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Draft:A happy solution

2024-01-10T18:57:21Z

Celina Köck:

{{Head_UTO
|Authors=[[User:Celina Köck]]
|Observations=
* The bibliographic references are incomplete according to APA style.
* This article is in review process. The discussion tab will be used to provide feedback, sugestions or changes to be introduced in the article by the author.
* Everybody is invited to discuss or comment this article using the discussion tab. If you do so, (i) head your contribution in the discussion with a title as "Comments by"... followed by the commentator's name; (ii) finish your comment paragraphs with with signature automatically introduced by the system using the wikicode <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>.
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== 1. Short story ==

=== A happy solution ===
Happiness was forced upon all of us. We suffocated under its weight like ants under a rock, slowly feeling our amour split and crack. We revealed our soft bodies from beneath our broken shells to easily. We had never felt this sort of joy before. Just one taste of it would have been enough to sustain a person for days but we were letting ourselves drown in dopamine. All the ugliness of the world had become faded and didn’t seem to matter as much as it used to. It was almost like it wasn’t there anymore. Or at least we couldn’t see it. This wasn’t true of course. The wars, murders, attacks, pain, and torture hadn’t disappeared. We had just changed perspective.

“War is an important industry!”, shouted the president through the television screen in our living room, as my boyfriend and I sat down to watch the news two years ago. The broadcasts were becoming more and more similar since the new regime had taken power. They all preached about the prominent need for technology in all fields of life, making no exception, propagated on how the wars in the middle east and Europe were necessary and moralized on how men and women should live their lives according to traditional values. We started to get nervous then, that much was clear. “I promise all of you…,” continued the president now looking directly into the news camera. The supercilious look in his eyes made me feel sick to my stomach. “…that our government will save this country. We will make a new world, a new way of life. Technology is and will prove to be the holy grail that will make our country rise again and I, as your president am prepared to lead our country into a utopia.” He paused for a moment; I felt a chill go down my spine. “I vow to make you all happy!”, the president finished and smiled broadly. My boyfriend and I looked at each other nervously. “That last sentence was a bit odd, wasn’t it?”, I asked. “Yeah, it was.”, he said slowly, with a concerned frown on his face. “What do you think he meant by that? ´I vow to make you all happy! ´ I don’t think I have ever heard a politician talk like that. Since when do politicians care if the publics happy?”, he laughed dryly. But I couldn’t laugh. I was scared. What did it mean?

We all got to know to soon enough what the meaning behind that strange promise was. Soon technology had taken over. Children in schools started being taught by robots and computers, everyone had mandatory access to smart phones and became connected to each other. The government said that every man, woman, and child should have equal access to technological devices. Security surveillance was installed all over the country to make the public feel safer. Cameras were everywhere making crime rates drop significantly. In the beginning most people were pleased about this myself included. What we didn’t know was that we would quickly come to sober up about the effects of constant surveillance. Pretty soon we didn’t know when or where we were being watched. No conversation or action was private anymore. Technology was sold to us as convenience and safety but robbed us of our privacy and freedom. Soon it became clear that we were being watched at home as well, through our mandatory smart phones and computers, while we were surfing the internet, watching the news, or communicating with friends. While we were watching the world through our phones, our phones were watching us as well. At first when people started to notice, that our privacy was being intruded upon, they took to the streets and demonstrated. But soon people who had taken part in the demonstrations, were arrested by the government army, and disappeared and were never seen again. So, the demonstrations soon died down. For a while we thought that this was obviously not the world that was promised to us by the president, but we didn’t know then what was to happen next.

Because he did keep his promise to us. He did make us happy. We just didn’t know that this happiness was the worst kind of happiness ever to be experienced.

It seemed that scientists who supported the president’s regime had worked hard to create a device that would save people from sadness. These devices can be best described as dopamine chips. When inserted to the back of the head of a person it increased the level of dopamine in the brain and thus increased the level of happiness. And soon we would all be wearing those dopamine chips. It happened one night a year after the new regime had taken power. The governments soldiers came to our homes. It was a huge shock when I opened the door, and they pushed in. They spent two hours telling us that we had to wear those dopamine chips. When my boyfriend and I refused things became nasty and the soldiers forced the dopamine chips to the back of our heads. It happened so quickly and when it was over, we suddenly found that we didn’t want to take the dopamine chips off. In that moment we were completely and utterly content. So now technology was the holy grail that would save our society and the dopamine chips were the ultimate key to achieve utopia. It was the also the key to control our society. Now the government didn’t have to try to improve the world because we, the public, were manipulated into accepting everything around us. We were unconditionally happy. Now wars were being fought, rules were being made, and the world was being destroyed and we didn’t care one bit. The president walked about grinning like the cheshire cat. His wide smile became the symbol that signified our country. Everywhere I looked there were posters with a wide smile printed on them, plastering houses, bus stops and billboards. One day I was passing one of these posters on a billboard. I could see my own wide smile reflected in the glass separating my delirious grin from the maniacal symbol staring back at me. “He’s a lunatic, isn’t he?” I spun around. An old woman, maybe 70 years old was standing next to me. I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. She wasn’t smiling. I couldn’t understand. “Excuse me?”, I said somewhat shakily. “I said, he’s a lunatic, isn’t he?”, the woman was looking at me with a note of humour in her eyes. “I’m sorry but I don’t thing I can be understanding you correctly. Our president isn’t a lunatic. He saved us from sadness…. didn’t he?” The way she looked at me was unnerving. A feeling I hadn’t felt for quite some time. My smile wavered slightly but I straightened it within a fraction of a second. The woman straightened up and turned to face me. She was standing so close I could count every wrinkle on her face. “You don’t really think that do you? You’re a clever girl. What do you really think?” I breathed in shakily. A tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t stop smiling and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “I…I don’t know. I don’t know!”, I wept shakily. I felt like a doll being shattered only to find I was still whole. But the pain was unbearable. “Yes, you do.” The woman’s certainty shook me to my very core. And then suddenly I realised she was right. How could she not be. For ages I had been in a haze not realizing that I was letting myself fade away. “What happened to me?”, I asked the lady. “And who are you?” “My name is Elsie”, the woman answered smiling a genuine and warm smile. How I had missed the honesty and warmth of a genuine smile. So much so I couldn’t believe that I was only now realising that I had missed it. “You’ve been sleepwalking my dear. Ever since you’ve been wearing that dopamine chip. Everyone has. You forgot that you have opinions and dreams and ambitions. But I see now you remember.” “But I don’t understand. How did you do that. How did you…” “How did I get through to you?”, Elsie took my arm, and we started walking down the street together. “Its quite simple really. The dopamine chips only work if they aren’t challenged. Since everyone is always surrounded by people all wearing the same dopamine chips, thinking the same things, feeling the same way, there is no one to challenge. But when I asked you what you really think, what YOU really think, the dopamine chip started to lose its power. The same happened to me.” I picked the dopamine chip of from the back of my head, put it in my pocket and was about to ask her who it was who had freed her from the deluded life I had also been living up until now when I looked up. We had come to an abandoned alley. “Where are we?” I asked. Elsie smiled and walked down the alley towards a set of doors at the far end. “Follow me.”, she said looking back at me and beckoning with her hand. With a certain amount of hesitancy, I did as she said wiped my tears away and followed her down a long flight of stone steps into a huge room filled with people chatting indistinctly in hushed voices. As soon as they saw me the room became quiet. Then one voice which came from a young man sitting on a table said: “Found another one then, Elsie? That’s good. We need all the help we can get.” A small ripple of laughter went through the crowded room. I looked at Elsie. “What is he talking about?” Elsie pointed towards a plaque hanging on the opposite wall of the room. It read `Save the world from happiness! Join the fight. ` “Welcome to the revolution.”, Elsie said to me smiling. I smiled back and, in that moment, I knew that a war for freedom was soon to begin and that I would join the fight.

== 2. Epilogue ==
This short story titled “A happy solution” depicts the experiences of a young woman in a country taken over by a totalitarian regime which has manipulated the public into believing that their regime is what will lead the country into a utopia. This they do by manipulating the public with dopamine chips, which make people uncontrollably happy and therefore will make the public happy with any decision the government makes. The short story is therefore a dystopic depiction of a country being ruled by a totalitarian regime which uses methods being sold as utopic solutions to oppress the public. The dopamine chips stand as a utopic solution to “save people from sadness”. This idea can also be seen in the dystopic novel “Brave new world” by Aldous Huxley with the recreational drug “soma” which was used to increase happiness and complacency of the population. The following will show a small quote from Huxley’s “Brave new world” said by the character Mustapha Mond:

“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.” (Huxley, 1932, p. 102) <ref>Huxley, A. (1932). ''Brave New World''. Random House UK Ltd.</ref>

The short story “A happy solution” also shows how the government uses technological advances, and technological connection between people through computers and smartphones and security surveillance through cameras to control and watch the public. This is a motive that can also be seen in the novel “1984” by George Orwell, which is a story about a futuristic dystopian society. This futuristic society is polluted by power and control which is used to oppress the public. <ref>Orwell, G. (1949). ''1984.'' Köln: Anaconda Verlag.</ref>

However, the aspect of the public being connected to each other through smart phones and social media could be seen as a method of transparency among people. So that people might be more honest and trustful towards each other. This is a belief shared by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who lived from 1712 to 1778. He believed that transparency and access of information between parties would lead to more equality. <ref>Rousseau, J. (1762). ''Vom Gesellschaftsvertrag''. Insel Verlag. https://www.getabstract.com/de/zusammenfassung/vom-gesellschaftsvertrag/4853</ref>In the story the antagonist, the president, uses this argument to make people more open to the idea of introducing technology into every aspect of everyday life. The president then uses the connection to control and watch the public in their homes and private lives which reveals how his utopic promise of a transparent society can be easily manipulated to create a very dystopic and controlling society with a great lack of privacy and discretion. This dystopic form of a transparent society can also be seen in Jeremy Bentham’s prison design `The Panopticon`. The prison would be so built that a watchtower would be circularly surrounded by individual cells. Therefore, every prisoner could never be sure weather they were being watched or not. This would ensure that the prisoners would always be on best behaviour.<ref>Wolff, J. (2015). ''Foucaults Panoptismus. Ein Gefängnisentwurf als Sinnbild moderner Gesellschaften.'' GRIN Verlag.

https://www.grin.com/document/304027</ref> The short story “A happy solution” depicts a similar kind of transparent society being created by the president because it becomes clear that people are being watched even when they don’t know it. In the story the public reacts to this constant surveillance with demonstrations which result in people disappearing after being arrested by the government army. This brutal abuse of power and infringement of free speech clearly shows that the government uses the “transparency” of the society, the technological connection, to find out who does what and when and then uses that information to make arrests and control the public.

The end of the short story “A happy solution” tells us that a revolution is underway to overthrow the totalitarian government. This is a kind of anarchism. Anarchism is often associated with violence, but the basic idea of anarchism is that a government which uses its power and influence to manipulate and oppress should be abolished. Hierarchy is seen as harmful, and the freedom of individuals is seen as an important right which must be protected and must be fought for if endangered.<ref>Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia. (2022). ''Anarchism''. Last edited: 07.01. 2024, at 03:18 UTC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism Last accessed: 09.01.2024, at 20:35 UTC.</ref> In addition, crypto anarchism, a form of anarchism which wants to weaken the state’s power by strengthening the common man as an individual would be achieved by prohibiting the government from collecting personal information on the citizens. Since the totalitarian government in the short story uses their technology to watch the citizens and gather information on the public, the revolution which is under way in the story makes sense as a crypto-anarchical response to such a hierarchical oppression.<ref>Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia. (2021). ''Crypto-anarchism''. Last edited: 18.12. 2023, at 02:47 UTC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism Last accessed: 09.01.2014, at 20:40 UTC.</ref> In addition, the anarchical ideal of a person’s individuality as the key to overthrow oppressive governments is shown in how the hero Elsie saves the protagonist in the short story “A happy solution”. When Elsie askes the protagonist what she personally thinks of the president, the power of the dopamine chip weakens, and the protagonist is able to shake of the control that the totalitarian regime has on her. Thus concluding the story at a turning point in the protagonists journey.

== References ==
<references />

[[Category:Cyberutopias]]

Draft:A happy solution

2024-01-10T18:39:58Z

Celina Köck:

{{Head_UTO
|Authors=[[User:Celina Köck]]
|Observations=
* The bibliographic references are incomplete according to APA style.
* This article is in review process. The discussion tab will be used to provide feedback, sugestions or changes to be introduced in the article by the author.
* Everybody is invited to discuss or comment this article using the discussion tab. If you do so, (i) head your contribution in the discussion with a title as "Comments by"... followed by the commentator's name; (ii) finish your comment paragraphs with with signature automatically introduced by the system using the wikicode <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>.
}}
== 1. Short story ==

=== A happy solution ===
Happiness was forced upon all of us. We suffocated under its weight like ants under a rock, slowly feeling our amour split and crack. We revealed our soft bodies from beneath our broken shells to easily. We had never felt this sort of joy before. Just one taste of it would have been enough to sustain a person for days but we were letting ourselves drown in dopamine. All the ugliness of the world had become faded and didn’t seem to matter as much as it used to. It was almost like it wasn’t there anymore. Or at least we couldn’t see it. This wasn’t true of course. The wars, murders, attacks, pain, and torture hadn’t disappeared. We had just changed perspective.

“War is an important industry!”, shouted the president through the television screen in our living room, as my boyfriend and I sat down to watch the news two years ago. The broadcasts were becoming more and more similar since the new regime had taken power. They all preached about the prominent need for technology in all fields of life, making no exception, propagated on how the wars in the middle east and Europe were necessary and moralized on how men and women should live their lives according to traditional values. We started to get nervous then, that much was clear. “I promise all of you…,” continued the president now looking directly into the news camera. The supercilious look in his eyes made me feel sick to my stomach. “…that our government will save this country. We will make a new world, a new way of life. Technology is and will prove to be the holy grail that will make our country rise again and I, as your president am prepared to lead our country into a utopia.” He paused for a moment; I felt a chill go down my spine. “I vow to make you all happy!”, the president finished and smiled broadly. My boyfriend and I looked at each other nervously. “That last sentence was a bit odd, wasn’t it?”, I asked. “Yeah, it was.”, he said slowly, with a concerned frown on his face. “What do you think he meant by that? ´I vow to make you all happy! ´ I don’t think I have ever heard a politician talk like that. Since when do politicians care if the publics happy?”, he laughed dryly. But I couldn’t laugh. I was scared. What did it mean?

We all got to know to soon enough what the meaning behind that strange promise was. Soon technology had taken over. Children in schools started being taught by robots and computers, everyone had mandatory access to smart phones and became connected to each other. The government said that every man, woman, and child should have equal access to technological devices. Security surveillance was installed all over the country to make the public feel safer. Cameras were everywhere making crime rates drop significantly. In the beginning most people were pleased about this myself included. What we didn’t know was that we would quickly come to sober up about the effects of constant surveillance. Pretty soon we didn’t know when or where we were being watched. No conversation or action was private anymore. Technology was sold to us as convenience and safety but robbed us of our privacy and freedom. Soon it became clear that we were being watched at home as well, through our mandatory smart phones and computers, while we were surfing the internet, watching the news, or communicating with friends. While we were watching the world through our phones, our phones were watching us as well. At first when people started to notice, that our privacy was being intruded upon, they took to the streets and demonstrated. But soon people who had taken part in the demonstrations, were arrested by the government army, and disappeared and were never seen again. So, the demonstrations soon died down. For a while we thought that this was obviously not the world that was promised to us by the president, but we didn’t know then what was to happen next.

Because he did keep his promise to us. He did make us happy. We just didn’t know that this happiness was the worst kind of happiness ever to be experienced.

It seemed that scientists who supported the president’s regime had worked hard to create a device that would save people from sadness. These devices can be best described as dopamine chips. When inserted to the back of the head of a person it increased the level of dopamine in the brain and thus increased the level of happiness. And soon we would all be wearing those dopamine chips. It happened one night a year after the new regime had taken power. The governments soldiers came to our homes. It was a huge shock when I opened the door, and they pushed in. They spent two hours telling us that we had to wear those dopamine chips. When my boyfriend and I refused things became nasty and the soldiers forced the dopamine chips to the back of our heads. It happened so quickly and when it was over, we suddenly found that we didn’t want to take the dopamine chips off. In that moment we were completely and utterly content. So now technology was the holy grail that would save our society and the dopamine chips were the ultimate key to achieve utopia. It was the also the key to control our society. Now the government didn’t have to try to improve the world because we, the public, were manipulated into accepting everything around us. We were unconditionally happy. Now wars were being fought, rules were being made, and the world was being destroyed and we didn’t care one bit. The president walked about grinning like the cheshire cat. His wide smile became the symbol that signified our country. Everywhere I looked there were posters with a wide smile printed on them, plastering houses, bus stops and billboards. One day I was passing one of these posters on a billboard. I could see my own wide smile reflected in the glass separating my delirious grin from the maniacal symbol staring back at me. “He’s a lunatic, isn’t he?” I spun around. An old woman, maybe 70 years old was standing next to me. I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. She wasn’t smiling. I couldn’t understand. “Excuse me?”, I said somewhat shakily. “I said, he’s a lunatic, isn’t he?”, the woman was looking at me with a note of humour in her eyes. “I’m sorry but I don’t thing I can be understanding you correctly. Our president isn’t a lunatic. He saved us from sadness…. didn’t he?” The way she looked at me was unnerving. A feeling I hadn’t felt for quite some time. My smile wavered slightly but I straightened it within a fraction of a second. The woman straightened up and turned to face me. She was standing so close I could count every wrinkle on her face. “You don’t really think that do you? You’re a clever girl. What do you really think?” I breathed in shakily. A tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t stop smiling and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “I…I don’t know. I don’t know!”, I wept shakily. I felt like a doll being shattered only to find I was still whole. But the pain was unbearable. “Yes, you do.” The woman’s certainty shook me to my very core. And then suddenly I realised she was right. How could she not be. For ages I had been in a haze not realizing that I was letting myself fade away. “What happened to me?”, I asked the lady. “And who are you?” “My name is Elsie”, the woman answered smiling a genuine and warm smile. How I had missed the honesty and warmth of a genuine smile. So much so I couldn’t believe that I was only now realising that I had missed it. “You’ve been sleepwalking my dear. Ever since you’ve been wearing that dopamine chip. Everyone has. You forgot that you have opinions and dreams and ambitions. But I see now you remember.” “But I don’t understand. How did you do that. How did you…” “How did I get through to you?”, Elsie took my arm, and we started walking down the street together. “Its quite simple really. The dopamine chips only work if they aren’t challenged. Since everyone is always surrounded by people all wearing the same dopamine chips, thinking the same things, feeling the same way, there is no one to challenge. But when I asked you what you really think, what YOU really think, the dopamine chip started to lose its power. The same happened to me.” I picked the dopamine chip of from the back of my head, put it in my pocket and was about to ask her who it was who had freed her from the deluded life I had also been living up until now when I looked up. We had come to an abandoned alley. “Where are we?” I asked. Elsie smiled and walked down the alley towards a set of doors at the far end. “Follow me.”, she said looking back at me and beckoning with her hand. With a certain amount of hesitancy, I did as she said wiped my tears away and followed her down a long flight of stone steps into a huge room filled with people chatting indistinctly in hushed voices. As soon as they saw me the room became quiet. Then one voice which came from a young man sitting on a table said: “Found another one then, Elsie? That’s good. We need all the help we can get.” A small ripple of laughter went through the crowded room. I looked at Elsie. “What is he talking about?” Elsie pointed towards a plaque hanging on the opposite wall of the room. It read `Save the world from happiness! Join the fight. ` “Welcome to the revolution.”, Elsie said to me smiling. I smiled back and, in that moment, I knew that a war for freedom was soon to begin and that I would join the fight.

== 2. Epilogue ==
This short story titled “A happy solution” depicts the experiences of a young woman in a country taken over by a totalitarian regime which has manipulated the public into believing that their regime is what will lead the country into a utopia. This they do by manipulating the public with dopamine chips, which make people uncontrollably happy and therefore will make the public happy with any decision the government makes. The short story is therefore a dystopic depiction of a country being ruled by a totalitarian regime which uses methods being sold as utopic solutions to oppress the public. The dopamine chips stand as a utopic solution to “save people from sadness”. This idea can also be seen in the dystopic novel “Brave new world” by Aldous Huxley with the recreational drug “soma” which was used to increase happiness and complacency of the population. The following will show a small quote from Huxley’s “Brave new world” said by the character Mustapha Mond:

“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.” (Huxley, 1932, p. 102) <ref>Huxley, A. (1932). ''Brave New World''. Random House UK Ltd.</ref>

The short story “A happy solution” also shows how the government uses technological advances, and technological connection between people through computers and smartphones and security surveillance through cameras to control and watch the public. This is a motive that can also be seen in the novel “1984” by George Orwell, which is a story about a futuristic dystopian society. This futuristic society is polluted by power and control which is used to oppress the public. <ref>Orwell, G. (1949). ''1984.'' Köln: Anaconda Verlag.</ref>

However, the aspect of the public being connected to each other through smart phones and social media could be seen as a method of transparency among people. So that people might be more honest and trustful towards each other. This is a belief shared by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who lived from 1712 to 1778. He believed that transparency and access of information between parties would lead to more equality. <ref>Rousseau, J. (1762). ''Vom Gesellschaftsvertrag''. Insel Verlag. https://www.getabstract.com/de/zusammenfassung/vom-gesellschaftsvertrag/4853</ref>In the story the antagonist, the president, uses this argument to make people more open to the idea of introducing technology into every aspect of everyday life. The president then uses the connection to control and watch the public in their homes and private lives which reveals how his utopic promise of a transparent society can be easily manipulated to create a very dystopic and controlling society with a great lack of privacy and discretion. This dystopic form of a transparent society can also be seen in Jeremy Bentham’s prison design `The Panopticon`. The prison would be so built that a watchtower would be circularly surrounded by individual cells. Therefore, every prisoner could never be sure weather they were being watched or not. This would ensure that the prisoners would always be on best behaviour.<ref>Wolff, J. (2015). ''Foucaults Panoptismus. Ein Gefängnisentwurf als Sinnbild moderner Gesellschaften.'' GRIN Verlag.

https://www.grin.com/document/304027</ref> The short story “A happy solution” depicts a similar kind of transparent society being created by the president because it becomes clear that people are being watched even when they don’t know it. In the story the public reacts to this constant surveillance with demonstrations which result in people disappearing after being arrested by the government army. This brutal abuse of power and infringement of free speech clearly shows that the government uses the “transparency” of the society, the technological connection, to find out who does what and when and then uses that information to make arrests and control the public.

The end of the short story “A happy solution” tells us that a revolution is underway to overthrow the totalitarian government. This is a kind of anarchism. Anarchism is often associated with violence, but the basic idea of anarchism is that a government which uses its power and influence to manipulate and oppress should be abolished. Hierarchy is seen as harmful, and the freedom of individuals is seen as an important right which must be protected and must be fought for if endangered.<ref>Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia. (2022). ''Anarchism''. Last edited: 07.01. 2024, at 03:18 UTC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism Last accessed: 09.01.2024, at 20:35 UTC.</ref> In addition, crypto anarchism, a form of anarchism which wants to weaken the state’s power by strengthening the common man as an individual would be achieved by prohibiting the government from collecting personal information on the citizens. Since the totalitarian government in the short story uses their technology to watch the citizens and gather information on the public, the revolution which is under way in the story makes sense as a crypto-anarchical response to such a hierarchical oppression.<ref>Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia. (2021). ''Crypto-anarchism''. Last edited: 18.12. 2023, at 02:47 UTC<nowiki/>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism Last accessed: 09.01.2014, at 20:40 UTC.</ref> In addition, the anarchical ideal of a person’s individuality as the key to overthrow oppressive governments is shown in how the hero Elsie saves the protagonist in the short story “A happy solution”. When Elsie askes the protagonist what she personally thinks of the president, the power of the dopamine chip weakens, and the protagonist is able to shake of the control that the totalitarian regime has on her. Thus concluding the story at a turning point in the protagonists journey.

== References ==
<references />

[[Category:Cyberutopias]]

Draft:A happy solution

2024-01-09T19:59:26Z

Celina Köck:

{{Head_UTO
|Authors=[[User:Celina Köck]]
|Observations=
* The bibliographic references are incomplete according to APA style.
* This article is in review process. The discussion tab will be used to provide feedback, sugestions or changes to be introduced in the article by the author.
* Everybody is invited to discuss or comment this article using the discussion tab. If you do so, (i) head your contribution in the discussion with a title as "Comments by"... followed by the commentator's name; (ii) finish your comment paragraphs with with signature automatically introduced by the system using the wikicode <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>.
}}
== 1. Short story ==

=== A happy solution ===
Happiness was forced upon all of us. We suffocated under its weight like ants under a rock, slowly feeling our amour split and crack. We revealed our soft bodies from beneath our broken shells to easily. We had never felt this sort of joy before. Just one taste of it would have been enough to sustain a person for days but we were letting ourselves drown in dopamine. All the ugliness of the world had become faded and didn’t seem to matter as much as it used to. It was almost like it wasn’t there anymore. Or at least we couldn’t see it. This wasn’t true of course. The wars, murders, attacks, pain, and torture hadn’t disappeared. We had just changed perspective.

“War is an important industry!”, shouted the president through the television screen in our living room, as my boyfriend and I sat down to watch the news two years ago. The broadcasts were becoming more and more similar since the new regime had taken power. They all preached about the prominent need for technology in all fields of life, making no exception, propagated on how the wars in the middle east and Europe were necessary and moralized on how men and women should live their lives according to traditional values. We started to get nervous then, that much was clear. “I promise all of you…,” continued the president now looking directly into the news camera. The supercilious look in his eyes made me feel sick to my stomach. “…that our government will save this country. We will make a new world, a new way of life. Technology is and will prove to be the holy grail that will make our country rise again and I, as your president am prepared to lead our country into a utopia.” He paused for a moment; I felt a chill go down my spine. “I vow to make you all happy!”, the president finished and smiled broadly. My boyfriend and I looked at each other nervously. “That last sentence was a bit odd, wasn’t it?”, I asked. “Yeah, it was.”, he said slowly, with a concerned frown on his face. “What do you think he meant by that? ´I vow to make you all happy! ´ I don’t think I have ever heard a politician talk like that. Since when do politicians care if the publics happy?”, he laughed dryly. But I couldn’t laugh. I was scared. What did it mean?

We all got to know to soon enough what the meaning behind that strange promise was. Soon technology had taken over. Children in schools started being taught by robots and computers, everyone had mandatory access to smart phones and became connected to each other. The government said that every man, woman, and child should have equal access to technological devices. Security surveillance was installed all over the country to make the public feel safer. Cameras were everywhere making crime rates drop significantly. In the beginning most people were pleased about this myself included. What we didn’t know was that we would quickly come to sober up about the effects of constant surveillance. Pretty soon we didn’t know when or where we were being watched. No conversation or action was private anymore. Technology was sold to us as convenience and safety but robbed us of our privacy and freedom. Soon it became clear that we were being watched at home as well, through our mandatory smart phones and computers, while we were surfing the internet, watching the news, or communicating with friends. While we were watching the world through our phones, our phones were watching us as well. At first when people started to notice, that our privacy was being intruded upon, they took to the streets and demonstrated. But soon people who had taken part in the demonstrations, were arrested by the government army, and disappeared and were never seen again. So, the demonstrations soon died down. For a while we thought that this was obviously not the world that was promised to us by the president, but we didn’t know then what was to happen next.

Because he did keep his promise to us. He did make us happy. We just didn’t know that this happiness was the worst kind of happiness ever to be experienced.

It seemed that scientists who supported the president’s regime had worked hard to create a device that would save people from sadness. These devices can be best described as dopamine chips. When inserted to the back of the head of a person it increased the level of dopamine in the brain and thus increased the level of happiness. And soon we would all be wearing those dopamine chips. It happened one night a year after the new regime had taken power. The governments soldiers came to our homes. It was a huge shock when I opened the door, and they pushed in. They spent two hours telling us that we had to wear those dopamine chips. When my boyfriend and I refused things became nasty and the soldiers forced the dopamine chips to the back of our heads. It happened so quickly and when it was over, we suddenly found that we didn’t want to take the dopamine chips off. In that moment we were completely and utterly content. So now technology was the holy grail that would save our society and the dopamine chips were the ultimate key to achieve utopia. It was the also the key to control our society. Now the government didn’t have to try to improve the world because we, the public, were manipulated into accepting everything around us. We were unconditionally happy. Now wars were being fought, rules were being made, and the world was being destroyed and we didn’t care one bit. The president walked about grinning like the cheshire cat. His wide smile became the symbol that signified our country. Everywhere I looked there were posters with a wide smile printed on them, plastering houses, bus stops and billboards. One day I was passing one of these posters on a billboard. I could see my own wide smile reflected in the glass separating my delirious grin from the maniacal symbol staring back at me. “He’s a lunatic, isn’t he?” I spun around. An old woman, maybe 70 years old was standing next to me. I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. She wasn’t smiling. I couldn’t understand. “Excuse me?”, I said somewhat shakily. “I said, he’s a lunatic, isn’t he?”, the woman was looking at me with a note of humour in her eyes. “I’m sorry but I don’t thing I can be understanding you correctly. Our president isn’t a lunatic. He saved us from sadness…. didn’t he?” The way she looked at me was unnerving. A feeling I hadn’t felt for quite some time. My smile wavered slightly but I straightened it within a fraction of a second. The woman straightened up and turned to face me. She was standing so close I could count every wrinkle on her face. “You don’t really think that do you? You’re a clever girl. What do you really think?” I breathed in shakily. A tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t stop smiling and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “I…I don’t know. I don’t know!”, I wept shakily. I felt like a doll being shattered only to find I was still whole. But the pain was unbearable. “Yes, you do.” The woman’s certainty shook me to my very core. And then suddenly I realised she was right. How could she not be. For ages I had been in a haze not realizing that I was letting myself fade away. “What happened to me?”, I asked the lady. “And who are you?” “My name is Elsie”, the woman answered smiling a genuine and warm smile. How I had missed the honesty and warmth of a genuine smile. So much so I couldn’t believe that I was only now realising that I had missed it. “You’ve been sleepwalking my dear. Ever since you’ve been wearing that dopamine chip. Everyone has. You forgot that you have opinions and dreams and ambitions. But I see now you remember.” “But I don’t understand. How did you do that. How did you…” “How did I get through to you?”, Elsie took my arm, and we started walking down the street together. “Its quite simple really. The dopamine chips only work if they aren’t challenged. Since everyone is always surrounded by people all wearing the same dopamine chips, thinking the same things, feeling the same way, there is no one to challenge. But when I asked you what you really think, what YOU really think, the dopamine chip started to lose its power. The same happened to me.” I picked the dopamine chip of from the back of my head, put it in my pocket and was about to ask her who it was who had freed her from the deluded life I had also been living up until now when I looked up. We had come to an abandoned alley. “Where are we?” I asked. Elsie smiled and walked down the alley towards a set of doors at the far end. “Follow me.”, she said looking back at me and beckoning with her hand. With a certain amount of hesitancy, I did as she said wiped my tears away and followed her down a long flight of stone steps into a huge room filled with people chatting indistinctly in hushed voices. As soon as they saw me the room became quiet. Then one voice which came from a young man sitting on a table said: “Found another one then, Elsie? That’s good. We need all the help we can get.” A small ripple of laughter went through the crowded room. I looked at Elsie. “What is he talking about?” Elsie pointed towards a plaque hanging on the opposite wall of the room. It read `Save the world from happiness! Join the fight. ` “Welcome to the revolution.”, Elsie said to me smiling. I smiled back and, in that moment, I knew that a war for freedom was soon to begin and that I would join the fight.

== 2. Epilogue ==
This short story titled “A happy solution” depicts the experiences of a young woman in a country taken over by a totalitarian regime which has manipulated the public into believing that their regime is what will lead the country into a utopia. This they do by manipulating the public with dopamine chips, which make people uncontrollably happy and therefore will make the public happy with any decision the government makes. The short story is therefore a dystopic depiction of a country being ruled by a totalitarian regime which uses methods being sold as utopic solutions to oppress the public. The dopamine chips stand as a utopic solution to “save people from sadness”. This idea can also be seen in the dystopic novel “Brave new world” by Aldous Huxley with the recreational drug “soma” which was used to increase happiness and complacency of the population. The following will show a small quote from Huxley’s “Brave new world” said by the character Mustapha Mond:

“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.” (Huxley, 1932, p. 102) <ref>Huxley, A. (1932). ''Brave New World''. Random House UK Ltd.</ref>

The short story “A happy solution” also shows how the government uses technological advances, and technological connection between people through computers and smartphones and security surveillance through cameras to control and watch the public. This is a motive that can also be seen in the novel “1984” by George Orwell, which is a story about a futuristic dystopian society. This futuristic society is polluted by power and control which is used to oppress the public. <ref>Orwell, G. (1949). ''1984.'' E-Kitap Projesi & Cheapest Books. Anaconda Verlag.</ref>

However, the aspect of the public being connected to each other through smart phones and social media could be seen as a method of transparency among people. So that people might be more honest and trustful towards each other. This is a belief shared by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who lived from 1712 to 1778. He believed that transparency and access of information between parties would lead to more equality. <ref>Rousseau, J. (1762). ''Vom Gesellschaftsvertrag''. Insel Verlag. https://www.getabstract.com/de/zusammenfassung/vom-gesellschaftsvertrag/4853</ref>In the story the antagonist, the president, uses this argument to make people more open to the idea of introducing technology into every aspect of everyday life. The president then uses the connection to control and watch the public in their homes and private lives which reveals how his utopic promise of a transparent society can be easily manipulated to create a very dystopic and controlling society with a great lack of privacy and discretion. This dystopic form of a transparent society can also be seen in Jeremy Bentham’s prison design `The Panopticon`. The prison would be so built that a watchtower would be circularly surrounded by individual cells. Therefore, every prisoner could never be sure weather they were being watched or not. This would ensure that the prisoners would always be on best behaviour.<ref>Wolff, J. (2015). ''Foucaults Panoptismus. Ein Gefängnisentwurf als Sinnbild moderner Gesellschaften.'' GRIN Verlag.

https://www.grin.com/document/304027</ref> The short story “A happy solution” depicts a similar kind of transparent society being created by the president because it becomes clear that people are being watched even when they don’t know it. In the story the public reacts to this constant surveillance with demonstrations which result in people disappearing after being arrested by the government army. This brutal abuse of power and infringement of free speech clearly shows that the government uses the “transparency” of the society, the technological connection, to find out who does what and when and then uses that information to make arrests and control the public.

The end of the short story “A happy solution” tells us that a revolution is underway to overthrow the totalitarian government. This is a kind of anarchism. Anarchism is often associated with violence, but the basic idea of anarchism is that a government which uses its power and influence to manipulate and oppress should be abolished. Hierarchy is seen as harmful, and the freedom of individuals is seen as an important right which must be protected and must be fought for if endangered.<ref>Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia. (2022). ''Anarchism''. Last edited: 07.01. 2024, at 03:18 UTC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism Last accessed: 09.01.2024, at 20:35 UTC.</ref> In addition, crypto anarchism, a form of anarchism which wants to weaken the state’s power by strengthening the common man as an individual would be achieved by prohibiting the government from collecting personal information on the citizens. Since the totalitarian government in the short story uses their technology to watch the citizens and gather information on the public, the revolution which is under way in the story makes sense as a crypto-anarchical response to such a hierarchical oppression.<ref>Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia. (2021). ''Crypto-anarchism''. Last edited: 18.12. 2023, at 02:47 UTC<nowiki/>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism Last accessed: 09.01.2014, at 20:40 UTC.</ref> In addition, the anarchical ideal of a person’s individuality as the key to overthrow oppressive governments is shown in how the hero Elsie saves the protagonist in the short story “A happy solution”. When Elsie askes the protagonist what she personally thinks of the president, the power of the dopamine chip weakens, and the protagonist is able to shake of the control that the totalitarian regime has on her. Thus concluding the story at a turning point in the protagonists journey.

== References ==
<references />

[[Category:Cyberutopias]]

Draft:A happy solution

2024-01-09T19:17:46Z

Celina Köck:

{{Head_UTO
|Authors=[[User:Celina Köck]]
|Observations=
* The bibliographic references are incomplete according to APA style.
* This article is in review process. The discussion tab will be used to provide feedback, sugestions or changes to be introduced in the article by the author.
* Everybody is invited to discuss or comment this article using the discussion tab. If you do so, (i) head your contribution in the discussion with a title as "Comments by"... followed by the commentator's name; (ii) finish your comment paragraphs with with signature automatically introduced by the system using the wikicode <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>.
}}
== 1. Short story ==

=== A happy solution ===
Happiness was forced upon all of us. We suffocated under its weight like ants under a rock, slowly feeling our amour split and crack. We revealed our soft bodies from beneath our broken shells to easily. We had never felt this sort of joy before. Just one taste of it would have been enough to sustain a person for days but we were letting ourselves drown in dopamine. All the ugliness of the world had become faded and didn’t seem to matter as much as it used to. It was almost like it wasn’t there anymore. Or at least we couldn’t see it. This wasn’t true of course. The wars, murders, attacks, pain, and torture hadn’t disappeared. We had just changed perspective.

“War is an important industry!”, shouted the president through the television screen in our living room, as my boyfriend and I sat down to watch the news two years ago. The broadcasts were becoming more and more similar since the new regime had taken power. They all preached about the prominent need for technology in all fields of life, making no exception, propagated on how the wars in the middle east and Europe were necessary and moralized on how men and women should live their lives according to traditional values. We started to get nervous then, that much was clear. “I promise all of you…,” continued the president now looking directly into the news camera. The supercilious look in his eyes made me feel sick to my stomach. “…that our government will save this country. We will make a new world, a new way of life. Technology is and will prove to be the holy grail that will make our country rise again and I, as your president am prepared to lead our country into a utopia.” He paused for a moment; I felt a chill go down my spine. “I vow to make you all happy!”, the president finished and smiled broadly. My boyfriend and I looked at each other nervously. “That last sentence was a bit odd, wasn’t it?”, I asked. “Yeah, it was.”, he said slowly, with a concerned frown on his face. “What do you think he meant by that? ´I vow to make you all happy! ´ I don’t think I have ever heard a politician talk like that. Since when do politicians care if the publics happy?”, he laughed dryly. But I couldn’t laugh. I was scared. What did it mean?

We all got to know to soon enough what the meaning behind that strange promise was. Soon technology had taken over. Children in schools started being taught by robots and computers, everyone had mandatory access to smart phones and became connected to each other. The government said that every man, woman, and child should have equal access to technological devices. Security surveillance was installed all over the country to make the public feel safer. Cameras were everywhere making crime rates drop significantly. In the beginning most people were pleased about this myself included. What we didn’t know was that we would quickly come to sober up about the effects of constant surveillance. Pretty soon we didn’t know when or where we were being watched. No conversation or action was private anymore. Technology was sold to us as convenience and safety but robbed us of our privacy and freedom. Soon it became clear that we were being watched at home as well, through our mandatory smart phones and computers, while we were surfing the internet, watching the news, or communicating with friends. While we were watching the world through our phones, our phones were watching us as well. At first when people started to notice, that our privacy was being intruded upon, they took to the streets and demonstrated. But soon people who had taken part in the demonstrations, were arrested by the government army, and disappeared and were never seen again. So, the demonstrations soon died down. For a while we thought that this was obviously not the world that was promised to us by the president, but we didn’t know then what was to happen next.

Because he did keep his promise to us. He did make us happy. We just didn’t know that this happiness was the worst kind of happiness ever to be experienced.

It seemed that scientists who supported the president’s regime had worked hard to create a device that would save people from sadness. These devices can be best described as dopamine chips. When inserted to the back of the head of a person it increased the level of dopamine in the brain and thus increased the level of happiness. And soon we would all be wearing those dopamine chips. It happened one night a year after the new regime had taken power. The governments soldiers came to our homes. It was a huge shock when I opened the door, and they pushed in. They spent two hours telling us that we had to wear those dopamine chips. When my boyfriend and I refused things became nasty and the soldiers forced the dopamine chips to the back of our heads. It happened so quickly and when it was over, we suddenly found that we didn’t want to take the dopamine chips off. In that moment we were completely and utterly content. So now technology was the holy grail that would save our society and the dopamine chips were the ultimate key to achieve utopia. It was the also the key to control our society. Now the government didn’t have to try to improve the world because we, the public, were manipulated into accepting everything around us. We were unconditionally happy. Now wars were being fought, rules were being made, and the world was being destroyed and we didn’t care one bit. The president walked about grinning like the cheshire cat. His wide smile became the symbol that signified our country. Everywhere I looked there were posters with a wide smile printed on them, plastering houses, bus stops and billboards. One day I was passing one of these posters on a billboard. I could see my own wide smile reflected in the glass separating my delirious grin from the maniacal symbol staring back at me. “He’s a lunatic, isn’t he?” I spun around. An old woman, maybe 70 years old was standing next to me. I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. She wasn’t smiling. I couldn’t understand. “Excuse me?”, I said somewhat shakily. “I said, he’s a lunatic, isn’t he?”, the woman was looking at me with a note of humour in her eyes. “I’m sorry but I don’t thing I can be understanding you correctly. Our president isn’t a lunatic. He saved us from sadness…. didn’t he?” The way she looked at me was unnerving. A feeling I hadn’t felt for quite some time. My smile wavered slightly but I straightened it within a fraction of a second. The woman straightened up and turned to face me. She was standing so close I could count every wrinkle on her face. “You don’t really think that do you? You’re a clever girl. What do you really think?” I breathed in shakily. A tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t stop smiling and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “I…I don’t know. I don’t know!”, I wept shakily. I felt like a doll being shattered only to find I was still whole. But the pain was unbearable. “Yes, you do.” The woman’s certainty shook me to my very core. And then suddenly I realised she was right. How could she not be. For ages I had been in a haze not realizing that I was letting myself fade away. “What happened to me?”, I asked the lady. “And who are you?” “My name is Elsie”, the woman answered smiling a genuine and warm smile. How I had missed the honesty and warmth of a genuine smile. So much so I couldn’t believe that I was only now realising that I had missed it. “You’ve been sleepwalking my dear. Ever since you’ve been wearing that dopamine chip. Everyone has. You forgot that you have opinions and dreams and ambitions. But I see now you remember.” “But I don’t understand. How did you do that. How did you…” “How did I get through to you?”, Elsie took my arm, and we started walking down the street together. “Its quite simple really. The dopamine chips only work if they aren’t challenged. Since everyone is always surrounded by people all wearing the same dopamine chips, thinking the same things, feeling the same way, there is no one to challenge. But when I asked you what you really think, what YOU really think, the dopamine chip started to lose its power. The same happened to me.” I picked the dopamine chip of from the back of my head, put it in my pocket and was about to ask her who it was who had freed her from the deluded life I had also been living up until now when I looked up. We had come to an abandoned alley. “Where are we?” I asked. Elsie smiled and walked down the alley towards a set of doors at the far end. “Follow me.”, she said looking back at me and beckoning with her hand. With a certain amount of hesitancy, I did as she said wiped my tears away and followed her down a long flight of stone steps into a huge room filled with people chatting indistinctly in hushed voices. As soon as they saw me the room became quiet. Then one voice which came from a young man sitting on a table said: “Found another one then, Elsie? That’s good. We need all the help we can get.” A small ripple of laughter went through the crowded room. I looked at Elsie. “What is he talking about?” Elsie pointed towards a plaque hanging on the opposite wall of the room. It read `Save the world from happiness! Join the fight. ` “Welcome to the revolution.”, Elsie said to me smiling. I smiled back and, in that moment, I knew that a war for freedom was soon to begin and that I would join the fight.

== 2. Epilogue ==
This short story titled “A happy solution” depicts the experiences of a young woman in a country taken over by a totalitarian regime which has manipulated the public into believing that their regime is what will lead the country into a utopia. This they do by manipulating the public with dopamine chips, which make people uncontrollably happy and therefore will make the public happy with any decision the government makes. The short story is therefore a dystopic depiction of a country being ruled by a totalitarian regime which uses methods being sold as utopic solutions to oppress the public. The dopamine chips stand as a utopic solution to “save people from sadness”. This idea can also be seen in the dystopic novel “Brave new world” by Aldous Huxley with the recreational drug “soma” which was used to increase happiness and complacency of the population. The following will show a small quote from Huxley’s “Brave new world” said by the character Mustapha Mond:

“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.” (Huxley, 1932, p. 102) <ref>Huxley, A. (1932). ''Brave New World''. Random House UK Ltd.</ref>

The short story “A happy solution” also shows how the government uses technological advances, and technological connection between people through computers and smartphones and security surveillance through cameras to control and watch the public. This is a motive that can also be seen in the novel “1984” by George Orwell, which is a story about a futuristic dystopian society. This futuristic society is polluted by power and control which is used to oppress the public. <ref>Orwell, G. (1949). ''1984'', E-Kitap Projesi & Cheapest Books. Anaconda Verlag.</ref>

However, the aspect of the public being connected to each other through smart phones and social media could be seen as a method of transparency among people. So that people might be more honest and trustful towards each other. This is a belief shared by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who lived from 1712 to 1778. He believed that transparency and access of information between parties would lead to more equality. <ref>Rousseau, J. (1762).

https://www.getabstract.com/de/zusammenfassung/vom-gesellschaftsvertrag/4853</ref>In the story the antagonist, the president, uses this argument to make people more open to the idea of introducing technology into every aspect of everyday life. The president then uses the connection to control and watch the public in their homes and private lives which reveals how his utopic promise of a transparent society can be easily manipulated to create a very dystopic and controlling society with a great lack of privacy and discretion. This dystopic form of a transparent society can also be seen in Jeremy Bentham’s prison design `The Panopticon`. The prison would be so built that a watchtower would be circularly surrounded by individual cells. Therefore, every prisoner could never be sure weather they were being watched or not. This would ensure that the prisoners would always be on best behaviour.<ref>https://www.grin.com/document/304027</ref> The short story “A happy solution” depicts a similar kind of transparent society being created by the president because it becomes clear that people are being watched even when they don’t know it. In the story the public reacts to this constant surveillance with demonstrations which result in people disappearing after being arrested by the government army. This brutal abuse of power and infringement of free speech clearly shows that the government uses the “transparency” of the society, the technological connection, to find out who does what and when and then uses that information to make arrests and control the public.

The end of the short story “A happy solution” tells us that a revolution is underway to overthrow the totalitarian government. This is a kind of anarchism. Anarchism is often associated with violence, but the basic idea of anarchism is that a government which uses its power and influence to manipulate and oppress should be abolished. Hierarchy is seen as harmful, and the freedom of individuals is seen as an important right which must be protected and must be fought for if endangered.<ref>Anarchism. (2022). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism</ref> In addition, crypto anarchism, a form of anarchism which wants to weaken the state’s power by strengthening the common man as an individual would be achieved by prohibiting the government from collecting personal information on the citizens. Since the totalitarian government in the short story uses their technology to watch the citizens and gather information on the public, the revolution which is under way in the story makes sense as a crypto-anarchical response to such a hierarchical oppression.<ref>Crypto-anarchism. (2021). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism</ref> In addition, the anarchical ideal of a person’s individuality as the key to overthrow oppressive governments is shown in how the hero Elsie saves the protagonist in the short story “A happy solution”. When Elsie askes the protagonist what she personally thinks of the president, the power of the dopamine chip weakens, and the protagonist is able to shake of the control that the totalitarian regime has on her. Thus concluding the story at a turning point in the protagonists journey.

== References ==
<references />

[[Category:Cyberutopias]]

Draft:A happy solution

2024-01-09T19:09:34Z

Celina Köck:

{{Head_UTO
|Authors=[[User:Celina Köck]]
|Observations=
* The bibliographic references are incomplete according to APA style.
* This article is in review process. The discussion tab will be used to provide feedback, sugestions or changes to be introduced in the article by the author.
* Everybody is invited to discuss or comment this article using the discussion tab. If you do so, (i) head your contribution in the discussion with a title as "Comments by"... followed by the commentator's name; (ii) finish your comment paragraphs with with signature automatically introduced by the system using the wikicode <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>.
}}
== 1. Short story ==

=== A happy solution ===
Happiness was forced upon all of us. We suffocated under its weight like ants under a rock, slowly feeling our amour split and crack. We revealed our soft bodies from beneath our broken shells to easily. We had never felt this sort of joy before. Just one taste of it would have been enough to sustain a person for days but we were letting ourselves drown in dopamine. All the ugliness of the world had become faded and didn’t seem to matter as much as it used to. It was almost like it wasn’t there anymore. Or at least we couldn’t see it. This wasn’t true of course. The wars, murders, attacks, pain, and torture hadn’t disappeared. We had just changed perspective.

“War is an important industry!”, shouted the president through the television screen in our living room, as my boyfriend and I sat down to watch the news two years ago. The broadcasts were becoming more and more similar since the new regime had taken power. They all preached about the prominent need for technology in all fields of life, making no exception, propagated on how the wars in the middle east and Europe were necessary and moralized on how men and women should live their lives according to traditional values. We started to get nervous then, that much was clear. “I promise all of you…,” continued the president now looking directly into the news camera. The supercilious look in his eyes made me feel sick to my stomach. “…that our government will save this country. We will make a new world, a new way of life. Technology is and will prove to be the holy grail that will make our country rise again and I, as your president am prepared to lead our country into a utopia.” He paused for a moment; I felt a chill go down my spine. “I vow to make you all happy!”, the president finished and smiled broadly. My boyfriend and I looked at each other nervously. “That last sentence was a bit odd, wasn’t it?”, I asked. “Yeah, it was.”, he said slowly, with a concerned frown on his face. “What do you think he meant by that? ´I vow to make you all happy! ´ I don’t think I have ever heard a politician talk like that. Since when do politicians care if the publics happy?”, he laughed dryly. But I couldn’t laugh. I was scared. What did it mean?

We all got to know to soon enough what the meaning behind that strange promise was. Soon technology had taken over. Children in schools started being taught by robots and computers, everyone had mandatory access to smart phones and became connected to each other. The government said that every man, woman, and child should have equal access to technological devices. Security surveillance was installed all over the country to make the public feel safer. Cameras were everywhere making crime rates drop significantly. In the beginning most people were pleased about this myself included. What we didn’t know was that we would quickly come to sober up about the effects of constant surveillance. Pretty soon we didn’t know when or where we were being watched. No conversation or action was private anymore. Technology was sold to us as convenience and safety but robbed us of our privacy and freedom. Soon it became clear that we were being watched at home as well, through our mandatory smart phones and computers, while we were surfing the internet, watching the news, or communicating with friends. While we were watching the world through our phones, our phones were watching us as well. At first when people started to notice, that our privacy was being intruded upon, they took to the streets and demonstrated. But soon people who had taken part in the demonstrations, were arrested by the government army, and disappeared and were never seen again. So, the demonstrations soon died down. For a while we thought that this was obviously not the world that was promised to us by the president, but we didn’t know then what was to happen next.

Because he did keep his promise to us. He did make us happy. We just didn’t know that this happiness was the worst kind of happiness ever to be experienced.

It seemed that scientists who supported the president’s regime had worked hard to create a device that would save people from sadness. These devices can be best described as dopamine chips. When inserted to the back of the head of a person it increased the level of dopamine in the brain and thus increased the level of happiness. And soon we would all be wearing those dopamine chips. It happened one night a year after the new regime had taken power. The governments soldiers came to our homes. It was a huge shock when I opened the door, and they pushed in. They spent two hours telling us that we had to wear those dopamine chips. When my boyfriend and I refused things became nasty and the soldiers forced the dopamine chips to the back of our heads. It happened so quickly and when it was over, we suddenly found that we didn’t want to take the dopamine chips off. In that moment we were completely and utterly content. So now technology was the holy grail that would save our society and the dopamine chips were the ultimate key to achieve utopia. It was the also the key to control our society. Now the government didn’t have to try to improve the world because we, the public, were manipulated into accepting everything around us. We were unconditionally happy. Now wars were being fought, rules were being made, and the world was being destroyed and we didn’t care one bit. The president walked about grinning like the cheshire cat. His wide smile became the symbol that signified our country. Everywhere I looked there were posters with a wide smile printed on them, plastering houses, bus stops and billboards. One day I was passing one of these posters on a billboard. I could see my own wide smile reflected in the glass separating my delirious grin from the maniacal symbol staring back at me. “He’s a lunatic, isn’t he?” I spun around. An old woman, maybe 70 years old was standing next to me. I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. She wasn’t smiling. I couldn’t understand. “Excuse me?”, I said somewhat shakily. “I said, he’s a lunatic, isn’t he?”, the woman was looking at me with a note of humour in her eyes. “I’m sorry but I don’t thing I can be understanding you correctly. Our president isn’t a lunatic. He saved us from sadness…. didn’t he?” The way she looked at me was unnerving. A feeling I hadn’t felt for quite some time. My smile wavered slightly but I straightened it within a fraction of a second. The woman straightened up and turned to face me. She was standing so close I could count every wrinkle on her face. “You don’t really think that do you? You’re a clever girl. What do you really think?” I breathed in shakily. A tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t stop smiling and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “I…I don’t know. I don’t know!”, I wept shakily. I felt like a doll being shattered only to find I was still whole. But the pain was unbearable. “Yes, you do.” The woman’s certainty shook me to my very core. And then suddenly I realised she was right. How could she not be. For ages I had been in a haze not realizing that I was letting myself fade away. “What happened to me?”, I asked the lady. “And who are you?” “My name is Elsie”, the woman answered smiling a genuine and warm smile. How I had missed the honesty and warmth of a genuine smile. So much so I couldn’t believe that I was only now realising that I had missed it. “You’ve been sleepwalking my dear. Ever since you’ve been wearing that dopamine chip. Everyone has. You forgot that you have opinions and dreams and ambitions. But I see now you remember.” “But I don’t understand. How did you do that. How did you…” “How did I get through to you?”, Elsie took my arm, and we started walking down the street together. “Its quite simple really. The dopamine chips only work if they aren’t challenged. Since everyone is always surrounded by people all wearing the same dopamine chips, thinking the same things, feeling the same way, there is no one to challenge. But when I asked you what you really think, what YOU really think, the dopamine chip started to lose its power. The same happened to me.” I picked the dopamine chip of from the back of my head, put it in my pocket and was about to ask her who it was who had freed her from the deluded life I had also been living up until now when I looked up. We had come to an abandoned alley. “Where are we?” I asked. Elsie smiled and walked down the alley towards a set of doors at the far end. “Follow me.”, she said looking back at me and beckoning with her hand. With a certain amount of hesitancy, I did as she said wiped my tears away and followed her down a long flight of stone steps into a huge room filled with people chatting indistinctly in hushed voices. As soon as they saw me the room became quiet. Then one voice which came from a young man sitting on a table said: “Found another one then, Elsie? That’s good. We need all the help we can get.” A small ripple of laughter went through the crowded room. I looked at Elsie. “What is he talking about?” Elsie pointed towards a plaque hanging on the opposite wall of the room. It read `Save the world from happiness! Join the fight. ` “Welcome to the revolution.”, Elsie said to me smiling. I smiled back and, in that moment, I knew that a war for freedom was soon to begin and that I would join the fight.

== 2. Epilogue ==
This short story titled “A happy solution” depicts the experiences of a young woman in a country taken over by a totalitarian regime which has manipulated the public into believing that their regime is what will lead the country into a utopia. This they do by manipulating the public with dopamine chips, which make people uncontrollably happy and therefore will make the public happy with any decision the government makes. The short story is therefore a dystopic depiction of a country being ruled by a totalitarian regime which uses methods being sold as utopic solutions to oppress the public. The dopamine chips stand as a utopic solution to “save people from sadness”. This idea can also be seen in the dystopic novel “Brave new world” by Aldous Huxley with the recreational drug “soma” which was used to increase happiness and complacency of the population. The following will show a small quote from Huxley’s “Brave new world” said by the character Mustapha Mond:

“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.” (Huxley, 1932, p. 102) <ref>Huxley, A. (1932). ''Brave New World''. Random House UK Ltd.</ref>

The short story “A happy solution” also shows how the government uses technological advances, and technological connection between people through computers and smartphones and security surveillance through cameras to control and watch the public. This is a motive that can also be seen in the novel “1984” by George Orwell, which is a story about a futuristic dystopian society. This futuristic society is polluted by power and control which is used to oppress the public. <ref>Orwell, G. (1949). ''1984'', E-Kitap Projesi & Cheapest Books. Anaconda Verlag.</ref>

However, the aspect of the public being connected to each other through smart phones and social media could be seen as a method of transparency among people. So that people might be more honest and trustful towards each other. This is a belief shared by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who lived from 1712 to 1778. He believed that transparency and access of information between parties would lead to more equality. <ref>https://www.getabstract.com/de/zusammenfassung/vom-gesellschaftsvertrag/4853</ref>In the story the antagonist, the president, uses this argument to make people more open to the idea of introducing technology into every aspect of everyday life. The president then uses the connection to control and watch the public in their homes and private lives which reveals how his utopic promise of a transparent society can be easily manipulated to create a very dystopic and controlling society with a great lack of privacy and discretion. This dystopic form of a transparent society can also be seen in Jeremy Bentham’s prison design `The Panopticon`. The prison would be so built that a watchtower would be circularly surrounded by individual cells. Therefore, every prisoner could never be sure weather they were being watched or not. This would ensure that the prisoners would always be on best behaviour.<ref>https://www.grin.com/document/304027</ref> The short story “A happy solution” depicts a similar kind of transparent society being created by the president because it becomes clear that people are being watched even when they don’t know it. In the story the public reacts to this constant surveillance with demonstrations which result in people disappearing after being arrested by the government army. This brutal abuse of power and infringement of free speech clearly shows that the government uses the “transparency” of the society, the technological connection, to find out who does what and when and then uses that information to make arrests and control the public.

The end of the short story “A happy solution” tells us that a revolution is underway to overthrow the totalitarian government. This is a kind of anarchism. Anarchism is often associated with violence, but the basic idea of anarchism is that a government which uses its power and influence to manipulate and oppress should be abolished. Hierarchy is seen as harmful, and the freedom of individuals is seen as an important right which must be protected and must be fought for if endangered.<ref>Anarchism. (2022). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism</ref> In addition, crypto anarchism, a form of anarchism which wants to weaken the state’s power by strengthening the common man as an individual would be achieved by prohibiting the government from collecting personal information on the citizens. Since the totalitarian government in the short story uses their technology to watch the citizens and gather information on the public, the revolution which is under way in the story makes sense as a crypto-anarchical response to such a hierarchical oppression.<ref>Crypto-anarchism. (2021). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism</ref> In addition, the anarchical ideal of a person’s individuality as the key to overthrow oppressive governments is shown in how the hero Elsie saves the protagonist in the short story “A happy solution”. When Elsie askes the protagonist what she personally thinks of the president, the power of the dopamine chip weakens, and the protagonist is able to shake of the control that the totalitarian regime has on her. Thus concluding the story at a turning point in the protagonists journey.

== References ==
<references />

[[Category:Cyberutopias]]

Draft:A happy solution

2024-01-09T19:09:05Z

Celina Köck: /* 2. Epilogue */

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== 1. Short story ==

=== A happy solution ===
Happiness was forced upon all of us. We suffocated under its weight like ants under a rock, slowly feeling our amour split and crack. We revealed our soft bodies from beneath our broken shells to easily. We had never felt this sort of joy before. Just one taste of it would have been enough to sustain a person for days but we were letting ourselves drown in dopamine. All the ugliness of the world had become faded and didn’t seem to matter as much as it used to. It was almost like it wasn’t there anymore. Or at least we couldn’t see it. This wasn’t true of course. The wars, murders, attacks, pain, and torture hadn’t disappeared. We had just changed perspective.

“War is an important industry!”, shouted the president through the television screen in our living room, as my boyfriend and I sat down to watch the news two years ago. The broadcasts were becoming more and more similar since the new regime had taken power. They all preached about the prominent need for technology in all fields of life, making no exception, propagated on how the wars in the middle east and Europe were necessary and moralized on how men and women should live their lives according to traditional values. We started to get nervous then, that much was clear. “I promise all of you…,” continued the president now looking directly into the news camera. The supercilious look in his eyes made me feel sick to my stomach. “…that our government will save this country. We will make a new world, a new way of life. Technology is and will prove to be the holy grail that will make our country rise again and I, as your president am prepared to lead our country into a utopia.” He paused for a moment; I felt a chill go down my spine. “I vow to make you all happy!”, the president finished and smiled broadly. My boyfriend and I looked at each other nervously. “That last sentence was a bit odd, wasn’t it?”, I asked. “Yeah, it was.”, he said slowly, with a concerned frown on his face. “What do you think he meant by that? ´I vow to make you all happy! ´ I don’t think I have ever heard a politician talk like that. Since when do politicians care if the publics happy?”, he laughed dryly. But I couldn’t laugh. I was scared. What did it mean?

We all got to know to soon enough what the meaning behind that strange promise was. Soon technology had taken over. Children in schools started being taught by robots and computers, everyone had mandatory access to smart phones and became connected to each other. The government said that every man, woman, and child should have equal access to technological devices. Security surveillance was installed all over the country to make the public feel safer. Cameras were everywhere making crime rates drop significantly. In the beginning most people were pleased about this myself included. What we didn’t know was that we would quickly come to sober up about the effects of constant surveillance. Pretty soon we didn’t know when or where we were being watched. No conversation or action was private anymore. Technology was sold to us as convenience and safety but robbed us of our privacy and freedom. Soon it became clear that we were being watched at home as well, through our mandatory smart phones and computers, while we were surfing the internet, watching the news, or communicating with friends. While we were watching the world through our phones, our phones were watching us as well. At first when people started to notice, that our privacy was being intruded upon, they took to the streets and demonstrated. But soon people who had taken part in the demonstrations, were arrested by the government army, and disappeared and were never seen again. So, the demonstrations soon died down. For a while we thought that this was obviously not the world that was promised to us by the president, but we didn’t know then what was to happen next.

Because he did keep his promise to us. He did make us happy. We just didn’t know that this happiness was the worst kind of happiness ever to be experienced.

It seemed that scientists who supported the president’s regime had worked hard to create a device that would save people from sadness. These devices can be best described as dopamine chips. When inserted to the back of the head of a person it increased the level of dopamine in the brain and thus increased the level of happiness. And soon we would all be wearing those dopamine chips. It happened one night a year after the new regime had taken power. The governments soldiers came to our homes. It was a huge shock when I opened the door, and they pushed in. They spent two hours telling us that we had to wear those dopamine chips. When my boyfriend and I refused things became nasty and the soldiers forced the dopamine chips to the back of our heads. It happened so quickly and when it was over, we suddenly found that we didn’t want to take the dopamine chips off. In that moment we were completely and utterly content. So now technology was the holy grail that would save our society and the dopamine chips were the ultimate key to achieve utopia. It was the also the key to control our society. Now the government didn’t have to try to improve the world because we, the public, were manipulated into accepting everything around us. We were unconditionally happy. Now wars were being fought, rules were being made, and the world was being destroyed and we didn’t care one bit. The president walked about grinning like the cheshire cat. His wide smile became the symbol that signified our country. Everywhere I looked there were posters with a wide smile printed on them, plastering houses, bus stops and billboards. One day I was passing one of these posters on a billboard. I could see my own wide smile reflected in the glass separating my delirious grin from the maniacal symbol staring back at me. “He’s a lunatic, isn’t he?” I spun around. An old woman, maybe 70 years old was standing next to me. I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. She wasn’t smiling. I couldn’t understand. “Excuse me?”, I said somewhat shakily. “I said, he’s a lunatic, isn’t he?”, the woman was looking at me with a note of humour in her eyes. “I’m sorry but I don’t thing I can be understanding you correctly. Our president isn’t a lunatic. He saved us from sadness…. didn’t he?” The way she looked at me was unnerving. A feeling I hadn’t felt for quite some time. My smile wavered slightly but I straightened it within a fraction of a second. The woman straightened up and turned to face me. She was standing so close I could count every wrinkle on her face. “You don’t really think that do you? You’re a clever girl. What do you really think?” I breathed in shakily. A tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t stop smiling and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “I…I don’t know. I don’t know!”, I wept shakily. I felt like a doll being shattered only to find I was still whole. But the pain was unbearable. “Yes, you do.” The woman’s certainty shook me to my very core. And then suddenly I realised she was right. How could she not be. For ages I had been in a haze not realizing that I was letting myself fade away. “What happened to me?”, I asked the lady. “And who are you?” “My name is Elsie”, the woman answered smiling a genuine and warm smile. How I had missed the honesty and warmth of a genuine smile. So much so I couldn’t believe that I was only now realising that I had missed it. “You’ve been sleepwalking my dear. Ever since you’ve been wearing that dopamine chip. Everyone has. You forgot that you have opinions and dreams and ambitions. But I see now you remember.” “But I don’t understand. How did you do that. How did you…” “How did I get through to you?”, Elsie took my arm, and we started walking down the street together. “Its quite simple really. The dopamine chips only work if they aren’t challenged. Since everyone is always surrounded by people all wearing the same dopamine chips, thinking the same things, feeling the same way, there is no one to challenge. But when I asked you what you really think, what YOU really think, the dopamine chip started to lose its power. The same happened to me.” I picked the dopamine chip of from the back of my head, put it in my pocket and was about to ask her who it was who had freed her from the deluded life I had also been living up until now when I looked up. We had come to an abandoned alley. “Where are we?” I asked. Elsie smiled and walked down the alley towards a set of doors at the far end. “Follow me.”, she said looking back at me and beckoning with her hand. With a certain amount of hesitancy, I did as she said wiped my tears away and followed her down a long flight of stone steps into a huge room filled with people chatting indistinctly in hushed voices. As soon as they saw me the room became quiet. Then one voice which came from a young man sitting on a table said: “Found another one then, Elsie? That’s good. We need all the help we can get.” A small ripple of laughter went through the crowded room. I looked at Elsie. “What is he talking about?” Elsie pointed towards a plaque hanging on the opposite wall of the room. It read `Save the world from happiness! Join the fight. ` “Welcome to the revolution.”, Elsie said to me smiling. I smiled back and, in that moment, I knew that a war for freedom was soon to begin and that I would join the fight.

== 2. Epilogue ==
This short story titled “A happy solution” depicts the experiences of a young woman in a country taken over by a totalitarian regime which has manipulated the public into believing that their regime is what will lead the country into a utopia. This they do by manipulating the public with dopamine chips, which make people uncontrollably happy and therefore will make the public happy with any decision the government makes. The short story is therefore a dystopic depiction of a country being ruled by a totalitarian regime which uses methods being sold as utopic solutions to oppress the public. The dopamine chips stand as a utopic solution to “save people from sadness”. This idea can also be seen in the dystopic novel “Brave new world” by Aldous Huxley with the recreational drug “soma” which was used to increase happiness and complacency of the population. The following will show a small quote from Huxley’s “Brave new world” said by the character Mustapha Mond:

“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.” (Huxley, 1932, p. 102) <ref>Huxley, A. (1932). ''Brave New World''. Random House UK Ltd</ref>

The short story “A happy solution” also shows how the government uses technological advances, and technological connection between people through computers and smartphones and security surveillance through cameras to control and watch the public. This is a motive that can also be seen in the novel “1984” by George Orwell, which is a story about a futuristic dystopian society. This futuristic society is polluted by power and control which is used to oppress the public. <ref>Orwell, G. (1949). ''1984'', E-Kitap Projesi & Cheapest Books. Anaconda Verlag.</ref>

However, the aspect of the public being connected to each other through smart phones and social media could be seen as a method of transparency among people. So that people might be more honest and trustful towards each other. This is a belief shared by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who lived from 1712 to 1778. He believed that transparency and access of information between parties would lead to more equality. <ref>https://www.getabstract.com/de/zusammenfassung/vom-gesellschaftsvertrag/4853</ref>In the story the antagonist, the president, uses this argument to make people more open to the idea of introducing technology into every aspect of everyday life. The president then uses the connection to control and watch the public in their homes and private lives which reveals how his utopic promise of a transparent society can be easily manipulated to create a very dystopic and controlling society with a great lack of privacy and discretion. This dystopic form of a transparent society can also be seen in Jeremy Bentham’s prison design `The Panopticon`. The prison would be so built that a watchtower would be circularly surrounded by individual cells. Therefore, every prisoner could never be sure weather they were being watched or not. This would ensure that the prisoners would always be on best behaviour.<ref>https://www.grin.com/document/304027</ref> The short story “A happy solution” depicts a similar kind of transparent society being created by the president because it becomes clear that people are being watched even when they don’t know it. In the story the public reacts to this constant surveillance with demonstrations which result in people disappearing after being arrested by the government army. This brutal abuse of power and infringement of free speech clearly shows that the government uses the “transparency” of the society, the technological connection, to find out who does what and when and then uses that information to make arrests and control the public.

The end of the short story “A happy solution” tells us that a revolution is underway to overthrow the totalitarian government. This is a kind of anarchism. Anarchism is often associated with violence, but the basic idea of anarchism is that a government which uses its power and influence to manipulate and oppress should be abolished. Hierarchy is seen as harmful, and the freedom of individuals is seen as an important right which must be protected and must be fought for if endangered.<ref>Anarchism. (2022). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism</ref> In addition, crypto anarchism, a form of anarchism which wants to weaken the state’s power by strengthening the common man as an individual would be achieved by prohibiting the government from collecting personal information on the citizens. Since the totalitarian government in the short story uses their technology to watch the citizens and gather information on the public, the revolution which is under way in the story makes sense as a crypto-anarchical response to such a hierarchical oppression.<ref>Crypto-anarchism. (2021). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism</ref> In addition, the anarchical ideal of a person’s individuality as the key to overthrow oppressive governments is shown in how the hero Elsie saves the protagonist in the short story “A happy solution”. When Elsie askes the protagonist what she personally thinks of the president, the power of the dopamine chip weakens, and the protagonist is able to shake of the control that the totalitarian regime has on her. Thus concluding the story at a turning point in the protagonists journey.

== References ==
<references />

[[Category:Cyberutopias]]

Draft:A happy solution

2024-01-08T19:35:10Z

Celina Köck:

= Short story: "A happy solution" by Celina Köck =

=== 1. Short story: "A happy solution" ===
Happiness was forced upon all of us. We suffocated under its weight like ants under a rock, slowly feeling our amour split and crack. We revealed our soft bodies from beneath our broken shells to easily. We had never felt this sort of joy before. Just one taste of it would have been enough to sustain a person for days but we were letting ourselves drown in dopamine. All the ugliness of the world had become faded and didn’t seem to matter as much as it used to. It was almost like it wasn’t there anymore. Or at least we couldn’t see it. This wasn’t true of course. The wars, murders, attacks, pain, and torture hadn’t disappeared. We had just changed perspective.

“War is an important industry!”, shouted the president through the television screen in our living room, as my boyfriend and I sat down to watch the news two years ago. The broadcasts were becoming more and more similar since the new regime had taken power. They all preached about the prominent need for technology in all fields of life, making no exception, propagated on how the wars in the middle east and Europe were necessary and moralized on how men and women should live their lives according to traditional values. We started to get nervous then, that much was clear. “I promise all of you…,” continued the president now looking directly into the news camera. The supercilious look in his eyes made me feel sick to my stomach. “…that our government will save this country. We will make a new world, a new way of life. Technology is and will prove to be the holy grail that will make our country rise again and I, as your president am prepared to lead our country into a utopia.” He paused for a moment; I felt a chill go down my spine. “I vow to make you all happy!”, the president finished and smiled broadly. My boyfriend and I looked at each other nervously. “That last sentence was a bit odd, wasn’t it?”, I asked. “Yeah, it was.”, he said slowly, with a concerned frown on his face. “What do you think he meant by that? ´I vow to make you all happy! ´ I don’t think I have ever heard a politician talk like that. Since when do politicians care if the publics happy?”, he laughed dryly. But I couldn’t laugh. I was scared. What did it mean?

We all got to know to soon enough what the meaning behind that strange promise was. Soon technology had taken over. Children in schools started being taught by robots and computers, everyone had mandatory access to smart phones and became connected to each other. The government said that every man, woman, and child should have equal access to technological devices. Security surveillance was installed all over the country to make the public feel safer. Cameras were everywhere making crime rates drop significantly. In the beginning most people were pleased about this myself included. What we didn’t know was that we would quickly come to sober up about the effects of constant surveillance. Pretty soon we didn’t know when or where we were being watched. No conversation or action was private anymore. Technology was sold to us as convenience and safety but robbed us of our privacy and freedom. Soon it became clear that we were being watched at home as well, through our mandatory smart phones and computers, while we were surfing the internet, watching the news, or communicating with friends. While we were watching the world through our phones, our phones were watching us as well. At first when people started to notice, that our privacy was being intruded upon, they took to the streets and demonstrated. But soon people who had taken part in the demonstrations, were arrested by the government army, and disappeared and were never seen again. So, the demonstrations soon died down. For a while we thought that this was obviously not the world that was promised to us by the president, but we didn’t know then what was to happen next.

Because he did keep his promise to us. He did make us happy. We just didn’t know that this happiness was the worst kind of happiness ever to be experienced.

It seemed that scientists who supported the president’s regime had worked hard to create a device that would save people from sadness. These devices can be best described as dopamine chips. When inserted to the back of the head of a person it increased the level of dopamine in the brain and thus increased the level of happiness. And soon we would all be wearing those dopamine chips. It happened one night a year after the new regime had taken power. The governments soldiers came to our homes. It was a huge shock when I opened the door, and they pushed in. They spent two hours telling us that we had to wear those dopamine chips. When my boyfriend and I refused things became nasty and the soldiers forced the dopamine chips to the back of our heads. It happened so quickly and when it was over, we suddenly found that we didn’t want to take the dopamine chips off. In that moment we were completely and utterly content. So now technology was the holy grail that would save our society and the dopamine chips were the ultimate key to achieve utopia. It was the also the key to control our society. Now the government didn’t have to try to improve the world because we, the public, were manipulated into accepting everything around us. We were unconditionally happy. Now wars were being fought, rules were being made, and the world was being destroyed and we didn’t care one bit. The president walked about grinning like the cheshire cat. His wide smile became the symbol that signified our country. Everywhere I looked there were posters with a wide smile printed on them, plastering houses, bus stops and billboards. One day I was passing one of these posters on a billboard. I could see my own wide smile reflected in the glass separating my delirious grin from the maniacal symbol staring back at me. “He’s a lunatic, isn’t he?” I spun around. An old woman, maybe 70 years old was standing next to me. I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. She wasn’t smiling. I couldn’t understand. “Excuse me?”, I said somewhat shakily. “I said, he’s a lunatic, isn’t he?”, the woman was looking at me with a note of humour in her eyes. “I’m sorry but I don’t thing I can be understanding you correctly. Our president isn’t a lunatic. He saved us from sadness…. didn’t he?” The way she looked at me was unnerving. A feeling I hadn’t felt for quite some time. My smile wavered slightly but I straightened it within a fraction of a second. The woman straightened up and turned to face me. She was standing so close I could count every wrinkle on her face. “You don’t really think that do you? You’re a clever girl. What do you really think?” I breathed in shakily. A tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t stop smiling and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “I…I don’t know. I don’t know!”, I wept shakily. I felt like a doll being shattered only to find I was still whole. But the pain was unbearable. “Yes, you do.” The woman’s certainty shook me to my very core. And then suddenly I realised she was right. How could she not be. For ages I had been in a haze not realizing that I was letting myself fade away. “What happened to me?”, I asked the lady. “And who are you?” “My name is Elsie”, the woman answered smiling a genuine and warm smile. How I had missed the honesty and warmth of a genuine smile. So much so I couldn’t believe that I was only now realising that I had missed it. “You’ve been sleepwalking my dear. Ever since you’ve been wearing that dopamine chip. Everyone has. You forgot that you have opinions and dreams and ambitions. But I see now you remember.” “But I don’t understand. How did you do that. How did you…” “How did I get through to you?”, Elsie took my arm, and we started walking down the street together. “Its quite simple really. The dopamine chips only work if they aren’t challenged. Since everyone is always surrounded by people all wearing the same dopamine chips, thinking the same things, feeling the same way, there is no one to challenge. But when I asked you what you really think, what YOU really think, the dopamine chip started to lose its power. The same happened to me.” I picked the dopamine chip of from the back of my head, put it in my pocket and was about to ask her who it was who had freed her from the deluded life I had also been living up until now when I looked up. We had come to an abandoned alley. “Where are we?” I asked. Elsie smiled and walked down the alley towards a set of doors at the far end. “Follow me.”, she said looking back at me and beckoning with her hand. With a certain amount of hesitancy, I did as she said wiped my tears away and followed her down a long flight of stone steps into a huge room filled with people chatting indistinctly in hushed voices. As soon as they saw me the room became quiet. Then one voice which came from a young man sitting on a table said: “Found another one then, Elsie? That’s good. We need all the help we can get.” A small ripple of laughter went through the crowded room. I looked at Elsie. “What is he talking about?” Elsie pointed towards a plaque hanging on the opposite wall of the room. It read `Save the world from happiness! Join the fight. ` “Welcome to the revolution.”, Elsie said to me smiling. I smiled back and, in that moment, I knew that a war for freedom was soon to begin and that I would join the fight.

=== 2. Epilogue ===
This short story titled “A happy solution” depicts the experiences of a young woman in a country taken over by a totalitarian regime which has manipulated the public into believing that their regime is what will lead the country into a utopia. This they do by manipulating the public with dopamine chips, which make people uncontrollably happy and therefore will make the public happy with any decision the government makes. The short story is therefore a dystopic depiction of a country being ruled by a totalitarian regime which uses methods being sold as utopic solutions to oppress the public. The dopamine chips stand as a utopic solution to “save people from sadness”. This idea can also be seen in the dystopic novel “Brave new world” by Aldous Huxley with the recreational drug “soma” which was used to increase happiness and complacency of the population. The following will show a small quote from Huxley’s “Brave new world” said by the character Mustapha Mond:

“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.” (Huxley 1932, Chapter 17, page 102) <ref>Huxley, Aldous: Brave new world, Original Classic Editions, 06.12.2023, 368 Pages; ISBN-13: 9783104027739</ref>

The short story “A happy solution” also shows how the government uses technological advances, and technological connection between people through computers and smartphones and security surveillance through cameras to control and watch the public. This is a motive that can also be seen in the novel “1984” by George Orwell, which is a story about a futuristic dystopian society. This futuristic society is polluted by power and control which is used to oppress the public. <ref>Orwell, George: 1984, E-Kitap Projesi & Cheapest Books, 06.12.2023, 324 Pages; ISBN-13: 978-6257120890</ref>

However, the aspect of the public being connected to each other through smart phones and social media could be seen as a method of transparency among people. So that people might be more honest and trustful towards each other. This is a belief shared by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who lived from 1712 to 1778. He believed that transparency and access of information between parties would lead to more equality. <ref>https://www.getabstract.com/de/zusammenfassung/vom-gesellschaftsvertrag/4853</ref>In the story the antagonist, the president, uses this argument to make people more open to the idea of introducing technology into every aspect of everyday life. The president then uses the connection to control and watch the public in their homes and private lives which reveals how his utopic promise of a transparent society can be easily manipulated to create a very dystopic and controlling society with a great lack of privacy and discretion. This dystopic form of a transparent society can also be seen in Jeremy Bentham’s prison design `The Panopticon`. The prison would be so built that a watchtower would be circularly surrounded by individual cells. Therefore, every prisoner could never be sure weather they were being watched or not. This would ensure that the prisoners would always be on best behaviour.<ref>https://www.grin.com/document/304027</ref> The short story “A happy solution” depicts a similar kind of transparent society being created by the president because it becomes clear that people are being watched even when they don’t know it. In the story the public reacts to this constant surveillance with demonstrations which result in people disappearing after being arrested by the government army. This brutal abuse of power and infringement of free speech clearly shows that the government uses the “transparency” of the society, the technological connection, to find out who does what and when and then uses that information to make arrests and control the public.

The end of the short story “A happy solution” tells us that a revolution is underway to overthrow the totalitarian government. This is a kind of anarchism. Anarchism is often associated with violence, but the basic idea of anarchism is that a government which uses its power and influence to manipulate and oppress should be abolished. Hierarchy is seen as harmful, and the freedom of individuals is seen as an important right which must be protected and must be fought for if endangered.<ref>Anarchism. (2022). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism</ref> In addition, crypto anarchism, a form of anarchism which wants to weaken the state’s power by strengthening the common man as an individual would be achieved by prohibiting the government from collecting personal information on the citizens. Since the totalitarian government in the short story uses their technology to watch the citizens and gather information on the public, the revolution which is under way in the story makes sense as a crypto-anarchical response to such a hierarchical oppression.<ref>Crypto-anarchism. (2021). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism</ref> In addition, the anarchical ideal of a person’s individuality as the key to overthrow oppressive governments is shown in how the hero Elsie saves the protagonist in the short story “A happy solution”. When Elsie askes the protagonist what she personally thinks of the president, the power of the dopamine chip weakens, and the protagonist is able to shake of the control that the totalitarian regime has on her. Thus concluding the story at a turning point in the protagonists journey.

== Sources ==
<references />

Draft talk:A happy solution

2023-12-30T12:38:25Z

Celina Köck: Celina Köck moved page Talk:"A happy solution" by Celina Köck to Draft talk:"A happy solution" by Celina Köck over redirect

15% AI

Draft:A happy solution

2023-12-30T12:38:25Z

Celina Köck: Celina Köck moved page "A happy solution" by Celina Köck to Draft:"A happy solution" by Celina Köck over redirect

= Short story: "A happy solution" by Celina Köck =

=== 1. Short story: "A happy solution" ===
Happiness was forced upon all of us. We suffocated under its weight like ants under a rock, slowly feeling our amour split and crack. We revealed our soft bodies from beneath our broken shells to easily. We had never felt this sort of joy before. Just one taste of it would have been enough to sustain a person for days but we were letting ourselves drown in dopamine. All the ugliness of the world had become faded and didn’t seem to matter as much as it used to. It was almost like it wasn’t there anymore. Or at least we couldn’t see it. This wasn’t true of course. The wars, murders, attacks, pain, and torture hadn’t disappeared. We had just changed perspective.

“War is an important industry!”, shouted the president through the television screen in our living room, as my boyfriend and I sat down to watch the news two years ago. The broadcasts were becoming more and more similar since the new regime had taken power. They all preached about the prominent need for technology in all fields of life, making no exception, propagated on how the wars in the middle east and Europe were necessary and moralized on how men and women should live their lives according to traditional values. We started to get nervous then, that much was clear. “I promise all of you…,” continued the president now looking directly into the news camera. The supercilious look in his eyes made me feel sick to my stomach. “…that our government will save this country. We will make a new world, a new way of life. Technology is and will prove to be the holy grail that will make our country rise again and I, as your president am prepared to lead our country into a utopia.” He paused for a moment; I felt a chill go down my spine. “I vow to make you all happy!”, the president finished and smiled broadly. My boyfriend and I looked at each other nervously. “That last sentence was a bit odd, wasn’t it?”, I asked. “Yeah, it was.”, he said slowly, with a concerned frown on his face. “What do you think he meant by that? ´I vow to make you all happy! ´ I don’t think I have ever heard a politician talk like that. Since when do politicians care if the publics happy?”, he laughed dryly. But I couldn’t laugh. I was scared. What did it mean?

We all got to know to soon enough what the meaning behind that strange promise was. Soon technology had taken over. Children in schools started being taught by robots and computers, everyone had mandatory access to smart phones and became connected to each other. The government said that every man, woman, and child should have equal access to technological devices. Security surveillance was installed all over the country to make the public feel safer. Cameras were everywhere making crime rates drop significantly. In the beginning most people were pleased about this myself included. What we didn’t know was that we would quickly come to sober up about the effects of constant surveillance. Pretty soon we didn’t know when or where we were being watched. No conversation or action was private anymore. Technology was sold to us as convenience and safety but robbed us of our privacy and freedom. Soon it became clear that we were being watched at home as well, through our mandatory smart phones and computers, while we were surfing the internet, watching the news, or communicating with friends. While we were watching the world through our phones, our phones were watching us as well. At first when people started to notice, that our privacy was being intruded upon, they took to the streets and demonstrated. But soon people who had taken part in the demonstrations, were arrested by the government army, and disappeared and were never seen again. So, the demonstrations soon died down. For a while we thought that this was obviously not the world that was promised to us by the president, but we didn’t know then what was to happen next.

Because he did keep his promise to us. He did make us happy. We just didn’t know that this happiness was the worst kind of happiness ever to be experienced.

It seemed that scientists who supported the president’s regime had worked hard to create a device that would save people from sadness. These devices can be best described as dopamine chips. When inserted to the back of the head of a person it increased the level of dopamine in the brain and thus increased the level of happiness. And soon we would all be wearing those dopamine chips. It happened one night a year after the new regime had taken power. The governments soldiers came to our homes. It was a huge shock when I opened the door, and they pushed in. They spent two hours telling us that we had to wear those dopamine chips. When my boyfriend and I refused things became nasty and the soldiers forced the dopamine chips to the back of our heads. It happened so quickly and when it was over, we suddenly found that we didn’t want to take the dopamine chips off. In that moment we were completely and utterly content. So now technology was the holy grail that would save our society and the dopamine chips were the ultimate key to achieve utopia. It was the also the key to control our society. Now the government didn’t have to try to improve the world because we, the public, were manipulated into accepting everything around us. We were unconditionally happy. Now wars were being fought, rules were being made, and the world was being destroyed and we didn’t care one bit. The president walked about grinning like the cheshire cat. His wide smile became the symbol that signified our country. Everywhere I looked there were posters with a wide smile printed on them, plastering houses, bus stops and billboards. One day I was passing one of these posters on a billboard. I could see my own wide smile reflected in the glass separating my delirious grin from the maniacal symbol staring back at me. “He’s a lunatic, isn’t he?” I spun around. An old woman, maybe 70 years old was standing next to me. I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. She wasn’t smiling. I couldn’t understand. “Excuse me?”, I said somewhat shakily. “I said, he’s a lunatic, isn’t he?”, the woman was looking at me with a note of humour in her eyes. “I’m sorry but I don’t thing I can be understanding you correctly. Our president isn’t a lunatic. He saved us from sadness…. didn’t he?” The way she looked at me was unnerving. A feeling I hadn’t felt for quite some time. My smile wavered slightly but I straightened it within a fraction of a second. The woman straightened up and turned to face me. She was standing so close I could count every wrinkle on her face. “You don’t really think that do you? You’re a clever girl. What do you really think?” I breathed in shakily. A tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t stop smiling and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “I…I don’t know. I don’t know!”, I wept shakily. I felt like a doll being shattered only to find I was still whole. But the pain was unbearable. “Yes, you do.” The woman’s certainty shook me to my very core. And then suddenly I realised she was right. How could she not be. For ages I had been in a haze not realizing that I was letting myself fade away. “What happened to me?”, I asked the lady. “And who are you?” “My name is Elsie”, the woman answered smiling a genuine and warm smile. How I had missed the honesty and warmth of a genuine smile. So much so I couldn’t believe that I was only now realising that I had missed it. “You’ve been sleepwalking my dear. Ever since you’ve been wearing that dopamine chip. Everyone has. You forgot that you have opinions and dreams and ambitions. But I see now you remember.” “But I don’t understand. How did you do that. How did you…” “How did I get through to you?”, Elsie took my arm, and we started walking down the street together. “Its quite simple really. The dopamine chips only work if they aren’t challenged. Since everyone is always surrounded by people all wearing the same dopamine chips, thinking the same things, feeling the same way, there is no one to challenge. But when I asked you what you really think, what YOU really think, the dopamine chip started to lose its power. The same happened to me.” I picked the dopamine chip of from the back of my head, put it in my pocket and was about to ask her who it was who had freed her from the deluded life I had also been living up until now when I looked up. We had come to an abandoned alley. “Where are we?” I asked. Elsie smiled and walked down the alley towards a set of doors at the far end. “Follow me.”, she said looking back at me and beckoning with her hand. With a certain amount of hesitancy, I did as she said wiped my tears away and followed her down a long flight of stone steps into a huge room filled with people chatting indistinctly in hushed voices. As soon as they saw me the room became quiet. Then one voice which came from a young man sitting on a table said: “Found another one then, Elsie? That’s good. We need all the help we can get.” A small ripple of laughter went through the crowded room. I looked at Elsie. “What is he talking about?” Elsie pointed towards a plaque hanging on the opposite wall of the room. It read `Save the world from happiness! Join the fight. ` “Welcome to the revolution.”, Elsie said to me smiling. I smiled back and, in that moment, I knew that a war for freedom was soon to begin and that I would join the fight.

=== 2. Epilogue ===
This short story titled “The happy solution” depicts the experiences of a young woman in a country taken over by a totalitarian regime which has manipulated the public into believing that their regime is what will lead the country into a utopia. This they do by manipulating the public with dopamine chips, which make people uncontrollably happy and therefore will make the public happy with any decision the government makes. The short story is therefore a dystopic depiction of a country being ruled by a totalitarian regime which uses methods being sold as utopic solutions to oppress the public. The dopamine chips stand as a utopic solution to “save people from sadness”. This idea can also be seen in the dystopic novel “Brave new world” by Aldous Huxley with the recreational drug “soma” which was used to increase happiness and complacency of the population. The following will show a small quote from Huxley’s “Brave new world” said by the character Mustapha Mond:

“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.” (Huxley 1932, Chapter 17, page 102) <ref>Huxley, Aldous: Brave new world, Original Classic Editions, 06.12.2023, 368 Pages; ISBN-13: 9783104027739</ref>

The short story “The happy solution” also shows how the government uses technological advances, and technological connection between people through computers and smartphones and security surveillance through cameras to control and watch the public. This is a motive that can also be seen in the novel “1984” by George Orwell, which is a story about a futuristic dystopian society. This futuristic society is polluted by power and control which is used to oppress the public. <ref>Orwell, George: 1984, E-Kitap Projesi & Cheapest Books, 06.12.2023, 324 Pages; ISBN-13: 978-6257120890</ref>

However, the aspect of the public being connected to each other through smart phones and social media could be seen as a method of transparency among people. So that people might be more honest and trustful towards each other. This is a belief shared by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who lived from 1712 to 1778. He believed that transparency and access of information between parties would lead to more equality. <ref>https://www.getabstract.com/de/zusammenfassung/vom-gesellschaftsvertrag/4853</ref>In the story the antagonist, the president, uses this argument to make people more open to the idea of introducing technology into every aspect of everyday life. The president then uses the connection to control and watch the public in their homes and private lives which reveals how his utopic promise of a transparent society can be easily manipulated to create a very dystopic and controlling society with a great lack of privacy and discretion. This dystopic form of a transparent society can also be seen in Jeremy Bentham’s prison design `The Panopticon`. The prison would be so built that a watchtower would be circularly surrounded by individual cells. Therefore, every prisoner could never be sure weather they were being watched or not. This would ensure that the prisoners would always be on best behaviour.<ref>https://www.grin.com/document/304027</ref> The short story “The happy solution” depicts a similar kind of transparent society being created by the president because it becomes clear that people are being watched even when they don’t know it. In the story the public reacts to this constant surveillance with demonstrations which result in people disappearing after being arrested by the government army. This brutal abuse of power and infringement of free speech clearly shows that the government uses the “transparency” of the society, the technological connection, to find out who does what and when and then uses that information to make arrests and control the public.

The end of the short story “The happy solution” tells us that a revolution is underway to overthrow the totalitarian government. This is a kind of anarchism. Anarchism is often associated with violence, but the basic idea of anarchism is that a government which uses its power and influence to manipulate and oppress should be abolished. Hierarchy is seen as harmful, and the freedom of individuals is seen as an important right which must be protected and must be fought for if endangered.<ref>Anarchism. (2022). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism</ref> In addition, crypto anarchism, a form of anarchism which wants to weaken the state’s power by strengthening the common man as an individual would be achieved by prohibiting the government from collecting personal information on the citizens. Since the totalitarian government in the short story uses their technology to watch the citizens and gather information on the public, the revolution which is under way in the story makes sense as a crypto-anarchical response to such a hierarchical oppression.<ref>Crypto-anarchism. (2021). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism</ref> In addition, the anarchical ideal of a person’s individuality as the key to overthrow oppressive governments is shown in how the hero Elsie saves the protagonist in the short story “A happy solution”. When Elsie askes the protagonist what she personally thinks of the president, the power of the dopamine chip weakens, and the protagonist is able to shake of the control that the totalitarian regime has on her. Thus concluding the story at a turning point in the protagonists journey.

== Sources ==
<references />

Draft talk:A happy solution

2023-12-30T12:36:53Z

Celina Köck: Celina Köck moved page Draft talk:"A happy solution" by Celina Köck to Talk:"A happy solution" by Celina Köck over redirect

15% AI

Draft:A happy solution

2023-12-30T12:36:53Z

Celina Köck: Celina Köck moved page Draft:"A happy solution" by Celina Köck to "A happy solution" by Celina Köck over redirect

= Short story: "A happy solution" by Celina Köck =

=== 1. Short story: "A happy solution" ===
Happiness was forced upon all of us. We suffocated under its weight like ants under a rock, slowly feeling our amour split and crack. We revealed our soft bodies from beneath our broken shells to easily. We had never felt this sort of joy before. Just one taste of it would have been enough to sustain a person for days but we were letting ourselves drown in dopamine. All the ugliness of the world had become faded and didn’t seem to matter as much as it used to. It was almost like it wasn’t there anymore. Or at least we couldn’t see it. This wasn’t true of course. The wars, murders, attacks, pain, and torture hadn’t disappeared. We had just changed perspective.

“War is an important industry!”, shouted the president through the television screen in our living room, as my boyfriend and I sat down to watch the news two years ago. The broadcasts were becoming more and more similar since the new regime had taken power. They all preached about the prominent need for technology in all fields of life, making no exception, propagated on how the wars in the middle east and Europe were necessary and moralized on how men and women should live their lives according to traditional values. We started to get nervous then, that much was clear. “I promise all of you…,” continued the president now looking directly into the news camera. The supercilious look in his eyes made me feel sick to my stomach. “…that our government will save this country. We will make a new world, a new way of life. Technology is and will prove to be the holy grail that will make our country rise again and I, as your president am prepared to lead our country into a utopia.” He paused for a moment; I felt a chill go down my spine. “I vow to make you all happy!”, the president finished and smiled broadly. My boyfriend and I looked at each other nervously. “That last sentence was a bit odd, wasn’t it?”, I asked. “Yeah, it was.”, he said slowly, with a concerned frown on his face. “What do you think he meant by that? ´I vow to make you all happy! ´ I don’t think I have ever heard a politician talk like that. Since when do politicians care if the publics happy?”, he laughed dryly. But I couldn’t laugh. I was scared. What did it mean?

We all got to know to soon enough what the meaning behind that strange promise was. Soon technology had taken over. Children in schools started being taught by robots and computers, everyone had mandatory access to smart phones and became connected to each other. The government said that every man, woman, and child should have equal access to technological devices. Security surveillance was installed all over the country to make the public feel safer. Cameras were everywhere making crime rates drop significantly. In the beginning most people were pleased about this myself included. What we didn’t know was that we would quickly come to sober up about the effects of constant surveillance. Pretty soon we didn’t know when or where we were being watched. No conversation or action was private anymore. Technology was sold to us as convenience and safety but robbed us of our privacy and freedom. Soon it became clear that we were being watched at home as well, through our mandatory smart phones and computers, while we were surfing the internet, watching the news, or communicating with friends. While we were watching the world through our phones, our phones were watching us as well. At first when people started to notice, that our privacy was being intruded upon, they took to the streets and demonstrated. But soon people who had taken part in the demonstrations, were arrested by the government army, and disappeared and were never seen again. So, the demonstrations soon died down. For a while we thought that this was obviously not the world that was promised to us by the president, but we didn’t know then what was to happen next.

Because he did keep his promise to us. He did make us happy. We just didn’t know that this happiness was the worst kind of happiness ever to be experienced.

It seemed that scientists who supported the president’s regime had worked hard to create a device that would save people from sadness. These devices can be best described as dopamine chips. When inserted to the back of the head of a person it increased the level of dopamine in the brain and thus increased the level of happiness. And soon we would all be wearing those dopamine chips. It happened one night a year after the new regime had taken power. The governments soldiers came to our homes. It was a huge shock when I opened the door, and they pushed in. They spent two hours telling us that we had to wear those dopamine chips. When my boyfriend and I refused things became nasty and the soldiers forced the dopamine chips to the back of our heads. It happened so quickly and when it was over, we suddenly found that we didn’t want to take the dopamine chips off. In that moment we were completely and utterly content. So now technology was the holy grail that would save our society and the dopamine chips were the ultimate key to achieve utopia. It was the also the key to control our society. Now the government didn’t have to try to improve the world because we, the public, were manipulated into accepting everything around us. We were unconditionally happy. Now wars were being fought, rules were being made, and the world was being destroyed and we didn’t care one bit. The president walked about grinning like the cheshire cat. His wide smile became the symbol that signified our country. Everywhere I looked there were posters with a wide smile printed on them, plastering houses, bus stops and billboards. One day I was passing one of these posters on a billboard. I could see my own wide smile reflected in the glass separating my delirious grin from the maniacal symbol staring back at me. “He’s a lunatic, isn’t he?” I spun around. An old woman, maybe 70 years old was standing next to me. I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. She wasn’t smiling. I couldn’t understand. “Excuse me?”, I said somewhat shakily. “I said, he’s a lunatic, isn’t he?”, the woman was looking at me with a note of humour in her eyes. “I’m sorry but I don’t thing I can be understanding you correctly. Our president isn’t a lunatic. He saved us from sadness…. didn’t he?” The way she looked at me was unnerving. A feeling I hadn’t felt for quite some time. My smile wavered slightly but I straightened it within a fraction of a second. The woman straightened up and turned to face me. She was standing so close I could count every wrinkle on her face. “You don’t really think that do you? You’re a clever girl. What do you really think?” I breathed in shakily. A tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t stop smiling and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “I…I don’t know. I don’t know!”, I wept shakily. I felt like a doll being shattered only to find I was still whole. But the pain was unbearable. “Yes, you do.” The woman’s certainty shook me to my very core. And then suddenly I realised she was right. How could she not be. For ages I had been in a haze not realizing that I was letting myself fade away. “What happened to me?”, I asked the lady. “And who are you?” “My name is Elsie”, the woman answered smiling a genuine and warm smile. How I had missed the honesty and warmth of a genuine smile. So much so I couldn’t believe that I was only now realising that I had missed it. “You’ve been sleepwalking my dear. Ever since you’ve been wearing that dopamine chip. Everyone has. You forgot that you have opinions and dreams and ambitions. But I see now you remember.” “But I don’t understand. How did you do that. How did you…” “How did I get through to you?”, Elsie took my arm, and we started walking down the street together. “Its quite simple really. The dopamine chips only work if they aren’t challenged. Since everyone is always surrounded by people all wearing the same dopamine chips, thinking the same things, feeling the same way, there is no one to challenge. But when I asked you what you really think, what YOU really think, the dopamine chip started to lose its power. The same happened to me.” I picked the dopamine chip of from the back of my head, put it in my pocket and was about to ask her who it was who had freed her from the deluded life I had also been living up until now when I looked up. We had come to an abandoned alley. “Where are we?” I asked. Elsie smiled and walked down the alley towards a set of doors at the far end. “Follow me.”, she said looking back at me and beckoning with her hand. With a certain amount of hesitancy, I did as she said wiped my tears away and followed her down a long flight of stone steps into a huge room filled with people chatting indistinctly in hushed voices. As soon as they saw me the room became quiet. Then one voice which came from a young man sitting on a table said: “Found another one then, Elsie? That’s good. We need all the help we can get.” A small ripple of laughter went through the crowded room. I looked at Elsie. “What is he talking about?” Elsie pointed towards a plaque hanging on the opposite wall of the room. It read `Save the world from happiness! Join the fight. ` “Welcome to the revolution.”, Elsie said to me smiling. I smiled back and, in that moment, I knew that a war for freedom was soon to begin and that I would join the fight.

=== 2. Epilogue ===
This short story titled “The happy solution” depicts the experiences of a young woman in a country taken over by a totalitarian regime which has manipulated the public into believing that their regime is what will lead the country into a utopia. This they do by manipulating the public with dopamine chips, which make people uncontrollably happy and therefore will make the public happy with any decision the government makes. The short story is therefore a dystopic depiction of a country being ruled by a totalitarian regime which uses methods being sold as utopic solutions to oppress the public. The dopamine chips stand as a utopic solution to “save people from sadness”. This idea can also be seen in the dystopic novel “Brave new world” by Aldous Huxley with the recreational drug “soma” which was used to increase happiness and complacency of the population. The following will show a small quote from Huxley’s “Brave new world” said by the character Mustapha Mond:

“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.” (Huxley 1932, Chapter 17, page 102) <ref>Huxley, Aldous: Brave new world, Original Classic Editions, 06.12.2023, 368 Pages; ISBN-13: 9783104027739</ref>

The short story “The happy solution” also shows how the government uses technological advances, and technological connection between people through computers and smartphones and security surveillance through cameras to control and watch the public. This is a motive that can also be seen in the novel “1984” by George Orwell, which is a story about a futuristic dystopian society. This futuristic society is polluted by power and control which is used to oppress the public. <ref>Orwell, George: 1984, E-Kitap Projesi & Cheapest Books, 06.12.2023, 324 Pages; ISBN-13: 978-6257120890</ref>

However, the aspect of the public being connected to each other through smart phones and social media could be seen as a method of transparency among people. So that people might be more honest and trustful towards each other. This is a belief shared by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who lived from 1712 to 1778. He believed that transparency and access of information between parties would lead to more equality. <ref>https://www.getabstract.com/de/zusammenfassung/vom-gesellschaftsvertrag/4853</ref>In the story the antagonist, the president, uses this argument to make people more open to the idea of introducing technology into every aspect of everyday life. The president then uses the connection to control and watch the public in their homes and private lives which reveals how his utopic promise of a transparent society can be easily manipulated to create a very dystopic and controlling society with a great lack of privacy and discretion. This dystopic form of a transparent society can also be seen in Jeremy Bentham’s prison design `The Panopticon`. The prison would be so built that a watchtower would be circularly surrounded by individual cells. Therefore, every prisoner could never be sure weather they were being watched or not. This would ensure that the prisoners would always be on best behaviour.<ref>https://www.grin.com/document/304027</ref> The short story “The happy solution” depicts a similar kind of transparent society being created by the president because it becomes clear that people are being watched even when they don’t know it. In the story the public reacts to this constant surveillance with demonstrations which result in people disappearing after being arrested by the government army. This brutal abuse of power and infringement of free speech clearly shows that the government uses the “transparency” of the society, the technological connection, to find out who does what and when and then uses that information to make arrests and control the public.

The end of the short story “The happy solution” tells us that a revolution is underway to overthrow the totalitarian government. This is a kind of anarchism. Anarchism is often associated with violence, but the basic idea of anarchism is that a government which uses its power and influence to manipulate and oppress should be abolished. Hierarchy is seen as harmful, and the freedom of individuals is seen as an important right which must be protected and must be fought for if endangered.<ref>Anarchism. (2022). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism</ref> In addition, crypto anarchism, a form of anarchism which wants to weaken the state’s power by strengthening the common man as an individual would be achieved by prohibiting the government from collecting personal information on the citizens. Since the totalitarian government in the short story uses their technology to watch the citizens and gather information on the public, the revolution which is under way in the story makes sense as a crypto-anarchical response to such a hierarchical oppression.<ref>Crypto-anarchism. (2021). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism</ref> In addition, the anarchical ideal of a person’s individuality as the key to overthrow oppressive governments is shown in how the hero Elsie saves the protagonist in the short story “A happy solution”. When Elsie askes the protagonist what she personally thinks of the president, the power of the dopamine chip weakens, and the protagonist is able to shake of the control that the totalitarian regime has on her. Thus concluding the story at a turning point in the protagonists journey.

== Sources ==
<references />

Draft talk:A happy solution

2023-12-30T12:23:26Z

Celina Köck: Celina Köck moved page Talk:"A happy solution" by Celina Köck to Draft talk:"A happy solution" by Celina Köck over redirect

15% AI

Draft:A happy solution

2023-12-30T12:23:26Z

Celina Köck: Celina Köck moved page "A happy solution" by Celina Köck to Draft:"A happy solution" by Celina Köck over redirect

= Short story: "A happy solution" by Celina Köck =

=== 1. Short story: "A happy solution" ===
Happiness was forced upon all of us. We suffocated under its weight like ants under a rock, slowly feeling our amour split and crack. We revealed our soft bodies from beneath our broken shells to easily. We had never felt this sort of joy before. Just one taste of it would have been enough to sustain a person for days but we were letting ourselves drown in dopamine. All the ugliness of the world had become faded and didn’t seem to matter as much as it used to. It was almost like it wasn’t there anymore. Or at least we couldn’t see it. This wasn’t true of course. The wars, murders, attacks, pain, and torture hadn’t disappeared. We had just changed perspective.

“War is an important industry!”, shouted the president through the television screen in our living room, as my boyfriend and I sat down to watch the news two years ago. The broadcasts were becoming more and more similar since the new regime had taken power. They all preached about the prominent need for technology in all fields of life, making no exception, propagated on how the wars in the middle east and Europe were necessary and moralized on how men and women should live their lives according to traditional values. We started to get nervous then, that much was clear. “I promise all of you…,” continued the president now looking directly into the news camera. The supercilious look in his eyes made me feel sick to my stomach. “…that our government will save this country. We will make a new world, a new way of life. Technology is and will prove to be the holy grail that will make our country rise again and I, as your president am prepared to lead our country into a utopia.” He paused for a moment; I felt a chill go down my spine. “I vow to make you all happy!”, the president finished and smiled broadly. My boyfriend and I looked at each other nervously. “That last sentence was a bit odd, wasn’t it?”, I asked. “Yeah, it was.”, he said slowly, with a concerned frown on his face. “What do you think he meant by that? ´I vow to make you all happy! ´ I don’t think I have ever heard a politician talk like that. Since when do politicians care if the publics happy?”, he laughed dryly. But I couldn’t laugh. I was scared. What did it mean?

We all got to know to soon enough what the meaning behind that strange promise was. Soon technology had taken over. Children in schools started being taught by robots and computers, everyone had mandatory access to smart phones and became connected to each other. The government said that every man, woman, and child should have equal access to technological devices. Security surveillance was installed all over the country to make the public feel safer. Cameras were everywhere making crime rates drop significantly. In the beginning most people were pleased about this myself included. What we didn’t know was that we would quickly come to sober up about the effects of constant surveillance. Pretty soon we didn’t know when or where we were being watched. No conversation or action was private anymore. Technology was sold to us as convenience and safety but robbed us of our privacy and freedom. Soon it became clear that we were being watched at home as well, through our mandatory smart phones and computers, while we were surfing the internet, watching the news, or communicating with friends. While we were watching the world through our phones, our phones were watching us as well. At first when people started to notice, that our privacy was being intruded upon, they took to the streets and demonstrated. But soon people who had taken part in the demonstrations, were arrested by the government army, and disappeared and were never seen again. So, the demonstrations soon died down. For a while we thought that this was obviously not the world that was promised to us by the president, but we didn’t know then what was to happen next.

Because he did keep his promise to us. He did make us happy. We just didn’t know that this happiness was the worst kind of happiness ever to be experienced.

It seemed that scientists who supported the president’s regime had worked hard to create a device that would save people from sadness. These devices can be best described as dopamine chips. When inserted to the back of the head of a person it increased the level of dopamine in the brain and thus increased the level of happiness. And soon we would all be wearing those dopamine chips. It happened one night a year after the new regime had taken power. The governments soldiers came to our homes. It was a huge shock when I opened the door, and they pushed in. They spent two hours telling us that we had to wear those dopamine chips. When my boyfriend and I refused things became nasty and the soldiers forced the dopamine chips to the back of our heads. It happened so quickly and when it was over, we suddenly found that we didn’t want to take the dopamine chips off. In that moment we were completely and utterly content. So now technology was the holy grail that would save our society and the dopamine chips were the ultimate key to achieve utopia. It was the also the key to control our society. Now the government didn’t have to try to improve the world because we, the public, were manipulated into accepting everything around us. We were unconditionally happy. Now wars were being fought, rules were being made, and the world was being destroyed and we didn’t care one bit. The president walked about grinning like the cheshire cat. His wide smile became the symbol that signified our country. Everywhere I looked there were posters with a wide smile printed on them, plastering houses, bus stops and billboards. One day I was passing one of these posters on a billboard. I could see my own wide smile reflected in the glass separating my delirious grin from the maniacal symbol staring back at me. “He’s a lunatic, isn’t he?” I spun around. An old woman, maybe 70 years old was standing next to me. I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. She wasn’t smiling. I couldn’t understand. “Excuse me?”, I said somewhat shakily. “I said, he’s a lunatic, isn’t he?”, the woman was looking at me with a note of humour in her eyes. “I’m sorry but I don’t thing I can be understanding you correctly. Our president isn’t a lunatic. He saved us from sadness…. didn’t he?” The way she looked at me was unnerving. A feeling I hadn’t felt for quite some time. My smile wavered slightly but I straightened it within a fraction of a second. The woman straightened up and turned to face me. She was standing so close I could count every wrinkle on her face. “You don’t really think that do you? You’re a clever girl. What do you really think?” I breathed in shakily. A tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t stop smiling and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “I…I don’t know. I don’t know!”, I wept shakily. I felt like a doll being shattered only to find I was still whole. But the pain was unbearable. “Yes, you do.” The woman’s certainty shook me to my very core. And then suddenly I realised she was right. How could she not be. For ages I had been in a haze not realizing that I was letting myself fade away. “What happened to me?”, I asked the lady. “And who are you?” “My name is Elsie”, the woman answered smiling a genuine and warm smile. How I had missed the honesty and warmth of a genuine smile. So much so I couldn’t believe that I was only now realising that I had missed it. “You’ve been sleepwalking my dear. Ever since you’ve been wearing that dopamine chip. Everyone has. You forgot that you have opinions and dreams and ambitions. But I see now you remember.” “But I don’t understand. How did you do that. How did you…” “How did I get through to you?”, Elsie took my arm, and we started walking down the street together. “Its quite simple really. The dopamine chips only work if they aren’t challenged. Since everyone is always surrounded by people all wearing the same dopamine chips, thinking the same things, feeling the same way, there is no one to challenge. But when I asked you what you really think, what YOU really think, the dopamine chip started to lose its power. The same happened to me.” I picked the dopamine chip of from the back of my head, put it in my pocket and was about to ask her who it was who had freed her from the deluded life I had also been living up until now when I looked up. We had come to an abandoned alley. “Where are we?” I asked. Elsie smiled and walked down the alley towards a set of doors at the far end. “Follow me.”, she said looking back at me and beckoning with her hand. With a certain amount of hesitancy, I did as she said wiped my tears away and followed her down a long flight of stone steps into a huge room filled with people chatting indistinctly in hushed voices. As soon as they saw me the room became quiet. Then one voice which came from a young man sitting on a table said: “Found another one then, Elsie? That’s good. We need all the help we can get.” A small ripple of laughter went through the crowded room. I looked at Elsie. “What is he talking about?” Elsie pointed towards a plaque hanging on the opposite wall of the room. It read `Save the world from happiness! Join the fight. ` “Welcome to the revolution.”, Elsie said to me smiling. I smiled back and, in that moment, I knew that a war for freedom was soon to begin and that I would join the fight.

=== 2. Epilogue ===
This short story titled “The happy solution” depicts the experiences of a young woman in a country taken over by a totalitarian regime which has manipulated the public into believing that their regime is what will lead the country into a utopia. This they do by manipulating the public with dopamine chips, which make people uncontrollably happy and therefore will make the public happy with any decision the government makes. The short story is therefore a dystopic depiction of a country being ruled by a totalitarian regime which uses methods being sold as utopic solutions to oppress the public. The dopamine chips stand as a utopic solution to “save people from sadness”. This idea can also be seen in the dystopic novel “Brave new world” by Aldous Huxley with the recreational drug “soma” which was used to increase happiness and complacency of the population. The following will show a small quote from Huxley’s “Brave new world” said by the character Mustapha Mond:

“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.” (Huxley 1932, Chapter 17, page 102) <ref>Huxley, Aldous: Brave new world, Original Classic Editions, 06.12.2023, 368 Pages; ISBN-13: 9783104027739</ref>

The short story “The happy solution” also shows how the government uses technological advances, and technological connection between people through computers and smartphones and security surveillance through cameras to control and watch the public. This is a motive that can also be seen in the novel “1984” by George Orwell, which is a story about a futuristic dystopian society. This futuristic society is polluted by power and control which is used to oppress the public. <ref>Orwell, George: 1984, E-Kitap Projesi & Cheapest Books, 06.12.2023, 324 Pages; ISBN-13: 978-6257120890</ref>

However, the aspect of the public being connected to each other through smart phones and social media could be seen as a method of transparency among people. So that people might be more honest and trustful towards each other. This is a belief shared by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who lived from 1712 to 1778. He believed that transparency and access of information between parties would lead to more equality. <ref>https://www.getabstract.com/de/zusammenfassung/vom-gesellschaftsvertrag/4853</ref>In the story the antagonist, the president, uses this argument to make people more open to the idea of introducing technology into every aspect of everyday life. The president then uses the connection to control and watch the public in their homes and private lives which reveals how his utopic promise of a transparent society can be easily manipulated to create a very dystopic and controlling society with a great lack of privacy and discretion. This dystopic form of a transparent society can also be seen in Jeremy Bentham’s prison design `The Panopticon`. The prison would be so built that a watchtower would be circularly surrounded by individual cells. Therefore, every prisoner could never be sure weather they were being watched or not. This would ensure that the prisoners would always be on best behaviour.<ref>https://www.grin.com/document/304027</ref> The short story “The happy solution” depicts a similar kind of transparent society being created by the president because it becomes clear that people are being watched even when they don’t know it. In the story the public reacts to this constant surveillance with demonstrations which result in people disappearing after being arrested by the government army. This brutal abuse of power and infringement of free speech clearly shows that the government uses the “transparency” of the society, the technological connection, to find out who does what and when and then uses that information to make arrests and control the public.

The end of the short story “The happy solution” tells us that a revolution is underway to overthrow the totalitarian government. This is a kind of anarchism. Anarchism is often associated with violence, but the basic idea of anarchism is that a government which uses its power and influence to manipulate and oppress should be abolished. Hierarchy is seen as harmful, and the freedom of individuals is seen as an important right which must be protected and must be fought for if endangered.<ref>Anarchism. (2022). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism</ref> In addition, crypto anarchism, a form of anarchism which wants to weaken the state’s power by strengthening the common man as an individual would be achieved by prohibiting the government from collecting personal information on the citizens. Since the totalitarian government in the short story uses their technology to watch the citizens and gather information on the public, the revolution which is under way in the story makes sense as a crypto-anarchical response to such a hierarchical oppression.<ref>Crypto-anarchism. (2021). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism</ref> In addition, the anarchical ideal of a person’s individuality as the key to overthrow oppressive governments is shown in how the hero Elsie saves the protagonist in the short story “A happy solution”. When Elsie askes the protagonist what she personally thinks of the president, the power of the dopamine chip weakens, and the protagonist is able to shake of the control that the totalitarian regime has on her. Thus concluding the story at a turning point in the protagonists journey.

== Sources ==
<references />

Draft talk:A happy solution

2023-12-30T12:12:17Z

Celina Köck: Celina Köck moved page Draft talk:"A happy solution" by Celina Köck to Talk:"A happy solution" by Celina Köck

15% AI

Draft:A happy solution

2023-12-30T12:12:17Z

Celina Köck: Celina Köck moved page Draft:"A happy solution" by Celina Köck to "A happy solution" by Celina Köck

= Short story: "A happy solution" by Celina Köck =

=== 1. Short story: "A happy solution" ===
Happiness was forced upon all of us. We suffocated under its weight like ants under a rock, slowly feeling our amour split and crack. We revealed our soft bodies from beneath our broken shells to easily. We had never felt this sort of joy before. Just one taste of it would have been enough to sustain a person for days but we were letting ourselves drown in dopamine. All the ugliness of the world had become faded and didn’t seem to matter as much as it used to. It was almost like it wasn’t there anymore. Or at least we couldn’t see it. This wasn’t true of course. The wars, murders, attacks, pain, and torture hadn’t disappeared. We had just changed perspective.

“War is an important industry!”, shouted the president through the television screen in our living room, as my boyfriend and I sat down to watch the news two years ago. The broadcasts were becoming more and more similar since the new regime had taken power. They all preached about the prominent need for technology in all fields of life, making no exception, propagated on how the wars in the middle east and Europe were necessary and moralized on how men and women should live their lives according to traditional values. We started to get nervous then, that much was clear. “I promise all of you…,” continued the president now looking directly into the news camera. The supercilious look in his eyes made me feel sick to my stomach. “…that our government will save this country. We will make a new world, a new way of life. Technology is and will prove to be the holy grail that will make our country rise again and I, as your president am prepared to lead our country into a utopia.” He paused for a moment; I felt a chill go down my spine. “I vow to make you all happy!”, the president finished and smiled broadly. My boyfriend and I looked at each other nervously. “That last sentence was a bit odd, wasn’t it?”, I asked. “Yeah, it was.”, he said slowly, with a concerned frown on his face. “What do you think he meant by that? ´I vow to make you all happy! ´ I don’t think I have ever heard a politician talk like that. Since when do politicians care if the publics happy?”, he laughed dryly. But I couldn’t laugh. I was scared. What did it mean?

We all got to know to soon enough what the meaning behind that strange promise was. Soon technology had taken over. Children in schools started being taught by robots and computers, everyone had mandatory access to smart phones and became connected to each other. The government said that every man, woman, and child should have equal access to technological devices. Security surveillance was installed all over the country to make the public feel safer. Cameras were everywhere making crime rates drop significantly. In the beginning most people were pleased about this myself included. What we didn’t know was that we would quickly come to sober up about the effects of constant surveillance. Pretty soon we didn’t know when or where we were being watched. No conversation or action was private anymore. Technology was sold to us as convenience and safety but robbed us of our privacy and freedom. Soon it became clear that we were being watched at home as well, through our mandatory smart phones and computers, while we were surfing the internet, watching the news, or communicating with friends. While we were watching the world through our phones, our phones were watching us as well. At first when people started to notice, that our privacy was being intruded upon, they took to the streets and demonstrated. But soon people who had taken part in the demonstrations, were arrested by the government army, and disappeared and were never seen again. So, the demonstrations soon died down. For a while we thought that this was obviously not the world that was promised to us by the president, but we didn’t know then what was to happen next.

Because he did keep his promise to us. He did make us happy. We just didn’t know that this happiness was the worst kind of happiness ever to be experienced.

It seemed that scientists who supported the president’s regime had worked hard to create a device that would save people from sadness. These devices can be best described as dopamine chips. When inserted to the back of the head of a person it increased the level of dopamine in the brain and thus increased the level of happiness. And soon we would all be wearing those dopamine chips. It happened one night a year after the new regime had taken power. The governments soldiers came to our homes. It was a huge shock when I opened the door, and they pushed in. They spent two hours telling us that we had to wear those dopamine chips. When my boyfriend and I refused things became nasty and the soldiers forced the dopamine chips to the back of our heads. It happened so quickly and when it was over, we suddenly found that we didn’t want to take the dopamine chips off. In that moment we were completely and utterly content. So now technology was the holy grail that would save our society and the dopamine chips were the ultimate key to achieve utopia. It was the also the key to control our society. Now the government didn’t have to try to improve the world because we, the public, were manipulated into accepting everything around us. We were unconditionally happy. Now wars were being fought, rules were being made, and the world was being destroyed and we didn’t care one bit. The president walked about grinning like the cheshire cat. His wide smile became the symbol that signified our country. Everywhere I looked there were posters with a wide smile printed on them, plastering houses, bus stops and billboards. One day I was passing one of these posters on a billboard. I could see my own wide smile reflected in the glass separating my delirious grin from the maniacal symbol staring back at me. “He’s a lunatic, isn’t he?” I spun around. An old woman, maybe 70 years old was standing next to me. I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. She wasn’t smiling. I couldn’t understand. “Excuse me?”, I said somewhat shakily. “I said, he’s a lunatic, isn’t he?”, the woman was looking at me with a note of humour in her eyes. “I’m sorry but I don’t thing I can be understanding you correctly. Our president isn’t a lunatic. He saved us from sadness…. didn’t he?” The way she looked at me was unnerving. A feeling I hadn’t felt for quite some time. My smile wavered slightly but I straightened it within a fraction of a second. The woman straightened up and turned to face me. She was standing so close I could count every wrinkle on her face. “You don’t really think that do you? You’re a clever girl. What do you really think?” I breathed in shakily. A tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t stop smiling and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “I…I don’t know. I don’t know!”, I wept shakily. I felt like a doll being shattered only to find I was still whole. But the pain was unbearable. “Yes, you do.” The woman’s certainty shook me to my very core. And then suddenly I realised she was right. How could she not be. For ages I had been in a haze not realizing that I was letting myself fade away. “What happened to me?”, I asked the lady. “And who are you?” “My name is Elsie”, the woman answered smiling a genuine and warm smile. How I had missed the honesty and warmth of a genuine smile. So much so I couldn’t believe that I was only now realising that I had missed it. “You’ve been sleepwalking my dear. Ever since you’ve been wearing that dopamine chip. Everyone has. You forgot that you have opinions and dreams and ambitions. But I see now you remember.” “But I don’t understand. How did you do that. How did you…” “How did I get through to you?”, Elsie took my arm, and we started walking down the street together. “Its quite simple really. The dopamine chips only work if they aren’t challenged. Since everyone is always surrounded by people all wearing the same dopamine chips, thinking the same things, feeling the same way, there is no one to challenge. But when I asked you what you really think, what YOU really think, the dopamine chip started to lose its power. The same happened to me.” I picked the dopamine chip of from the back of my head, put it in my pocket and was about to ask her who it was who had freed her from the deluded life I had also been living up until now when I looked up. We had come to an abandoned alley. “Where are we?” I asked. Elsie smiled and walked down the alley towards a set of doors at the far end. “Follow me.”, she said looking back at me and beckoning with her hand. With a certain amount of hesitancy, I did as she said wiped my tears away and followed her down a long flight of stone steps into a huge room filled with people chatting indistinctly in hushed voices. As soon as they saw me the room became quiet. Then one voice which came from a young man sitting on a table said: “Found another one then, Elsie? That’s good. We need all the help we can get.” A small ripple of laughter went through the crowded room. I looked at Elsie. “What is he talking about?” Elsie pointed towards a plaque hanging on the opposite wall of the room. It read `Save the world from happiness! Join the fight. ` “Welcome to the revolution.”, Elsie said to me smiling. I smiled back and, in that moment, I knew that a war for freedom was soon to begin and that I would join the fight.

=== 2. Epilogue ===
This short story titled “The happy solution” depicts the experiences of a young woman in a country taken over by a totalitarian regime which has manipulated the public into believing that their regime is what will lead the country into a utopia. This they do by manipulating the public with dopamine chips, which make people uncontrollably happy and therefore will make the public happy with any decision the government makes. The short story is therefore a dystopic depiction of a country being ruled by a totalitarian regime which uses methods being sold as utopic solutions to oppress the public. The dopamine chips stand as a utopic solution to “save people from sadness”. This idea can also be seen in the dystopic novel “Brave new world” by Aldous Huxley with the recreational drug “soma” which was used to increase happiness and complacency of the population. The following will show a small quote from Huxley’s “Brave new world” said by the character Mustapha Mond:

“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.” (Huxley 1932, Chapter 17, page 102) <ref>Huxley, Aldous: Brave new world, Original Classic Editions, 06.12.2023, 368 Pages; ISBN-13: 9783104027739</ref>

The short story “The happy solution” also shows how the government uses technological advances, and technological connection between people through computers and smartphones and security surveillance through cameras to control and watch the public. This is a motive that can also be seen in the novel “1984” by George Orwell, which is a story about a futuristic dystopian society. This futuristic society is polluted by power and control which is used to oppress the public. <ref>Orwell, George: 1984, E-Kitap Projesi & Cheapest Books, 06.12.2023, 324 Pages; ISBN-13: 978-6257120890</ref>

However, the aspect of the public being connected to each other through smart phones and social media could be seen as a method of transparency among people. So that people might be more honest and trustful towards each other. This is a belief shared by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who lived from 1712 to 1778. He believed that transparency and access of information between parties would lead to more equality. <ref>https://www.getabstract.com/de/zusammenfassung/vom-gesellschaftsvertrag/4853</ref>In the story the antagonist, the president, uses this argument to make people more open to the idea of introducing technology into every aspect of everyday life. The president then uses the connection to control and watch the public in their homes and private lives which reveals how his utopic promise of a transparent society can be easily manipulated to create a very dystopic and controlling society with a great lack of privacy and discretion. This dystopic form of a transparent society can also be seen in Jeremy Bentham’s prison design `The Panopticon`. The prison would be so built that a watchtower would be circularly surrounded by individual cells. Therefore, every prisoner could never be sure weather they were being watched or not. This would ensure that the prisoners would always be on best behaviour.<ref>https://www.grin.com/document/304027</ref> The short story “The happy solution” depicts a similar kind of transparent society being created by the president because it becomes clear that people are being watched even when they don’t know it. In the story the public reacts to this constant surveillance with demonstrations which result in people disappearing after being arrested by the government army. This brutal abuse of power and infringement of free speech clearly shows that the government uses the “transparency” of the society, the technological connection, to find out who does what and when and then uses that information to make arrests and control the public.

The end of the short story “The happy solution” tells us that a revolution is underway to overthrow the totalitarian government. This is a kind of anarchism. Anarchism is often associated with violence, but the basic idea of anarchism is that a government which uses its power and influence to manipulate and oppress should be abolished. Hierarchy is seen as harmful, and the freedom of individuals is seen as an important right which must be protected and must be fought for if endangered.<ref>Anarchism. (2022). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism</ref> In addition, crypto anarchism, a form of anarchism which wants to weaken the state’s power by strengthening the common man as an individual would be achieved by prohibiting the government from collecting personal information on the citizens. Since the totalitarian government in the short story uses their technology to watch the citizens and gather information on the public, the revolution which is under way in the story makes sense as a crypto-anarchical response to such a hierarchical oppression.<ref>Crypto-anarchism. (2021). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism</ref> In addition, the anarchical ideal of a person’s individuality as the key to overthrow oppressive governments is shown in how the hero Elsie saves the protagonist in the short story “A happy solution”. When Elsie askes the protagonist what she personally thinks of the president, the power of the dopamine chip weakens, and the protagonist is able to shake of the control that the totalitarian regime has on her. Thus concluding the story at a turning point in the protagonists journey.

== Sources ==
<references />

Draft:A happy solution

2023-12-06T16:55:49Z

Celina Köck: Created page with " = Short story: "A happy solution" by Celina Köck = === 1. Short story: "A happy solution" === Happiness was forced upon all of us. We suffocated under its weight like ants under a rock, slowly feeling our amour split and crack. We revealed our soft bodies from beneath our broken shells to easily. We had never felt this sort of joy before. Just one taste of it would have been enough to sustain a person for days but we were letting ourselves drown in dopamine. All the u..."

= Short story: "A happy solution" by Celina Köck =

=== 1. Short story: "A happy solution" ===
Happiness was forced upon all of us. We suffocated under its weight like ants under a rock, slowly feeling our amour split and crack. We revealed our soft bodies from beneath our broken shells to easily. We had never felt this sort of joy before. Just one taste of it would have been enough to sustain a person for days but we were letting ourselves drown in dopamine. All the ugliness of the world had become faded and didn’t seem to matter as much as it used to. It was almost like it wasn’t there anymore. Or at least we couldn’t see it. This wasn’t true of course. The wars, murders, attacks, pain, and torture hadn’t disappeared. We had just changed perspective.

“War is an important industry!”, shouted the president through the television screen in our living room, as my boyfriend and I sat down to watch the news two years ago. The broadcasts were becoming more and more similar since the new regime had taken power. They all preached about the prominent need for technology in all fields of life, making no exception, propagated on how the wars in the middle east and Europe were necessary and moralized on how men and women should live their lives according to traditional values. We started to get nervous then, that much was clear. “I promise all of you…,” continued the president now looking directly into the news camera. The supercilious look in his eyes made me feel sick to my stomach. “…that our government will save this country. We will make a new world, a new way of life. Technology is and will prove to be the holy grail that will make our country rise again and I, as your president am prepared to lead our country into a utopia.” He paused for a moment; I felt a chill go down my spine. “I vow to make you all happy!”, the president finished and smiled broadly. My boyfriend and I looked at each other nervously. “That last sentence was a bit odd, wasn’t it?”, I asked. “Yeah, it was.”, he said slowly, with a concerned frown on his face. “What do you think he meant by that? ´I vow to make you all happy! ´ I don’t think I have ever heard a politician talk like that. Since when do politicians care if the publics happy?”, he laughed dryly. But I couldn’t laugh. I was scared. What did it mean?

We all got to know to soon enough what the meaning behind that strange promise was. Soon technology had taken over. Children in schools started being taught by robots and computers, everyone had mandatory access to smart phones and became connected to each other. The government said that every man, woman, and child should have equal access to technological devices. Security surveillance was installed all over the country to make the public feel safer. Cameras were everywhere making crime rates drop significantly. In the beginning most people were pleased about this myself included. What we didn’t know was that we would quickly come to sober up about the effects of constant surveillance. Pretty soon we didn’t know when or where we were being watched. No conversation or action was private anymore. Technology was sold to us as convenience and safety but robbed us of our privacy and freedom. Soon it became clear that we were being watched at home as well, through our mandatory smart phones and computers, while we were surfing the internet, watching the news, or communicating with friends. While we were watching the world through our phones, our phones were watching us as well. At first when people started to notice, that our privacy was being intruded upon, they took to the streets and demonstrated. But soon people who had taken part in the demonstrations, were arrested by the government army, and disappeared and were never seen again. So, the demonstrations soon died down. For a while we thought that this was obviously not the world that was promised to us by the president, but we didn’t know then what was to happen next.

Because he did keep his promise to us. He did make us happy. We just didn’t know that this happiness was the worst kind of happiness ever to be experienced.

It seemed that scientists who supported the president’s regime had worked hard to create a device that would save people from sadness. These devices can be best described as dopamine chips. When inserted to the back of the head of a person it increased the level of dopamine in the brain and thus increased the level of happiness. And soon we would all be wearing those dopamine chips. It happened one night a year after the new regime had taken power. The governments soldiers came to our homes. It was a huge shock when I opened the door, and they pushed in. They spent two hours telling us that we had to wear those dopamine chips. When my boyfriend and I refused things became nasty and the soldiers forced the dopamine chips to the back of our heads. It happened so quickly and when it was over, we suddenly found that we didn’t want to take the dopamine chips off. In that moment we were completely and utterly content. So now technology was the holy grail that would save our society and the dopamine chips were the ultimate key to achieve utopia. It was the also the key to control our society. Now the government didn’t have to try to improve the world because we, the public, were manipulated into accepting everything around us. We were unconditionally happy. Now wars were being fought, rules were being made, and the world was being destroyed and we didn’t care one bit. The president walked about grinning like the cheshire cat. His wide smile became the symbol that signified our country. Everywhere I looked there were posters with a wide smile printed on them, plastering houses, bus stops and billboards. One day I was passing one of these posters on a billboard. I could see my own wide smile reflected in the glass separating my delirious grin from the maniacal symbol staring back at me. “He’s a lunatic, isn’t he?” I spun around. An old woman, maybe 70 years old was standing next to me. I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. She wasn’t smiling. I couldn’t understand. “Excuse me?”, I said somewhat shakily. “I said, he’s a lunatic, isn’t he?”, the woman was looking at me with a note of humour in her eyes. “I’m sorry but I don’t thing I can be understanding you correctly. Our president isn’t a lunatic. He saved us from sadness…. didn’t he?” The way she looked at me was unnerving. A feeling I hadn’t felt for quite some time. My smile wavered slightly but I straightened it within a fraction of a second. The woman straightened up and turned to face me. She was standing so close I could count every wrinkle on her face. “You don’t really think that do you? You’re a clever girl. What do you really think?” I breathed in shakily. A tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t stop smiling and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “I…I don’t know. I don’t know!”, I wept shakily. I felt like a doll being shattered only to find I was still whole. But the pain was unbearable. “Yes, you do.” The woman’s certainty shook me to my very core. And then suddenly I realised she was right. How could she not be. For ages I had been in a haze not realizing that I was letting myself fade away. “What happened to me?”, I asked the lady. “And who are you?” “My name is Elsie”, the woman answered smiling a genuine and warm smile. How I had missed the honesty and warmth of a genuine smile. So much so I couldn’t believe that I was only now realising that I had missed it. “You’ve been sleepwalking my dear. Ever since you’ve been wearing that dopamine chip. Everyone has. You forgot that you have opinions and dreams and ambitions. But I see now you remember.” “But I don’t understand. How did you do that. How did you…” “How did I get through to you?”, Elsie took my arm, and we started walking down the street together. “Its quite simple really. The dopamine chips only work if they aren’t challenged. Since everyone is always surrounded by people all wearing the same dopamine chips, thinking the same things, feeling the same way, there is no one to challenge. But when I asked you what you really think, what YOU really think, the dopamine chip started to lose its power. The same happened to me.” I picked the dopamine chip of from the back of my head, put it in my pocket and was about to ask her who it was who had freed her from the deluded life I had also been living up until now when I looked up. We had come to an abandoned alley. “Where are we?” I asked. Elsie smiled and walked down the alley towards a set of doors at the far end. “Follow me.”, she said looking back at me and beckoning with her hand. With a certain amount of hesitancy, I did as she said wiped my tears away and followed her down a long flight of stone steps into a huge room filled with people chatting indistinctly in hushed voices. As soon as they saw me the room became quiet. Then one voice which came from a young man sitting on a table said: “Found another one then, Elsie? That’s good. We need all the help we can get.” A small ripple of laughter went through the crowded room. I looked at Elsie. “What is he talking about?” Elsie pointed towards a plaque hanging on the opposite wall of the room. It read `Save the world from happiness! Join the fight. ` “Welcome to the revolution.”, Elsie said to me smiling. I smiled back and, in that moment, I knew that a war for freedom was soon to begin and that I would join the fight.

=== 2. Epilogue ===
This short story titled “The happy solution” depicts the experiences of a young woman in a country taken over by a totalitarian regime which has manipulated the public into believing that their regime is what will lead the country into a utopia. This they do by manipulating the public with dopamine chips, which make people uncontrollably happy and therefore will make the public happy with any decision the government makes. The short story is therefore a dystopic depiction of a country being ruled by a totalitarian regime which uses methods being sold as utopic solutions to oppress the public. The dopamine chips stand as a utopic solution to “save people from sadness”. This idea can also be seen in the dystopic novel “Brave new world” by Aldous Huxley with the recreational drug “soma” which was used to increase happiness and complacency of the population. The following will show a small quote from Huxley’s “Brave new world” said by the character Mustapha Mond:

“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.” (Huxley 1932, Chapter 17, page 102) <ref>Huxley, Aldous: Brave new world, Original Classic Editions, 06.12.2023, 368 Pages; ISBN-13: 9783104027739</ref>

The short story “The happy solution” also shows how the government uses technological advances, and technological connection between people through computers and smartphones and security surveillance through cameras to control and watch the public. This is a motive that can also be seen in the novel “1984” by George Orwell, which is a story about a futuristic dystopian society. This futuristic society is polluted by power and control which is used to oppress the public. <ref>Orwell, George: 1984, E-Kitap Projesi & Cheapest Books, 06.12.2023, 324 Pages; ISBN-13: 978-6257120890</ref>

However, the aspect of the public being connected to each other through smart phones and social media could be seen as a method of transparency among people. So that people might be more honest and trustful towards each other. This is a belief shared by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who lived from 1712 to 1778. He believed that transparency and access of information between parties would lead to more equality. <ref>https://www.getabstract.com/de/zusammenfassung/vom-gesellschaftsvertrag/4853</ref>In the story the antagonist, the president, uses this argument to make people more open to the idea of introducing technology into every aspect of everyday life. The president then uses the connection to control and watch the public in their homes and private lives which reveals how his utopic promise of a transparent society can be easily manipulated to create a very dystopic and controlling society with a great lack of privacy and discretion. This dystopic form of a transparent society can also be seen in Jeremy Bentham’s prison design `The Panopticon`. The prison would be so built that a watchtower would be circularly surrounded by individual cells. Therefore, every prisoner could never be sure weather they were being watched or not. This would ensure that the prisoners would always be on best behaviour.<ref>https://www.grin.com/document/304027</ref> The short story “The happy solution” depicts a similar kind of transparent society being created by the president because it becomes clear that people are being watched even when they don’t know it. In the story the public reacts to this constant surveillance with demonstrations which result in people disappearing after being arrested by the government army. This brutal abuse of power and infringement of free speech clearly shows that the government uses the “transparency” of the society, the technological connection, to find out who does what and when and then uses that information to make arrests and control the public.

The end of the short story “The happy solution” tells us that a revolution is underway to overthrow the totalitarian government. This is a kind of anarchism. Anarchism is often associated with violence, but the basic idea of anarchism is that a government which uses its power and influence to manipulate and oppress should be abolished. Hierarchy is seen as harmful, and the freedom of individuals is seen as an important right which must be protected and must be fought for if endangered.<ref>Anarchism. (2022). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism</ref> In addition, crypto anarchism, a form of anarchism which wants to weaken the state’s power by strengthening the common man as an individual would be achieved by prohibiting the government from collecting personal information on the citizens. Since the totalitarian government in the short story uses their technology to watch the citizens and gather information on the public, the revolution which is under way in the story makes sense as a crypto-anarchical response to such a hierarchical oppression.<ref>Crypto-anarchism. (2021). 06.12.2023, retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism</ref> In addition, the anarchical ideal of a person’s individuality as the key to overthrow oppressive governments is shown in how the hero Elsie saves the protagonist in the short story “A happy solution”. When Elsie askes the protagonist what she personally thinks of the president, the power of the dopamine chip weakens, and the protagonist is able to shake of the control that the totalitarian regime has on her. Thus concluding the story at a turning point in the protagonists journey.

== Sources ==
<references />

Draft:Bala

2023-11-07T17:40:40Z

Celina Köck: Created page with "hghg "

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2023-11-03T17:28:21Z

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