Logan’s Run and burnout culture

Posted By Mahabodhi on Sep 17, 2024

Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton     10 minute read This is an excerpt from my chapter ‘The Woke Mind Virus.’       A Logan’s Run update on Yuppiedom Writing in Chicago magazine in 1980, Dan Rottenberg was the first to coin the term ‘Yuppies:’ ‘Something is occurring in Chicago … Some 20,000 new dwelling units have been built within two miles of the Loop over the past ten years to accommodate the rising tide of “Yuppies”—young urban professionals rebelling against the stodgy suburban lifestyles of their parents. The Yuppies seek neither comfort nor security, but stimulation, and they can find that only in the densest sections of the city.’[1] Moving forward to 2024, Damien Walter explores the 1970s science fiction classic Logan’s Run[2] as an allegory of today’s achievement culture: ‘Take a look around your bourgeois workplace, maybe it’s a tech start-up or a tech giant, a marketing agency or a media company, a Game Dev, a business consultancy; today even banks and accountancy firms run this way. Your office … looks like the primary colour set of 1970s sci-fi movie; there’s an unlimited supply of caffeinated energy drinks and probably a foosball table; your workplace looks more like a college dorm or a child’s day-care than like a workplace place, all to persuade you that you aren’t really at work, but this job eats every moment of your waking life and you never really sleep. If this is you, then congratulations you’re a member of the creative class and you’re among the elite. Everyone in your company is beautiful, well-dressed, young, oh-so-young. But think about this, where are the old people, is there anyone over 40 in your office? What did they do with the old people? You’ll find out when your life-clock begins to flash and you get the call to Carousel.’[3] Logan’s Run takes place in the year 2274; in a cluster of geodesic domes the remnants of human civilization live in a dome-enclosed city, run by a monolithic master computer that takes care of all aspects of life, including reproduction. The citizens live in a hedonistic utopia: no-one works or gets married; there are orgy rooms where people go to have sex and do drugs[4] but, to prevent overpopulation, all must undergo the rite of ‘Carrousel’ when they reach the age of 30; a ritual in which they are killed under the guise of being ‘renewed’ (as an infant in the city’s cloning facilities.) At birth, each is implanted with crystal in the palm of the left hand: their ‘life-clock.’ The crystal changes colour from white to yellow...