How We Got Conditioned Into Accepting Dystopia

Take a glimpse at the headlines. The Greek wildfires are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/world/europe/greece-wildfire-arson.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">record-breaking</a>. 5 dead in Michigan after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/us/michigan-tornado-storm-deaths.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">storms</a>. Tenerife, on <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjFxtL2pPiAAxWr0wIHHauyCfk4ChDF9AEoAHoECBAQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Ftenerife-firefighters-stabilise-huge-wildfire-after-nine-days-2023-08-25%2F&usg=AOvVaw3shQpU1DJj7vObgsD9doWC&opi=89978449" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">fire</a>. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/us/maui-fire-missing-list.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">388 people</a> are missing from the Maui wildfires. A new Covid variant, better than all the others at <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/08/25/covid-variant-ba-2-86-pirola/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">evading immunity</a>. And inflation, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/25/fed-chair-inflation-jerome-powell" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">still on the rise</a>. Oh, and don’t miss the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/videos/weather/2023/08/23/fire-tornado-wildfires-canada-cprog-orig-af.cnn" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">fire tornado</a> in Canada. We’re hammered, you and I, with dystopia. It rains down on us daily like a deluge. Fascism, climate change, disinformation, nature being annihilated, the seasons changing into things we don’t have words for, whole regions of the globe becoming Fire and Flood and Plague Belts. You’d think, given all that, that people would be fed up. That they’d be clamouring for transformation — not just “change,” whatever that even means, but profound, deep, lasting transformation. To institutions, constitutions, norms, values, these things we thoughtlessly call “lifestyles.” You’d think, given the sheer scale of dystopia thundering down on us, that it’d be an Age of Revolution. But…it’s not. Instead, it’s an Age of indifference, of apathy, of resignation, fatalism, futility. It’s an Age of Paralysis, an age of Pacification, instead of a Revolution. Something is very, very wrong with that. That isn’t remotely normal. When people are pushed to the brink — like we are, and I mean everything from countries to generations — normally, they push back. But…we don’t. <a href="https://eand.co/how-we-got-conditioned-into-accepting-dystopia-f472f335d34d">Website</a>