‘What ifs’ are fun jumping off points for novels and movies. Like what if the sea level rises and New York City is no longer habitable? What if an asteroid hits earth? What if the Nazis had won WWII? What if the worst happens? How would we act? Who would act? Who would survive? And ideas worth fighting for?
Please don’t call me extremist when I say we are on the verge of a dystopian present. What I mean by verge is that if something doesn’t change SOON we will be thrown into a future from which it will be nearly impossible to return. Not that I want to return to the past. I want for us to move forward on the ‘slow arc toward justice.’ We have jumped the tracks. The train is off the rails and hanging over a cliff. We are hovering over the precipice of world hunger, pandemic disease, war and totalitarianism.
Listen, I am not an alarmist. I know this because I have been friends with alarmists and understand from observation what an alarmist looks and feels like. If anything, I am an optimist and believe in humanity’s ability and will to overcome adversity and build a better world. That being said, I have also seen evil. As a youngster I visited Dachau and confronted the existence of evil. There is no other word for it. I have seen the evil of which ordinary people are capable. In college and graduate school I studied the history of Nazi Germany because I needed to understand how a whole people can become complicit with evil.
I’m certainly not the first, nor will I be the last, to ring out the alarm but I am ringing it out now. Here is the big dystopia we are living in today:
– equal education for all citizens(or the pursuit of that) is in jeopardy
– religion takes an unprecedented role in political discourse and policy
– refusal to address climate changes makes us vulnerable to famine, war, and disease
– hatred of the different- race, gender, sexualities, religions, is encouraged by the lack of will in the administration to address it as a serious problem and, indeed they profit from it in their political base.
– our democracy is being intentionally dismantled in service of a kleptocracy
-the current administration lines up our population in terms of ‘us vs. them’
I could go on but this is enough to predict a dystopian not-to-distant future being upon us. So here are my questions: In a conflict between good and evil, which side are you taking? Does your personal self-interest eclipse your interest of the greater good? Do you think because you are safe now – because you have the privilege of race, gender, class, etc – that you will not be touched?
We are entering a dystopian reality. It can happen here. Will you enable those in power or are you going to work your ass off to turn it around?