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Ask Slashdot: What's the Most Depressing Sci-fi You've Ever Read?
50000BTU_barbecue writes "Usually sci-fi provides adventure with happy endings for everyone. But what story have you read that resonates years later because of some insight about human nature or society that's basically cynical or pessimistic? For me it's Fred Pohl's Jem, with its sharply divided resource-constrained future world driven by politics, and its conclusion that humans are just too destructive to handle contacting alien life, especially if humans have the technological upper hand. I'm wondering what other stories have stuck in people's minds. It can be a short story, a novel or an entire series of books."
Do you mean Arthur C. Clakes Childhood's End, that wasn't depressing, certainly not up there with the most obvious example 1984. Unless you are trying to make some statement?
Any written work that refers to a Kardashian or a Snooki as admired or celebrity.
This is the essence of why capitalism defeated communism/fascism: while the latter systems tried to rule by direct application of force and thus met indignant resistance, the former realized that it's both much easier and more effective to deflect resistance into harmless outlets via the satisfaction of basic human needs and desires.
All libertarian thought basically has this problem - it's all based on simple, reductionist models, which is great for rhetorical purposes, but fails to correctly model reality in any meaningful way.
The most extreme extension of this is "the gun in the room," an argument that literally boils down to insisting that there is no subject that's not state coercion, and that nothing else can be discussed or spoken of until libertarian ideals are implemented in their entirety. (Courtesy note: As soon as someone does this, if at all possible leave and never speak to them again. There is no meaningful discussion to be had with anyone who uses this)