After talking in Social Studies class about some guy who decided we should live in futuristic domes when the bombs drop, I started thinking about too many video games and movies that made me want to write a page and a half of thinking. Thus, here's some ramblings
There are several reasons that we could, someday, be living in domes, shelters, or even underground vaults, ranging from nuclear winters to a political scheme for close control. In the case of the dome theory, it’d be to let the world re-naturalize itself over time. It could easily be nice inside that sort of world, with the artists and engineers and gardeners running the city with little trouble, like a little contained utopia. But there are massive repercussions to this, of societal and organic changes outside and inside.
For starters, the society inside the dome would be very different. The idea of a utopia is generally light-hearted, and the only type that we could establish inside domes would still be easy-going, not dramatically controlling of everybody, but only to a certain extent. Consider the freedom we have from birth; many places to go to school, opportunities for any career, possibilities to completely change your future. But the idea of keeping a dome that keeps us all well and alive means that the jobs that we need fulfilled will be needed to a much higher extreme. The eliminated jobs alone would leave a lot of people being forced into different and, perhaps, unfamiliar careers, but when children are raised in these things, they won’t get much freedom that we do now. We’d have to do what we’d have to do to all survive together, and a utopia could easily become a prison only a generation after placement. It’d make people want to survive on their own, like the others outside the dome, and that leads to a major point.
It is impossible to move an entire city’s population into a dome. The ideal of it would be for everybody to live safe inside the dome, doing the jobs they’re asked to do, and without rehabilitation of an obscene percentage of the population, not everybody would choose to go to the dome. Additionally, prisoners and illegally-living people in the original city would likely be locked outside, as not to harm the dream of the utopia. This would leave a new population outside surviving on their own, with little control and ridiculous individuality. There’d be a world outside, a dangerous one that the pure and rich could avoid in their domes. They’d still drain resources, they’d still find things to do, and they’d all try to survive, and some probably would try getting into the domes for their own safety. It’s probably even make the defending of the dome into a major career move. But unfortunately, it’d make re-naturalization impossible.
As long as there are people, there’ll be people who want things to be as easy as they can. Combining that with a world without any supervision means that everything is free for the taking, from plants to store contents to land. The outside world will still be working, be it in a more scavenger lifestyle. Sure, baybe in a good couple hundred years, if the outside world dies out, but that’s even less likely. But by then, we wouldn’t need anything to do with that world. We’d have gotten happy and comfy living in our domes, and as long as we could keep a steady resource cycle from inside, we’d have no need to leave, and with a lifestyle of a close space, we wouldn’t feel comfortable enough to leave. And to step back for a moment, there’s an even bigger if right there; a cycle of resources has already, in the world of today, become impossible to keep steady without running out. Could we do it from a locked dome?
It should probably be said by now, at least, that this is all in all a theory, and one of a worst case scenario, and a lot of my thoughts come from other theorists that express their thoughts through media and fiction, but as fictional as the sources are, they’re ones that are well thought out, to a point where it’s somewhat realistic, or at least imaginable, and proves enough that I’m not the only one as cynic about a domed lifestyle as myself. But I should be completely clear that I don’t deny the system working, but I have generally understandable doubts. It’s a lot to do, a lot to handle, and humanity hasn’t always shown itself to be mature enough to handle something this big. But if the world can start getting a little better before a situation like these domes could happen, then I’d be happy to be proved wrong. For now, though, I’ll sit down and watch with my little jar of pessimism by my side.
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