#utopian future

Our Dystopian Future In Dark Cyberpunk Artworks Of Nagafujiriku

Thanks for this question, anon. It has kept me awake for various reasons and perhaps you wanted just a couple of words or lines for answer, but I really liked this question so wanted to give it a proper answer.

I’m hoping that in this hypothetical situation that it is an economic collapse rather than one brought on by a nuclear winter via failures of diplomacy or mutually assured destruction. Because if it’s the latter, well, having read about the after-effects of radiation exposure, I’m not sure I’d want to go on living anyway. The words “their skin fell down their leg like a sports sock that lost its elastic” and “their tongue expanded and covered in pus-blisters” was enough for me.

Same goes for disaster caused by irreversible climate change inaction. I mean, we're constantly seeing the effects of doing nothing as it is, with Australia and the East West Coast of America on fire, and the polar ice caps breaking off and melting, and the sea levels rising.

So let's say, in this purely hypothetical situation, that late stage capitalism has finally imploded and we're seeing a global economic collapse. Money is now worthless, gold, oil, and other commodities have no value, and all the virtual currencies and digital numbers are meaningless. As if they aren’t already, but that’s a different rant.

The first thing to do would be to check on your neighbours and friends. These people should be your community already, but there’s nothing quite like a cataclysmic event to bring people together, am I right?

A period of chaos is likely to ensue, with a great deal of uncertainty. People tend to like structure and familiarity, and an event like this is definitely an end to the established world order and their day-to-day lives. Remember the pandemic shortages in stores earlier? Well it would be something like that, except your bank card is declined, and shops may not even be open. What happens in this case? Are we going to have the government declare martial law? Is there even going to be a government? Will these matters be devolved at a local level? And on what authority? How will it be communicated? The worst case scenario would be a fascist takeover, with militarised followers dividing and discriminating against minorities and races etc. So let's remain optimistic that your community sees sense that five people don't get 90% of the food, and the others get to fight over the 10%. "Perhaps we should just get what we need." Yes, quite. And that's what we're going to do.

We need to be responsible, and we need to ensure that the food supply is kept up. The good news is, that we have the infrastructure in place already, and now we just need to maintain it. Maybe the overworked people in this process don't want to do it all themselves, which would be understandable, so it goes back to what people can do for their community. Remember, that restaurants for the working classes came into prominence after the French revolution. So we could certainly learn something from that. We'd be looking at a system based on volunteerism. As well as needing some structure, people like to feel a sense of self-worth, that they’re doing or making things that bring some kind of enjoyment. So many of the unnecessary jobs would no longer need to be done. Automation would also help free up a great deal of time too.

Essential public services need to be maintained, so how can we help support these workers? Like everyone else, how many hours do they really need to work? There’s no longer a need for people to do jobs they may dislike for 40 hours a week. But the reason they may hate their job, is because they aren’t paid enough, or they’re stressed about paying bills. But now... this is no longer going to be a problem.

Can people work ten hours a week in their community to ensure that the supply chain continues, or they do food preparation or some kind of community work? Look around you, there is always something to be done. And now we’ll have the time to do it.

Trumptopia Has Come To Superversive Press

You may have heard about an anthology, titled Trumptopia, being put together by a small publisher in Europe. The stories were to be about a utopian future thanks to our current President, Donald Trump. The stories were to be positive stories.

I was fortunate enough to have one of my stories, which involves a class trip to the Trump Memorial Library in the future, accepted. I’m not a big fan of…