UTOPIA IS DYSTOPIC:

Biology, Culture, and Persistent Literary Dystopias (NANELLE R. BARASH and DAVID P. BARASH, 12/03/04, Chronicle of Higher Education)

Literary dystopias have this in common: They are imagined societies in which the deepest demands of human nature are either subverted, perverted, or simply made unattainable. Not that it is necessarily bad to say "no!" to human nature. When it comes to certain inclinations, such as violence or extreme selfishness, there is much to be said for defying the promptings of biology. But when society presses too hard in ways that go counter to natural needs, the result can be painfully unnatural, which is to say, dystopian.

What are some exemplary dystopias? Foremost for many readers are Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984. The towering influence of these works stems not only from their imaginative and artistic qualities, but also from the powerful theme that all dystopian literature shares: the horror of a society that runs roughshod over our instincts, forcing people to be, literally, inhuman.

A remarkable achievement this--they're theory is exactly backwards. Dystopias, literay and actual, are societies that are overly human, where people believe that by the functioning of their own Reason they've discovered a way to perfect human affairs. Dystopias/Utopias are always disastrous precisely because they seek to satisfy natural human needs without regard to the im possibility of doing so.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 13, 2004 1:27 PM