hourly wage.
You still haven't said what kind of work you do and whether or not you'd consent to similar monitoring.
I obviously have no delusions about human nature given that here is a person in the comments on my newsletter who believes they have the right to intrude on the basic dignity of others in order to get a better burrito. That's truly dystopian thinking.
I think that if you order a burrito, and the employee makes it wrong and doesn't fix their mistake, then they're treating you disrespectfully, which offends our dignity. In any case, no law is being broken, as far as I can see, so why shouldn't people record the employees making the burritos? You can say that there should be a law to prevent the recording, but what would the law be? If you can't name a law that's being broken or you can't come up with a law that would amend the indignity that you perceive then what you're saying is just sentimentality.
I've had a lot of jobs and was always subjected to surveillance and evaluation. I was also on camera pretty much all of the time, as security cameras are ubiquitous. People are monitored by security cameras all the time and few complain about that. Even if the Chipotle workers weren't filmed by customers, they would be filmed by security cameras. Do you object to security cameras too? Why is filming with a cellphone worse?
You have a very warped notion of ethics, laws, responsibilities, society, etc...
Maybe it's been warped by your experience being monitored and you've normalized what should be seen as an intrusion on your rights to dignity and privacy. Maybe you were never taught the golden rule in school.
What I do know is that your willingness to capitulate to this society is the best evidence of the dystopia one could hope for. I appreciate you providing an object example.
So you're against security cameras then? They've been proven effective in reducing crime. https://ericpiza.net/2020/12/02/cctv-review/
I actually was taught the golden rule, but I have no idea how you think it applies here.
I think surveillance has mixed effects that need to be evaluated. All I was doing was pointing out that the example you gave was more complicated than you were making it out to be. Please be open-minded about the complexity of reality rather than lobbing silly insults at people who point it out.
For pandemic dystopia, I'd go with either "The Plague" by Camus or more recently, "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel. For dystopia caused by a sociopathic brilliant maniac, I'd go with Atwood's "Oryx and Crake," as you mentioned... I think about its warnings often, but then nobody listened to the warnings of "The Handmaid's Tale" either.
Oryx and Crake is disturbingly on point with all the corporations being the only remaining source of order/shelter. Station Eleven really gets at the human dynamics that could be unleashed by societal breakdown on that order. Two of my favorites.
The rise in cozy fiction the last few years has been attributed to people not read about bad futures when things are already looking so grim.
I don’t know that it’s the Best in terms of literature, but Scott Westerfeld published a YA series called “Uglies” in the early 2000s that had an outsized impact on myself and many of my friends (kids at the time). The fourth book, Extras, is about a future city where every citizen competes to be famous on a digital leaderboard. Some people livestream 24/7, some get bizarre plastic surgery, some perform dangerous stunts, some are genuinely talented. Beauty and outrage are rewarded in equal measure and everyone’s life is empty of meaning, save the pursuit of fame for fame’s sake. I haven’t read it since I was a kid but I think about it all the time. Too real!
I remember seeing those books, but I never read them. The fame for fame's sake really is on point, and prescient writing from the early 2000's.
Infinite Jest got a lot of things right - the whole aside about how people don't want their faces shown on video calls was borne out by people's experiences on Zoom during the pandemic. The corporate naming of the years and exporting America's garbage were fairly low-hanging fruit, but the central premise, that we create things as "entertainments" that prove to be actually horrible addicting, sums up the smartphone age almost too neatly.
I enjoyed reading ‘How High We Go in the Dark’ by Sequoia Nagamatsu, although I don’t think it’s exactly a dystopian novel. It’s more of a fairly plausible near-future with some pretty hairy aspects but also not without some hopeful aspects too.
PS My own dear old dad was born in Rockford, Illinois
Usually a lurker, but felt compelled to comment this time. Love your perspective on Dystopia and these recs. This is actually the type of list I would recommend to my Rebel MFA Degree readers and will be adding this post to their resources guide and I also agree with you on the Lincoln Michel MFA piece.
Mockingbird by Walter Tevis (I may have sent you this before due to tie in with AI and Robots)
The classic dystopia which is too close to coming true is Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. I don't think we need to worry much about the high tech taking over, and people being tracked everywhere, because I expect the electrical grid to fail and satellites to be lost as in World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler. Although The Warehouse by Rob Hart has an alternate view which is a little too believable. The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks Dalton seems to me to be most immediately possible, at least the beginning of it. When I was teaching high school lit, I would have students read Rash by Pete Hautman because it sparked such good discussions about just how far we are willing to go in trying to make ourselves "safe." This was in the days of the rise of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act. These days, I'd probably assign Sordidez by E.G. Conde. For adults with "resilience" and "grit" (as they keep telling us we need to instill in students), I'd recommend The Ministry For the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson, or The Deluge by Stephen Markley.
Wow - So many great recommendations! And totally agree about Parable of the Sower.
Parable of the Sower is at the top of my list too. Incredibly prescient.
"The Children's Bible" by Lydia Millet is one I have recommended over and over. She is such a good writer and this book paints a pretty stark picture. Oh, and if you want a better burrito, make one at home and film yourself.
That's a fantastic book, particularly in the climate fiction subgenre. She's one of my favorite writers working today.
Have you watched any episodes of Black Mirror? It’s about people rating each other's actions and interactions on a five-star scale using a social media platform and augmented reality. These ratings contribute to a user's social score, which determines their eligibility for jobs, housing, and benefits. It’s terrifying and very applicable!
https://www.netflix.com/watch/80104627?source=35
The Handmaid’s Tale.
I liked The Bear by Andrew Krivak. It’s about the last two people on earth after some unnamed apocalypse, so it doesn’t have the usual conflicts that most dystopian novels do.
As temperatures here in the southwest routinely soar over 100 degrees - - in June! - - I think a lot about Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry For The Future. It is especially relevant since a key theme is the ineffectiveness of social and governmental systems as the climate crisis spirals out of control.
Yes, and his New York 2140 is sort of terrifying looking at a period a little past that. His books make me deeply uncomfortable, which is the point, I think.
On a related note, I really loved Stephen Markley's The Deluge. Where Ministry for the Future feels optimistically strategic, The Deluge is more like an attempt to simulate the next few decades in novel form (and while there's a glimmer of hope, it's mostly grim).
Super Sad was one of those books that I enjoyed so much that I have permanent goodwill toward the author. Shteyngart will always get the benefit of the doubt from me!
I don't know where the line is between dystopian and apocalyptic, but I think a lot about American War... Not so much the plot but the possible climate-disaster future that the author builds. In fact, it's kind of like Super Sad in that I can't really remember too many plot points, just the world that the author constructed and the ways it demonstrated insight into our own.