To think that we already live in a dystopian world?

[wheresmymojo]

I've seen a lot of talk about dystopian TV series and possible outcomes of the climate crisis.

But AIBU to say we actually already live in a dystopian world but we're lucky to be in the 'ruling class'?

While we mainly live in our reasonably comfortable bubbles if you actually took things that were happening in the world today and strung them together it would be a perfect dystopian novel....

• BJ in the media offering tax cuts to those earning about £50k while we have 4 million children in poverty

• People being told they are fit to work who then die

• The popularity of cheap clothing which is reliant on large sections of society being in absolute dire poverty to provide the cheap labour (but we don't care and carry on buying)

• The growth of tech companies that have bigger turnovers than many countries GDP and have a global reach beyond any other institution that exists

• The factory farming of animals and genetic modification of them beyond anything nature intended so we can get bigger chicken breasts even if it means the chickens are too large to support their own body weight

• The amount of money pumped into the food industry and levels of obesity while other parts of the world starve

• Wars over oil killing thousands and thousands, even when science says using that oil will contribute to the destruction of the planet

• Rolling back of women's rights in the US so women will have to get across state borders for an abortion if they've been raped

• Arguing about cutting foreign aid while children live by scavenging rubbish dumps in so many countries.

Sorry depressing but it occurred to me that if you put all of this together in a novel it would be pretty clear that we already live in a dystopian world and are just in denial about it...?

Yanbu. We are living through troubling times.

poverty figures may not be "made up". It's just an awful statistic.

In any group, there will be an average. Half the group will be above average and half below. The half below may be less well off relative to the other half, but that doesn't mean they are poor in absolute terms. Poverty is too emotive a word to describe something that is not the condition.

4 million kids are not starving, are not homeless on the streets. Not being able to go on holiday isn't poverty.

No I don’t.

I’m a single mum, never married, from a free school meals family, yet I have a higher education, a career and my own home, acquired through my own efforts.
Society in any other period of history would have been considerably less tolerant and less supportive.
I suggest circumstances in most countries are generally better than they were 100 years ago.
Wanting things to be better is always good but don’t underestimate the value of what we already have.

The poverty which exists in this country is relative and by its very definition will always exist. This doesn’t take awAy from the feelings of the people who experience it but it is far removed from someone in the workhouse or someone in Bangladesh making clothes for primark.

The trouble with our capitalist society is we measure wealth and success in terms of monetary value. It leads to some dimensional world where the “winners”
Earn most, the “losers” have little money.

We need to start thinking about the environmental and human cost of the things we buy then maybe these c”cheap” things won’t seem as cheap. Buying cheap frozen prawns probably doesn’t seem cheap when you consider the human trafficking rife in the industry and the destruction of the ocean floor in wild caught prawns or the fact the areas used for farmed prawns in Asia will most likely have displaced villages and made the area infertile for the next 40-50 years.

If we all focused more on needs rather than wants the world would be a lot better place

Yes, I think you are right op. Child poverty is horrific;

• I don’t understand how people don’t question that austerity hasn’t created a ‘failed’ nation - use of foodbanks, child poverty is horrific,
• our environmental damage has been catastrophic,
• our rapid decline from a state with improving environmental standards, improving employment practices and amazing technology (concord, Galileo etc) thanks to cooperation with our European neighbours to one where we are aping the Americans, and harping back to the ‘special relationship’.

Dispatches did a programme about cheap clothing/fast fashion. Twitter was full of responses attacking working class women for buying cheaper clothing. Some of them were men who no doubt would expect the same women to go 50/50 on household costs if they were living with them.
The trouble is if you attack poorer British people for simply living within their means THEN attack the same people for NOT living within their means when they decide to buy a more expensive top from People Tree and then get behind with their council tax, it then risks creating division and hate. It seems to be a middle class thing in the UK A trend amongst the middle classes to accept whats going on in other countries but minimize whats going on in the UK. Almost as if its trendier. Its very Grazia!

It is possible to care about both without having a pop at British people (and its usually a pop at working class women when it comes to fast fashion so its misogyny too) imagine the AIBU if someone had spent their low wage and Universal Credit on a more expensive ethical piece of clothing. And then couldnt afford to pay a bill because of it.

The working class in the UK likely feel they cant do right for doing wrong No wonder there is so much resentment in some communities.

Added to which, there are many rich people out there who have wealth, power and opportunities to make the kind of changes the ethical community want. Many of them. And they don't. Most of them became well off by not giving a damn about anyone else after all. Why shouldn't those people be the focus of Twitter attacks, rather than the poorest who have no real options or power for change?

When I was being very poor I bought my clothes and shoes in charity shops, which I suppose was ethical. Sort-of, anyway. It led to an interesting wardrobe!