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"The Punishment of Luxury" is a short story written by Michael Carson. It was published within the book Serving Suggestions: Stories (a collection of 26 short stories) in 1993.
This utopian, or rather dystopian story deals with the consequences of the inauguration of a "Dark Green" government which has introduced "the Punishment of Luxury" according to their radical beliefs about how the world should look like.
In the story a man is executed for driving a car in a futuristic London where environmental correctness has run rampant. The citizens suffer under the Dark Green totalitarian regime where the party prohibits alcohol, cars, tobacco and all other luxury goods that contribute to the pollution of the planet. People who do not follow the rules of the government are executed or brought to the Dark Green Re-education Centre in Mid-Wales where they perform various duties such as dusting off leaves day after day, cleaning out badger setts and nursing cattle.
The main character of the story, Arnold Watney, intrigues against the Dark Green government and puts up secret resistance against it by owning a car (which is called Mabel the Morris Minor and hidden under a sheet in his lounge at home), smoking cigarettes and drinking his home-brew beer.
While watching the execution of a car driver (Dr Stone), Watney realises how dangerous his violations of the Dark Green laws are. Therefore, he secretly dumps his beloved Morris Minor into a pond and confesses his drinking and smoking habits to the Dark Green Cell, who sends him to the Re-education Centre.
After three weeks of re-educational treatment, the Dark Greens are overthrown. Besides Watney, many other people have hidden their cars. However, it turns out that the news of the overthrow has only been a clever strategy of the Dark Green government to rouse cars from their hiding places. The owners of the cars have to bear the consequences of their disobedience and "up and down the country" people are killed by the government.
The attitude which is presented by the short story is clearly anti-utopian: although there might have been a formerly honest and upright intention, namely to create a better world by avoiding everything which is unnatural and thus harmful to the environment, it is shown that everything which is driven into an extreme is negative. Another issue actualised in the short story is the appearance of the hidden side of the human nature when the controlling power vanishes.[ citation needed ]
The opinion expressed in the story is that any political or social group which forces other people to suppress their own human needs, even if they are considered luxuries, destroys an important part of humankind. And since human beings are a part of this nature, which shall be preserved in the story, a restriction of human behaviour can also be interpreted as a violation of nature. A reduction to a more thoughtful and ecological behaviour towards this world would be an agreeable aim, but in a moderate and respectful way, which grants nature and human beings the possibility to bloom.[ citation needed ]
The origin of the title is probably the 1891 painting by Giovanni Segantini in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.[ citation needed ]
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American psychologist, behaviourist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was a professor of psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for a crime. The sentence ordering that someone is punished with the death penalty is called a death sentence, and the act of carrying out such a sentence is known as an execution. A prisoner awaiting their execution is condemned and is "on death row". Crimes that are punishable by death are known as capital crimes, capital offences or capital felonies, and vary depending on the jurisdiction, but commonly include serious crimes against the person such as murder, mass murder, aggravated cases of rape, child rape, child sexual abuse, terrorism, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, along with crimes against the state such as attempting to overthrow government, treason, espionage, sedition, piracy, and aircraft hijacking. Also, in some cases, acts of recidivism, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping, in addition to drug trafficking, drug dealing, and drug possession, are capital crimes or enhancements.
A utopia is an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. The term was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island society in the south Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South America. The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia, which dominates the fictional literature from the 1950s onwards, chiefly because of the impact of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). However, the term can also denote actual experiments in what participants regard as a vastly superior manner of living, generally in what are termed intentional communities. In common parlance it is synonymous with "impossible", "far-fetched", and "deluded".
The term homo economicus, or economic man, is the portrayal of humans as agents who are consistently rational and narrowly self-interested, and who pursue their subjectively-defined ends optimally. It is a word play on Homo sapiens, used in some economic theories and in pedagogy.
William Francis Kemmler was an American peddler, alcoholic, and murderer, who in 1890 became the first person in the world to be executed by electric chair. He was convicted of murdering Matilda "Tillie" Ziegler, his common-law wife, two years earlier. Although electrocution had previously been successfully used to kill a horse, Kemmler's execution did not go smoothly.
Chain smoking is the practice of smoking several cigarettes in succession, sometimes using the ember of a finished cigarette to light the next. The term chain smoker often also refers to a person who smokes relatively constantly, though not necessarily chaining each cigarette. The term applies primarily to cigarettes, although it can be used to describe incessant cigar and pipe smoking as well. It is a common indicator of addiction.
Benson & Hedges is a British brand of cigarettes owned by American conglomerate Altria. Cigarettes under the Benson & Hedges name are manufactured worldwide by different companies such as Rothmans, Benson & Hedges, Philip Morris USA, British American Tobacco, or Japan Tobacco, depending on the region. In the UK, they are registered in Old Bond Street in London, and were manufactured in Lisnafillan, Ballymena, Northern Ireland, before production was moved to Eastern Europe in 2017.
North Korea's human rights record is often considered to be the worst in the world and has been globally condemned, with the United Nations, the European Union and groups such as Human Rights Watch all critical of the country's record. Most international human rights organizations consider North Korea to have no contemporary parallel with respect to violations of liberty.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the Islamic Republic of Iran face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. While people can legally change their assigned sex, sexual activity between members of the same sex is illegal and can be punishable by up to death.
Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More (1478–1535), written in Latin and published in 1516. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social, and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.
In criminology, public-order crime is defined by Siegel (2004) as "crime which involves acts that interfere with the operations of society and the ability of people to function efficiently", i.e., it is behaviour that has been labelled criminal because it is contrary to shared norms, social values, and customs. Robertson (1989:123) maintains a crime is nothing more than "an act that contravenes a law". Generally speaking, deviancy is criminalized when it is too disruptive and has proved uncontrollable through informal sanctions.
David Francis Marks is a psychologist, author and editor of twenty-five books largely concerned with four areas of psychological research – health psychology, consciousness, parapsychology and intelligence. He has also published books about artists and their works.
The Land of Toys is a fictional location in the Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) that is disguised as a haven of freedom and anarchy for boys and occasionally girls, but is eventually discovered to be far more sinister.
Social dangerousness is a category of anti-social behaviour on the basis of detectors of dangerousness that enable the judicial authorities to justify the need for a particular control by the police authorities.
Sodomy or buggery is generally anal or oral sex between people or sexual activity between a person and a non-human animal (bestiality), but it may also mean any non-procreative sexual activity. Originally, the term sodomy, which is derived from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis, was commonly restricted to anal sex. Sodomy laws in many countries criminalized the behavior. In the Western world, many of these laws have been overturned or are routinely not enforced.
A dystopia is a fictional community or society that is undesirable or frightening. It is often treated as an antonym of utopia, a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, published in 1516, which created a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence and poverty. But the relationship between utopia and dystopia is more complex than this, as there exist utopian elements in many dystopias, and vice-versa. Also, utopia and dystopia are not precise opposites. Utopia implies a perfectly or completely good society, while dystopia does not imply a completely bad society.
Capital punishment is legal in most countries of the Middle East. Much of the motivation for the retention of the death penalty has been religious in nature, as the Qur'an allows or mandates executions for various offences.
Naraka is the Hindu equivalent of Hell, where sinners are tormented after death. It is also the abode of Yama, the god of Death. It is described as located in the south of the universe and beneath the earth.
O'Brien is a fictional character and the main antagonist in George Orwell's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The protagonist Winston Smith, living in a dystopian society governed by the Party, feels strangely drawn to Inner Party member O'Brien. Orwell never reveals O'Brien's first name. The name indicates that O'Brien is of Irish origin, but this background is never shown to have any significance.
