Challenge: Less Misanthrophy in fiction

Don't forget that that many of the topics by Jewish, African-American, and female authors which are often perceived as misanthropy were actually attempts to show that their issues were important and had legitimacy. In regards to District 9 was written by Bloemkampf as a reaction to the mistreatment of refugees in South Africa, and subsequent riots that took place in 2004. Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan was written after the many hostage crises in Iran, Lebanon, et al. Forever War by Joel Hadleman was written to deal with the experiences of the Vietnam War. According to Chris Carter, the X-Files was written based on his reaction to the Iran-Contra Scandal, Watergate, and the scandals of the period.

Also consider the idea that people love a well-written villian or gritty anti-hero. Consider that if you look at current sales for comic books. People want the dark and gritty characters of the X-Men (all 5 titles), the Punisher (all 3 titles), Batman (all 5 titles), et al.
 
The problem seems to be a political one - there isn't a modern school of political thought that I can think of that lends itself well to idealism. In modern political discourse, at least in the western countries and particularly in the United States, we seem to have undercurrents of environmentalism and racial guilt on the left opposing the Calvinist sort of Christianity and objectivism on the right. All of these worldviews necessarily see humans as bastards - the former three are pretty rooted in self-flagellation for past sins, and the latter seems to take after Lord Shang - so, inevitably, people who are interested in discussing the condition of humanity at all end up preaching that "humans are bastards."

To nip this in the bud, or at least make it so that not every other work needs to make it clear how dark and edgy it is by showing off how mean people suck, you just need to preserve or create a worldview that dictates that Humans are Good and Righteous and Everything will Inevitably Be OK so more authors feel like pushing that stance. (There's definitely a huge market for it already - there's a reason why every third thread here turns into a ponythread - so demand's not as much of an issue as supply.) As for what to preserve, you had plenty on the left (Marxism, New Deal-style progressivism, liberation theology) and a few on the right (the "white man's burden" definitely dealt with this, and Mormonism kind of seems to do so as well) so there's a huge hat to draw from.
 

OS fan

Banned
You have a point there. The only optimist groups I can think of are the transhumanists, singularitarians and extropians (and there is some overlap). And parts of the objectivists.
 
You have a point there. The only optimist groups I can think of are the transhumanists, singularitarians and extropians (and there is some overlap). And parts of the objectivists.
Yes, but optimism towards the future. Not that we didn't do a lot of dark stuff in the past and even during the present.

Thankfully, we seem to be getting better.
 

NothingNow

Banned
The problem seems to be a political one - there isn't a modern school of political thought that I can think of that lends itself well to idealism.

It's more philosophical than political. Since the dawn of Modernism at least, there has been a very strong misanthropic streak in philosophy. After Postmodernism took off, it's just been at the forefront, something which even the meta-modernists and their ilk aren't quite ready to abandon.

And to a large degree, I think OP is over-observing things, or thinking that this is recent when it honestly isn't. Most fiction that has survived to the modern period is fairly misanthropic, even if it does have an optimistic ending. This is because either, without people doing horrible things to other people there is no plot (and thus it's all fucking pointless,) or frankly, the work grasps some deeper universal truth, generally relating to how people are pretty horrible to each other and life isn't all that great.

So, to change all that, you'd have to make it that we were all frankly high as a kite 24/7, or incapable of developing complex urban societies to really do anything about misanthropy being as prevalent as it is, because without that, you won't get people like Kafka, or create conflicts like WWI (the event that frankly marks the death of true optimism in the arts)
 
Get rid of the Cold War. A lot of the 'wise alien' stories were actually because people were hoping that that there was some hyper-advanced ultra-civilized race out there that would swoop down and save humans before they blew themselves up.

I'd say that without a constant background feeling that the world might end science fiction might just end up looking more positive.
 
It's more philosophical than political. Since the dawn of Modernism at least, there has been a very strong misanthropic streak in philosophy. After Postmodernism took off, it's just been at the forefront, something which even the meta-modernists and their ilk aren't quite ready to abandon.
I don't know, I see "postmodernism" in popular literature to be a more descriptive term than a prescriptive one; "postmodernism" might be able to tell us that literature has tended to be more cynical in this selective way but won't really tell us why. Very few authors are going to set out to write the Great Postmodern Novel simply for the sake of doing so, and most of what we expect from postmodern literature has its roots decades before anyone thought up the term (like you mentioned, Kafka's probably the most influential writer in the field, and IIRC works as far back as Don Quixote have been slapped with the postmodern label). It's also not like works that aren't in the framework we've been describing can't or won't sell well and be highly regarded by their contemporaries (Arthur C. Clarke hardly went hungry for not writing like Phillip K. Dick, for example). In all respects, it seems like authors can break from postmodernism very easily if they decide to, so it's a question of supply and not demand here.

I think it makes more sense to call the trend a political one. Most of the groundbreaking seminal work in creating misanthropy in fiction where there wasn't any before had a fairly explicit political agenda (Dark Knight Returns, I'm looking at you), and most of the political utopias from the period tended to decide whether or not humans were bastards based on the politics driving them (for example, Ecotopia is firmly on the Humans are Bastards side; anything by the Strugatsky brothers, not so much).

And to a large degree, I think OP is over-observing things, or thinking that this is recent when it honestly isn't. Most fiction that has survived to the modern period is fairly misanthropic, even if it does have an optimistic ending. This is because either, without people doing horrible things to other people there is no plot (and thus it's all fucking pointless,) or frankly, the work grasps some deeper universal truth, generally relating to how people are pretty horrible to each other and life isn't all that great.
The difference, I think, is that past work identified "people doing horrible things to other people" as an aberration rather than as the natural order. Sure, the factory bosses might be horrible now, but that's only a temporary state of affairs until we unite the workers in the inevitable revolution! The fuzzy-wuzzies in Darkest Africa might be cannibals now, but just wait until the Emparh brings them the light of civilization! The Galactic Emperor might be a total bastard, but once we throw him down a reactor shaft everyone will get along fabulously!
 
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Narnia

Banned
Have Germany win WWII then everything will be propaganda about how the "perfect" Aryan race defeats the evil enemy.
 
There are already plenty of idealistic views of humanity in sci fi and other fiction.

To get more, have the earliest alien stories feature aliens as more evil than they were portrayed (though they were already portrayed pretty evilly--original War of the Worlds, for example).

Also weaken the environmentalist movement (a big reason for seeing humanity as bad), and have stories with literal demons (from Hell) as the antagonists remain more common.

In doing so, you'd butterfly away the evil of Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot. There might be alternate evil warlords but it's unlikely they'll be as bad as those three.

I don't see how changing some early SF prevents totalitarianism. I mean, sure, "butterflies", but I really see no connection. You could just as easily say that more stories about fighting a monstrous "other" with no quarter results in a populace more likely to support genocide and total war.
 
If the extreme tendencies New Age movement is butterflied away, society might be less misanthrophic.

Why? Two words: Channeled Messages. They give humans a big inferiority complex. I myself have some New Age ideas but Channeled Messages are extremely biased, one-sided and serve to siphon money off of people while giving humanity an inferiority complex. Let's see here--they claim to be talking to "aliens" and higher beings that claim we are inferior and we need their "help" to evolve, telling humans to "wait for them" to come. Of course this is a money grabbing scam + trolling, but it gives humans an inferiority complex.

That or a more balanced view of aliens and humans emerge--sure humans can be bastards, but so can aliens, meaning we're no better or worse than anyone really and what's not to say that THEY are screwing their planets up and destroying or exploiting their own environments as well instead of being blue faced cat people living in harmony with nature. And instead of using this speculation to further wallow in grief, we use it to make ourselves "truly" better or higher on some sort of "galactic morality scale". A more greyer view of the universe could really help us A LOT.
 
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If the extreme tendencies New Age movement is butterflied away, society might be less misanthrophic.

Why? Two words: Channeled Messages. They give humans a big inferiority complex. I myself have some New Age ideas but Channeled Messages are extremely biased, one-sided and serve to siphon money off of people while giving humanity an inferiority complex. Let's see here--they claim to be talking to "aliens" and higher beings that claim we are inferior and we need their "help" to evolve, telling humans to "wait for them" to come. Of course this is a money grabbing scam + trolling, but it gives humans an inferiority complex.

That or a more balanced view of aliens and humans emerge--sure humans can be bastards, but so can aliens, meaning we're no better or worse than anyone really and what's not to say that THEY are screwing their planets up and destroying or exploiting their own environments as well instead of being blue faced cat people living in harmony with nature. And instead of using this speculation to further wallow in grief, we use it to make ourselves "truly" better or higher on some sort of "galactic morality scale". A more greyer view of the universe could really help us A LOT.

Again, I feel you'd need to get rid of the Cold War for this because 'wise aliens arrive to save us from our warlike nature' was actually a hopeful message at the time.

Stanford prison experiment basicaly showed how "decent people" can act given the opportunity.

Yeah, it showed that most people will do anything - good or bad - if an authoritative enough person tells them to.
 
Something to consider is the idea that many of the supposedly optimistic tomes of science fiction were actually pretty depressing upon closer examination. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne is actually about a terrorist declaring war on the Western world using a weapon of mass destruction. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells was based on the idea that the divide between the rich and the poor would grow to the point that humanity would divide into different species. War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells was a commentary on British colonialism and war, with humanity suffering the fate that many of the indigenous races suffered at the hands of the British Empire. The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was based on the idea that any of the species of the prehistoric era would only wreck havoc and destruction in our world.
 
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