Keyword: dystopian reality

Bread and Circuses: How Dystopian Fantasy Distracts Us from Our Dystopian Reality

Picture: Photograph of Jean-Leon Gerome Glenn Ashton - Two millennia ago the Roman commentator Juvenal wrote of “panem et circensis,” bread and circuses, to demonstrate how the masses had abandoned political responsibility in exchange for full bellies and extreme entertainment. In Juvenal’s times entertainment was of the gladiatorial variety. Today the violence of gladiators has been replaced by sports heroes and teams where rules constrain the violence, or by cinema and television featuring violence as gratuitous as the...