In a sense, the modern world in which we live is dystopian in its own ways. Dictionary.com defines dystopia as "a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding." All of these characteristics can be found in our world at certain times and places, The reason we can't consider our world dystopian is because there are plenty of times and places filled with joy and comfort that, in effect, "cancel out" the times and places filled with pain and grief. However, these joyful and comforting times and places don't completely wipe out the negatives of our world. There is poverty, people are sufering, people are sick, and if you look at a major city, such as New York, there is also overcrowding. These problems also aren't confined strictly to the United States. Third world countries suffer these issues daily, and many of them never have any relief. Have you ever seen a picture of an African child with his mother? They are walking down dirt paths, you can see the skin strapped tightly on both of their bones. The child is sometimes drinking water with a brownish hue out of a dirty gallon jug as his mother has a look of desperation on her face as if to say "is this what we live for?" That is dystopia. The fact that people wake up every day stricken with diseases, poverty, and much more that we in the first world hardly ever think about. In the novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley describes a dystopia as the loss of human morals. He discusses how in a dystopia, sex may be considered a plaything. Children are encouraged to participate in acts that in this world, only married adults are supposed to participate in. He also describes how in a dystopia, anything apart from "the norm" is frowned upon, and can even be reason to be expelled from society. For example, abnormal literature (such as Shakespeare) is grounds for removal from society and the loss of all communications. However, in our world, there are Shakespearean festivals and plays put on based on the works of William himself written hundreds of years ago, which is yet another reason we are not considered part of a dystopia. In a dystopia, they also have a tendency of "recreating creation". In Brave New World, the beginning of time is considered the Life of Henry Ford. Years are marked A.F. to denote how many years have taken place since Ford's death. The reason Ford is held so highly to them is because of his assembly line form of production. This is "Modeled" (get it?) in the new society's way of producing life. They mass produce children out of a single egg and manipulate the "birthing" process to receive different capabilities and mental strength out of each offspring, much like Ford would change up the parts distributed on the assembly line to end up with different models of cars, or variations on the same model. Can you imagine living in a world where you don't have someone to love? Just think about never having a mother to hold in the bad and hard times. Think about having meaningless sex day in and day out and popping dozens of soma pills just for a few hours of cheap entertainment. Any human being with the slightest bit of morality would be able to say that they would be disgusted with themselves living in a society, or in other words, these people would be miserable, which, keep in mind, is a key component of the dystopian society. So, in the end, I would not consider our world dystopian. Sure, there are negative sides to life, but everything has its ups and downs. One could make the argument that there are people living on the streets. There is war. There is unhappiness. There is disease. There is corrupt government, and there sure is suffering, both physical and emotional. But at the end of the day, dystopian societies have no real ups. The positive things in dystopian societies involve moral, spiritual, mental, and health declination. Thankfully, in our non-dystopian world, we have free will. We can read Shakespeare. We have mothers. We have the choice to only have sex with our life partner. We don't need to take a drug to be entertained. We have LIFE, and absolutely nobody can take that away from us. So while we do share some certain characteristics, I do not believe we live in a dystopian world.