The Pros And Cons Of Utopia A Dystopia

Imagine a society where every citizen was content with their lives. This society is stable, equal, crimeless, and perfect. However, could you imagine the price that’s being paid for this so called perfect society or some might call it a utopia. What might seem as a perfect environment is actually quite the opposite, rather a dystopia. “Fifty States of Fear” by Peter Ludlow, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley , and “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, in these three stories they all depict a dystopian environment with features such as sacrifice for the good of everyone. A dystopian society offers the perfect society with order where everything functions properly usually at the cost of the individuality of the citizens. As depicted in the stories

In Brave New World, the government has managed to create a perfect society where all of it’s citizens are always happy and everything works perfectly with each other, in other words stable. It’s evident that these benefits to society would be worth paying the small price the citizens of the story did. Quotes from Huxley sufficiently prove this, for example when Huxley stated “They 're well off; they 're safe; they 're never ill; they 're not afraid of death; they 're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they 're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they 've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they 're so conditioned that they practically can 't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there 's soma. " (220). There are no problems that can come up now and even if there are any they already have the solution for it. No citizen is discontent with their lives, and everything is smooth now because of their small sacrifices. This shows the reader the clear benefit society gains from all the sacrifices made by the citizens, the people are stable as well as happy, and these leads to the society being stable and prosperous. Conditioning in the story might be viewed as a horrible process that forces the people to sacrifices however, what are they sacrificing? They go through conditioning as babies and

When Machiavelli states “a good leader should induce fear in the populace in order to control the rabble.” (PP6), fear is essential for government control. It might seem like the government is the benefici to the sacrifice but in reality the only people who gain from having a controlled society is the people, they get to live in peace while having someone to depend on for peace and security. The sacrifice is unknown to them and causes no harm, another quote that supports this is spoken by hobbes “fear effectively motivates the creation of a social contract in which citizens cede their freedoms to the sovereign”(Hobbes) . This quote again shows how many government leaders use the power of fear to control the people in return of peace and order for society. Ludlow claims “fear is even used to prevent us from questioning the decisions supposedly being made for our safety” (34). The people are seeing no problems of the decisions because they believe that they are all for the sake of protecting them, this gives them the sense of security that the government is doing the right thing. Essentially, both sides benefit from the fear that is induced into society, the government gains control over the people, while they in return gain a sufficient relationship with the government where they follow laws