Is our Society Closer to a Utopia or a Dystopia?

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Have you ever imagined a society where people coexist peacefully, the question is, does such a place exist? Many people have questioned if our society is close to being a utopia or dystopia. Utopia represents a society where equality exists, there is not discrimination, a perfect legal system, with law-abiding citizens. Dystopia is the opposite where the society is filled will misery, war, poverty, violence, diseases, and pollution among other negative elements (Morrison 287).
Many works of literature describe the society as dystopian more than utopian because of the government control and power that is undesirable. Even though a utopian society does not exist, some of the features are described that make a society close to being utopian. There are distinct features that exist between a utopia and dystopia society, Aldous Huxley, Brave New World presents how our society is close to being dystopia than utopia. Aldous Huxley is a fictitious story that talks about a future utopian society where people can be produced in masses in laboratories. People have no emotion, drugs and promiscuous sex is hailed. The story describes how people are given labels based on their prenatal intelligence (Greenberg and Waddell 122).
The brave new world mirrors a dystopian society, and how we are slowing moving towards dystopia more than utopian. Even though the story highlights some of the features of a utopian society, where everyone has a job, and people live in harmony, there is no war, poverty and crime. There is a dystopian side of the story, especially when Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson talks about God, love, and science with Mustapha Mond (Greenberg and Waddell 171-187).
The story presents the rise of technology, science and a totalitarian state where humans are robbed of all their freedom and forced into happiness through the manipulation of genetics and psychology. According to the book, the author anticipates developments of reproductive technology, psychological manipulation to profoundly change and control society (Firchow 109). Power is evident in the story, people of every class are programmed using propaganda to make them believe that their class is more superior to the other classes.
Unhappiness is replaced by happiness by antidepressant drug called soma (Firchow 111). The author presents several examples that depict a dystopian society with few sections of the story show positivity. For example, when everyone has a job, but the use of soma presents the negative part of the society the characters live in. For example, John sees it as a terrible thing when his mother, Linda died from doses of the drug (Klein 88). The characters in the story rely on imperfection making the society more of dystopian.
The dystopian society is also described in the novel Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury in 1953. Ray tells a story about Guy Montag who is a loyal servant of a consumerist society with heavy censorship (Filler 528). The book introduces the world in which the government controls its citizens. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury presents the way a society copes with the government through conformity. In the story, characters like Mildred, Beatty, and others conform to the government because of its part of the culture. Individuality is not accepted because it causes conflict with one another. Fahrenheit 451 represents a dystopian society where man versus society conflict arises; the main conflict is the doubt Montag is experiencing. He is happy with his life in one-minute, but the next minute he is not. He realizes that something is wrong with the society and needs to be rectified (Filler 533).
According to the author, the government tried to demolish individuality and anyone who goes against the law. Individuality gives people the ability to question certain actions by the government; instead, people are expected to live in conformity and are not to question anything. (Filler 539). Like several kinds of literature, Fahrenheit 451 is an example of how society views things. Bradbury associates personal freedom as freedom of expression to represent an ideal utopian society. He utilizes the issue of censorship to portray a dystopian society.
Challenges we face in a dystopian society
After the two world wars, technology progression was widely believed that would improve living conditions. Technology was meant to solve issues of war, disease and poverty and all the world problems. Technology instead became a tool used to control people. For decades, advanced technology has come with many security challenges that require society to adapt to (Rami 329).
For the past 30 years, several breakthroughs in information and communication technology have progressed with no one anticipating how these developments would eventually turn to be weapons creating new forms of oppression and violence. Accordingly , advanced technology has expanded the inequality gap between its citizens and its government. Instead of saving humans from poverty and misery, advanced technology has accelerated violence and other negative events (Rami 334)
Is there hope for the future?
Even though our society is too flawed, I still bel...