Why are Westerners obsessed with dystopia?

[Universe]

Dystopia means:
a very bad or unfair society in which there is a lot of suffering, especially an imaginary society in the future, after something terrible has happenedDystopia has been popular for decades in the west. If you look at video games, TV shows, movies etc produced by western people, it is visible that westerners imagine the future in a negative way.
What about the east? Do easterners (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans etc) also imagine the future in a negative way or are they more optimistic? To me it seems like the West has no spirit and has given up, there's this popular belief that everything will be shit in the future. I don't know about the east though.

[gixajo]

Dystopia means:Dystopia has been popular for decades in the west. If you look at video games, TV shows, movies etc produced by western people, it is visible that westerners imagine the future in a negative way.
What about the east? Do easterners (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans etc) also imagine the future in a negative way or are they more optimistic? To me it seems like the West has no spirit and has given up, there's this popular belief that everything will be shit in the future. I don't know about the east though.

Dystopia is just the antonym of Utopia.

More than an obsession, it is a declaration of intentions. What we are looking for is to improve what exists, not make it worse, I think that is the objective of any human group, or at least it should be.

The problem is that every time someone tries to make a theoretical utopia real, we turn it into the closest thing to a dystopia.

Why do these attempts to achieve utopian worlds usually go wrong? Maybe because those who believe they have the right to choose for us the world in which we must live, often consider that "the end justifies the means".

And what is usually the first thing that is applied to start the path towards making a utopia real? Cancel the individual.

When the individual begins to lose power and decision-making capacity against the group, represented by the state, the threat of a new dystopia beginning begins to become plausible.

[Faklon]

Maybe dystopian media breed fear and fear breeds needs.

[Mejgusu]

I think it is because of an inner voice who thinks about the loss of the comfort. We live out the most comfortable times in human history, at the same time it is a fragile property. To your question whether other cultures also think about dystopian future, I think yes but not always the same way like westerners. For example for me China has a dystopian system but for the Chinese people it’s probably normal.

[Teutone]

https://i.imgur.com/j7rs6vs.jpg

[Celestia]

If the future means a bunch of gender fluid “it’s” walking around, I’d say western prediction for dystopia is not off. Perhaps it has been a foreshadow for the downfall of western civilization all along.

[Batavia]

Because most people notice that there is something wrong and the want to end this whole mess...

[RogueState]

It's a deep philosophical question, not only linked to the West, I can write extensively about that but in short :

The lack of transcendent ideals in the name of rationality, freedom and equality (axiomatic neutral rules of postmodern secularized Western societies) naturally leads to nihilistic approach of life (meaningless); where the entire political philosophical guidelines are not about proposing what's good for you (that would be seen as "tyranny") but rather, the research of the least common denominator (that allows us to live "together" in a given abstract society) which is the Market economy and the simplest form of Laws.

For the rest, people are "free" to find their own way (the illusion of freedom, since wealth inequalities are the highest ever), which means in practice : in the absence of spiritual-traditional-family values, that are mocked as "things from the past", it's only the pursuit of shallow materialistic desires that are the synonyms of fulfilled "life".

This outcome is pessimistic because it leads to nothing but nothingness, and has been already criticized by counter-revolutionary thinkers for more than 200 years, this is why this theme is very present in the fiction about future.

[Adrianv2]

Dystopia means:Dystopia has been popular for decades in the west. If you look at video games, TV shows, movies etc produced by western people, it is visible that westerners imagine the future in a negative way.
What about the east? Do easterners (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans etc) also imagine the future in a negative way or are they more optimistic? To me it seems like the West has no spirit and has given up, there's this popular belief that everything will be shit in the future. I don't know about the east though.

Obsessed is a strong word, but as we have seen with Covid mandates and the wonderful plans the WEF has for us we better be more vigilant. Westerners are probably more obsessed with professional sports then the above.

[Faklon]

Modern society is a result of immorality, but most dystopian media are about things you cannot control. Ecological destructions, meteorites, flu, tyrannical governments that got there for no reason, and you have to find a way to control them. They make good political and commercial arguments.

Actually, the thing you usually cannot control in these media is technology, the exact opposite of what happens in real life. I mean, you know that the Chinese government gathers your data, just delete TikTok.