As the number of days that I have remaining left in my current job very quickly winds down, my thoughts have once again turned to the realm of literature and the idea of the Dead World.
I do not mean a Dead World in the sense of a dystopia like 1984, Brave New World, or Fahrenheit 451, but in the sense of Night, Till A' The Seas, Hothouse, Rainworld, Waterworld, or The Gone World. A dystopia tells the story that the world exists but is bad. A dead world, which is either placed towards the end of time or after some hideous apocalyptic event, tells the story where the kosmos itself has either ceased to function or the kosmos which used to function now no longer does so.
Science fiction generally likes to tell stories of worlds imagined; either based upon some glorious and amazing future which will go wrong, or some future which has already gone horribly wrong and someone is trying to cope. The reason for this has to do with the fact that narratives are constructed on the basis that you need conflict in order to move forward, and conflict and complications that need to be solved because that's how stories work. Even children know that all stories have a beginning, middle, and end, and in order for the end to work, the middle needs logical points of order to swing upon.
Dead worlds though in telling stories of worlds imagined, usually come pre-packaged with conflict and complications with either describe how the world got to be that way and/or how to either restore or solve the problem, or how to rebuild the world after if has been destroyed. In some cases, the world is so irreparably gone, that the characters who inhabit it, will come to realise that they like the world are already doomed, and that the conflict and complications are resolved by them coming to realise this as fact.
Why do we like to tell stories like this? Science fiction generally, dystopias in particular, and dead worlds in minutiae, reflects a little of the hopes that we hold, and a lot of the fears that we carry. Humans are highly limited in both space and time, in that they can only live in the hear and now; and although we really hate to admit it, this thing that we call 'life' is merely only temporary and fleeting and can be snuffed out in an instant. Religion in general holds out a hope that this is not all there is, but a dead world in fiction certainly does not.
The biggest existential horror that we have is that none of us know what it is actually like to die. Dead people almost never come back to report what they have found on the other side of the veil. A dead world though, is when all the people who would have reported what it is like on the other side of the veil are gone, and all that is left is the detritus that has been left behind. In some respects, a dead world is semi-analogous to history, which is a different kind of story telling where the world that has been left behind has not only remained alive but we are left in the alive kosmos to receive the stories of the past.
When my current job dies and I move to a new one, the world that I will used to inhabit will be dead. I will have to carry forward the detritus to some degree but most of the old kosmos will only live as a memory on my head. Almost certainly it will not only be dead but closed to everyone except me and even then only living on in the archives of my mind. I am hardly unique in this. Moreover, when I die and my place remembers me not, even the archives of my mind will be closed; which leads us straight back to that central point of existential horror.
The dead world in principle, holds the mirror up to our existential horror and forces us to stare at it. Good fiction, good scripture, good ideas, good facts, good lore, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all have the property that just like a piece of grit which is trapped inside an oyster, forms a pearl of wisdom. A dead world in fiction makes us to face things like mortality, pain, disappointment, and maybe even our responses to those things like anger, sadness, ennui; and then forces us to either decide what we intend to do with those responses or manufacture new ones.
That is maybe just as big an existential horror. All evidence that we have thus far suggests that being dead is actually pretty easy. Being alive on the other hand, is sometimes hard. When we point the mirror at ourselves, we often have to consider what (if anything), goes on within our interior life. Some people at least from the outside, show no evidence that anything goes on behind blue eyes. Great philosophers try and take the various pieces of the things that they have manufactured as a result of their interior life and build them into some kind of schema. I think that I am too stupid to do this. I like to be entertained by the horror itself.
Additional and Aside:
I do not understand what is actually so bad about living in the classic dystopias.
Mildred in Farenheit 451 although she does try to commit suicide is probably an edge case to contrast Montag. For everyone else in the novel, being constantly entertained and being totally untroubled by the kosmos, seems like a kind of lovely existence.
I do not understand why The Matrix would not give the people who are stuck in the simulation, a lovely time. What is actually to be gained from giving them horrible experiences? If the intent is to keep them unaware and they have literally no other inputs, then wouldn't the The Matrix want to keep them inside? To that end, giving people a lovely existence seems like the best way to do that.
In Brave New World, what would be so bad about being an Epsilon semi-moron? It is in the interests of the people who want you to work in the factories to keep you happy because that way the system perpetuates. If you are actually too dumb to know what is happening to you, then that's probably a semi-lovely existence, isn't it? Likewise if you are an Alpha-plus, wouldn't that also be nice?
Everyone in the Inner Party in 1984 is clearly having a lovely time because they already control everything. Also, most of the proles in the prole sector also seem to be happy enough. It is only Winston Smith who thinks that he has a problem.
Depending on where you are in the classic dystopias, you are either having a lovely time because you have everything you want, or you are either having a lovely time because you have everything you want by virtue of having your expectations blinkered so very much that you don't want very much. Combine all of them, who wouldn't want to be a prole with Mildred, watching the Screaming Clown Show, drinking Victory Gin, and occasionally going on a Soma Holiday... wouldn't it be lovely?
