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Has to stem from the rise of the individual. My sense is that in the east, the collective takes precedent. Individual liberty is not sacred in that world, so freedom isn’t either.

I lived in HK up until about 8th grade and I don't think there were similar readings there to 1984 in Chinese. I imagine in upper grades, 1984 itself and a few others may be English class reading, but certainly nothing similar in Chinese novels at least in school, or novels that were famous. Growing up, most famous Chinese novels were around the themes of ancient martial arts fictions (e.g. Jin Yong's series). You may find tangents on the topic of authoritarianism/dictatorships here and there, but not a whole book like 1984.

No, 1984 or Animal Farm is not really fiction. It is the personal experience of Orwell when traveling to Spain as anarchist to participate in the civil war and fighting against communism.

The communist faction in Catalunia received orders from Stalin and for anarchist they were even a bigger enemy than Franco .

In fact, the communist ordered the murder of Orwell, along lots of other people. Orwell saved the life because at the time he was nobody important. Orwell was warned and he ran away of the country.

Novels like War and Peace, they are powerful because they are written in times of war.

People like Albert Einstein, watch Genius in Amazon Prime...or "the life of others" they experienced real dystopia.

It is not fictional dystopia. It is reality dystopia.

It is only that their children that are raised in peace have never experience it, and tend to repeat it.

Most wars tend to follow a cycle of 80 years. When there is no people alive that remember the war, they tend to repeat it.

It's rare to see introspective questions around here. The fear is not all fictional, but the fictional part, the fear of the totalitarian Other, is definitely helpful in justifying the establishment status quo and maintaining consensus. The excesses in the status quo are instead projected onto the Other, disavowed.

The other part of the fear is just what is called ideology, the lens through which the world is understood. In this case the western ideology is universalism, the philosophy that certain ideas are to be applied universally and infinitely. The works you list here are really examples of how universalism (utopianism, technologism, capitalism, totalitarianism) as a historical process necessarily develops into its own failure, in a Hegelian sense. I don't see univeralism as predominant as particularism in eastern fiction or even philosophy. The "eastern" particularism means that no idea is to be blindly applied to the end, no law is absolute, and no principle is sacred if it doesn't "work" in practice. The Hegelian process shall be halted if it is going to evolve into dystopia. This is why there is no such fear in eastern fiction.

Thank you. I have no idea how accurate or complete this answer is but I like it and the idea of a duty towards particularism acting as a protective layer against encroachment of authority, instead of fear tactics concerning universalism. Sort of "rule of thumb vs a moral" way of looking at shaping the world.

> Is it a fictional fear instilled in our cultural fabric that makes us so averse to what maybe isnt and wont ever be as bad as our stories tell us it will be?

Was real life in China not this bad during the cultural revolution?

When I say fiction (narrative not based strictly on history or fact) I dont necessarily mean false.

Without storytelling, how do we pass along our experiences? Fiction is often a way to take real things and wrap them up in intrigue to make them more compelling, or more viral. Fiction is often a combination of experiences and dreams, taking a totally real experience and just tweaking one axiom or premise.

I think our stories often have a level of competence and efficiency that is lacking in reality. What we accept as systematic and powerful is actually a hodge podge of attempts and accidents. We are pattern matching machines in search of explanation and relationships within randomness. I dont disagree that that part you quoted is a loaded question. All I meant by it is that our imaginations can be more powerful than our experiences, or at least amplify them. Maybe the opposite is true, in that our atrocities are unimaginable until we see them occur.

> Does eastern fiction not have this foundation of fictional dystopia from 50-100 years ago woven into societies consciousness?

No.

One Internet personality in China, who is a contrarian thinker and regarded as one of the best expert on information security, once said (after a murder case became national news),

> If you believe the opinions expressed in A Clockwork Orange, Minority Reports, or such, are crucial and something we must defend. Then, under this framework of civilization, regardless of what countermeasures we take, the severity of violent crimes will not reduce to something we are willing to live with. We must accept it, and believe it's the necessary cost of civilization.

> This is why I always think, the only solution we can expect is "Skynet Rising".

I think his take is representative to a large group of people. It can be dangerous.

Also, I see some people have no problems with Clockwork Orange style psychological torture on criminals. If the technology exists, they will welcome its adoption.

As I commented on a previous HN submission, Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

> Recognized "universal" values only came to existence by pure coincidence. The beliefs that the system of representative democracy is just, universal and progressive is only an illusion created by a short period of technological and economic boom. Just like the lack of consciousness in the biosphere, the norm of the human history is empires and authoritarianism, returning back to that state is entirely possible if people stop to believe.

Also,

> Part of western awareness towards, paranoia, fear, and wherewithal to stand against certain government behaviors and the totalitarian state is obviously awoken from and influenced by fiction,

These fictions can only be written in a world when elements of a modern nation prevails, in the west, it's already roughly 100 years after the industry revolution, and we had things like the BBC World Service, a systematic bureaucratic system of state control, and maybe capitalism. These dystopian Western fictions, such as 1984 or Brave New World, are largely a product of a modern world. Others, such as Philip K. Dick's works, are written in a transitional period from modern to a postmodern world.

But in the east, 50-100 years ago, it's still an age of monarchy and colonialism. And in the early 1970s, many people in China just got their first TV, there is no way that Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? makes sense.

> what maybe isn't and wont ever be as bad as our stories tell us it will be?

In my opinion, later cyberpunk works in the 1970s is somewhat a counterpart to the classical dystopian works, it describes a postmodern world, not modern world.

My favorite is Ghost in the Shell (original work & TV animation), it's a world of post-WW3 genocide, a world of universal surveillance, a world where the government can hijack your brain and body - many warnings in those classical works came true, but in less brutal forms, and somehow life still goes on, thanks to the domination of mass media entertainment and digital technology, and can even be better for some people in limited cases.

Its author Masamune Shirow said,

> Science fiction can't always describe the burnout world at the end of the century. The future is better to be bright.