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LITR 4368 Literature of the Future 
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Sample answers
for Part 2:
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Andrea Gerlach
11
May 2019
Utopia and Declinism in Future Narratives
Formerly, I had been embarking on a research report of man’s greatest triumphs
in history and was planning to prove that those supposed progresses were
actually declines. However, I have adjusted my thesis after reading several
model assignments, recent and old, to more closely address the decline seen in
future narratives studied during this course and how it relates to the concept
of utopia. I aim to clarify utopia and its role in speculative fiction, as well
as the importance of ideals such as utopia within society to ensure its
survival. This latter point, I believe, is the driving force for the existence
of speculative fiction.
Many
students in their model assignments spoke of progress and decline as a
dichotomy, two forces at odds with one another. They agreed: first, that
progress is good, and decline is bad, and, second, that change manifests within
a society as either progress or
decline, not both. Since the first premise is a matter of meaning, I will define
the terms. Progress comes from progredi,
which means “forward walk”, while decline comes from
declinare, which means to “bend down”
or descend. This quickly disrupts the second premise, for one could certainly
move forward and descend at the same time. How else does one enter a valley from
the plains or even a mountaintop. So, too, can we trouble the premise of
progress as wholly good, and decline as wholly bad by asking what is meant by
progress on a societal level. If we mean economic growth, or technological
advancement, then we mean some progress somewhere, not holistic progress. The
same goes for decline. A society, then, could experience progress in technology,
medicine, humanitarian efforts, economics, or quality of life, and still suffer
a decline in values, conscientiousness, courage, or will. This particular boost
in technology and corruption of culture is called declinism, first popularized
by Oswald Spengler in his book The
Decline of The West but has been around since the very beginnings of
historiography itself (Miller).
Declinism is commonly referenced in two ways. First, it is referenced as the
belief that a society, or country is in a state of, often viewed as inevitable,
decline, second, as the belief that society exists on a cycle of development,
proposed by Spengler, from birth to death like all of nature (Gopnik). The first
decline is usually said to be caused by the devolution of morality over the
course of a social system’s lifetime and has no definite endpoint. The second is
a natural function of all things, which the cause cannot be pinpointed nor
controlled. According to these stances on decline, the fall of the Roman empire
was either a result of its citizens’ eroding morals, or it was doomed to fail
from the start like all empires that came before and that have or will come
after. Declinism allows us to look at societies differently, especially those
derived for the future. It makes it easier to recognize the fallacy of a
physical utopia, which is regularly mentioned concerning SF.
Thomas More’s book in 1516 was a frame narrative for “the way things should be”
in a fictional island, which had a very long title in its original Latin but
came to be known as Utopia. The word
was derived from the Greek to actually mean “no place”, though the later English
form comes from Eutopia, meaning
“good place”. More chose this word to emphasize the fictionality of his story,
yet “utopia”, no matter how ideal, has morphed into a system as real as
dystopias.
Utopia was brought up frequently by students in the model assignments in order
to subvert it, showing how in specific texts a utopian society was actually a
dystopian society. Rachel Jungklaus did this when she stated in her essay, “Does
Utopia Exist?”, “every utopia is someone else’s dystopia”. She treats utopia as
if it is synonymous with “happy place” and dystopia as synonymous with “unhappy
place”, and she uses this premise to say that if utopia does exist, then it only
exists in a relative state according to each individual, which is to say that it
doesn’t exist at all. In fact, though I think this is a gross misrepresentation
of utopia and misunderstanding of its role in SF, she indirectly arrives at my
same conclusion. Utopia as a place to be doesn’t exist, while utopia as a
universal ideal is very real, and this is the role it fulfills for authors in
future narratives. Like in The Time
Machine, when the Time Traveler goes into the future the first time, utopia
is indirectly brought up through his musings over the Golden Age that he
expected to find but is not ever a part of his experiences. There is too much
that is displaced: the creatures’ humanity, the sun in the sky, the architecture
barely holding up. Utopia, for SF, is a painting that every SF author assumes
their readers have seen, so that when they see it in their story, they would
recognize it, and when they don’t see it, they would notice that too. It is a
counter weight for all that actually exists in SF societies, there for the
reader and the protagonists to measure up against the world as it is presented
to them, never is it actually implemented in SF or even supposed. A story that
truly takes place in a utopia would have no conflict, thus no story.
Considering “Stone Lives”, where there is an exponential progress in technology
and politics, we see a decline in conscientiousness in the elites of the FEZ’s
indecision, leading whole districts to fester and starve. The crux of the story
is that Stone, through his new eyes, must learn everything he possibly can about
the social system around him in order to discern where it stands on a line
between utopia and dystopia, which is not as often described, “good place” and
“bad place”, but better understood as “non-place” and “displace”. He comes to
realize this himself when he is reporting back about what he has observed. He
declares that, though it is beautiful, it is unfair. Stone is recognizing what
makes a society, which is the ability to improve upon itself through art or
invention, and the relocation of power according to who is most responsible for
that improvement. In “Bears Discover Fire” as well, bears have discovered fire
and are, in effect, experiencing a boost in civility, progressing along a path
first paved by mankind, while the cause for this new feat is that the bears have
ceased to hibernate, which is due to global climate change, often construed as a
result of pollution and man’s degradation of nature. So, man’s decline paves the
way for bears to progress.
As we
can see, it is the order of things to both progress and decline.
Man is driven by purpose; purpose being meaning contrived from a goal or many
goals. When man aims at these goals, he is necessarily claiming that what he is
aiming for is better than what he has currently. Otherwise, why would he do it
(Peterson)? This is how man’s natural drive to create value systems gives birth
to hierarchies. Culture manifests itself in a society through value systems and
man’s reaction to them, which is art. “True culture will always be at odds with
democracy. Culture is the province of an ‘elite’…” (Miller). This “ultimate
good” or beauty is represented in SF as utopia. It is the ideal that man is
after. For if there is such a thing as beauty (good) and man is capable of
bringing it about (work), then it is his duty and purpose to do so
(responsibility). So, man strives and innovates, stripping away at the dirt that
masks the gold.
The future scenarios portrayed in SF are not meant to be utopias, they are meant
to portray one possibility for how man may decide to seek after utopia, to bring
it about. This is why utopia is a “non-place”. It is not somewhere we can be. It
is somewhere we can imagine and dream of in order to wake up every morning and
have hope. The “non-place” is why you got out of bed today, because you imagine
today might be better than yesterday with a little work. It’s why we look back
on Neanderthals and deem them limited and ourselves capable, like in “House of
Bones”. The Paleolithic men believed our protagonist to be simple, because the
things they valued as knowledge, he did not know, and vice versa. This shows how
value systems change over time and how when one value system meets a force of
nature or culture that it cannot overcome, it must morph into something new.
That which was once valued the most takes a lower seat when innovation shatters
the glass ceiling. Society adjusts to the new hierarchy and the glass ceiling is
rebuilt, only higher. Spengler’s concept of declinism aligns with this format.
Civilization after civilization has proven it. Richard Goldstein’s “The Logical
Legend of Heliopause and Cyberfiddle” gives us a scenario of sublime high-tech.
Yet, presents us with Pryer, who, in his discontentment with the Heliopause and
Carmen Memorandum, finds purpose in bringing values that were forgotten back to
life. This could actually be a common trope of SF. When a society is at its peak
and has nowhere to go but down. When all forward momentum in the current system
has been halted, it is time to go back. T.S. Eliot wrote,
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
(“Little Gidding,” Four Quartets,
1943).
It is the nature of man to desire and imagine a utopia. In his efforts to bring
it about, he creates value hierarchies, which produce unfairness, and leads to
nonconformity, rebellion, and suffering. Then, a new understanding of utopia is
born, and we begin again. It is the job of Speculative/Science Fiction to
present and play out future scenarios for how we might progress in the future to
point out what won’t work and why, and to show us in what ways we are currently
failing to prevent massive societal failures like an apocalypse or a
dehumanizing singularity.
Work
Cited
Gopnik, A., & Gopnik, A. (2017, June 19). Decline, Fall, Rinse, Repeat.
Retrieved from
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/12/decline-fall-rinse-repeat
Miller, L. (2015, June 15). Culture is dead - again: It's the end of
civilization as we know it (and maybe we feel fine). Retrieved from
https://www.salon.com/2015/06/14/culture_is_dead_—_again_its_the_end_of_civilization_as_we_know_it_and_maybe_we_feel_fine/
Peterson, Jordan. “Inequality and Hierarchy Give Life Its Purpose.” YouTube,
Big Think, 5 Apr. 2018,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF-bXNQ4wzs.
Thought, Freedom in. “Is Utopia Always Dystopia? Is Utopia Possible?”. YouTube,
Freedom in Thought, 28 Sept. 2018,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=n20ZbRJyKPM.
“Utopia.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Apr. 2019,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia.
“Utopia (Book).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 7 May 2019,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(book).
