Culpa Innata Book Cover by B. Barmanbek
Culpa Innata is a well
written, imaginative, and realistic dystopian novel set in the future and taking
place in Eastern Europe. It paints a picture of what a New World Order might
look like following a great economic meltdown, worldwide riots, globalisation, and some affluent trillionaires buying the worldwide debt to introduce a new
system in their own vision, a vision where mega-corporations control the world.
In Culpa Innata the world
is separated into two: the mighty World Union, a free-trade area encompassing
all the Western World including South America, Japan, and Eastern Europe, and
the independent Rogue Nation-States like Russia, China, and India. From the
Culpa Innata website, the story reads: "A World Union citizen is murdered in
Russia, one of the few remaining Rogue States. This murder oddly coincides with
the accidental death of a prominent professor in Adrianopolis, an important
border town between the World Union and Russia. Senior Peace Agent Phoenix
Wallis is assigned to lead the investigation of the murder. Newly promoted to
senior rank after a stagnating career for more than a decade, she will soon
make discoveries beyond her wildest imagination, as skilled hackers and
subversive characters begin taking an inexplicable interest in Phoenix. Her
investigation reveals enigmatic clues that lead her deeper and deeper into a
mystery that challenges not only her case, but her very beliefs in the
worldview she is fiercely loyal and has sworn to protect."
The interest of the story
resides however in the brilliant conversations Phoenix has with different
characters across the city, each one showing us how the attitudes and
lifestyles have changed in the New World Order. She is also responsible for the
security interviews of new immigrants at the Immigration Academy, where it is
revealed how people live in the Rogue States and what it represents for them to
be welcomed in the World Union.
Memorable characters are
Phoenix's colleagues like the backstabbing and ambitious Julio Dominguez,
Phoenix's boss Dagmar Morssen who can sympathise only to a certain extent, and
Phoenix's best friend Sandra Pescara, who is the embodiment of selfishness. A
real treat is the Attorney Douglas Anderson and his boyfriend image-maker Roger
Arnett, the latter being most revealing in how the elite citizens of
Adrianopolis really think compared with what is taught in the Child-Development
Centres.
At first the book Culpa
Innata seems to present a utopia. There are no more murders in the new World
Union, no more organised governments or religions, no more traumatic biological
births or marriages. The rights of citizens are respected and it could appear
as if you had all the freedom in the world to accomplish whatever you wish to
achieve. This is not a system that forces you into submission by dictation;
nobody obliges you to do anything. However just like today in our society the
social pressure around you indirectly conditions your mind to conform to the
norms.
Huge compensations are paid
by the commercial companies that have taken over the work of the police force
if they intrude too much on your personal life. 100% of the population works. You
still have the dream to become a Devotee or an Arrivee at the top of the social
pyramid, if you have enough greed and selfishness in this predatory capitalism
pushed to its logical conclusion. So why is the New World Order depicted in Culpa
Innata instead a dystopian novel?
The difference between Culpa
Innata and other dystopian novels like Brave New World of Aldous Huxley, 1984
of George Orwell, and Men Like Gods of H. G. Wells, is that it is the closest to
describing where we are as a society today and where we are going. None of the
great classical authors could have predicted where capitalism and socialism
pushed to their extreme limits could lead in time and what measures could have
been put in place to build over such disasters.
If there is already any
such thing as a New World Order, and for any population to accept such a state
of affair no matter how desperate they are, such a world would need to provide
the illusion of freedom. On the surface at least, it would first appear ideal
and to be the solution to all our worldwide problems. This is where Culpa
Innata differs from the other authors who presented us a bleak future from the
start--readers knew right away they would not want to live in these societies. Some
people today who don't know better might actually enjoy living in the World
Union; this is why it is powerful.
You don't have to be fit
in the World Union, but if you are not you will be an outcast. Your health-insurance premium will skyrocket. You don't have to be greedy, but the system
interferes when you step on someone else's toes, and that is so easy to happen.
Everyone is a corporation and a country. You are the only citizen of your
country and you can live by the rules you set, as long as it doesn't interfere
with any other country's rights.
In the Rogue States their
style of capitalism, socialism, and communism appear to have led to constant
riots and chaos, pushed by the constant poverty and corrupted government
officials linked with the mafia still espousing some form of capitalism whilst
pretending to socialism for the rest of the population.
In the Western World
however we witness what happens when we reach the end of capitalism, where only
a handful of people in the world own all the money and assets of the rest of
the population and capitalism only works for those trillionaires. An economic
meltdown followed by riots also erupted everywhere due to poverty and the end
of the American dream, prompting those trillionaires to pay the entire debt of
all these countries for a price: the instauration of a New World Order.
In this New World Order
everything has been privatised. The Global Peace and Security Network (GPSN), a
private company, is in charge of the police and the military for which every
citizen must pay for their security or be thrown out of the World Union and unleashed
into the Rogue States. Banks are no longer working as they used to. The
corporate-personhood argument has been twisted to include every citizen being
now a small corporation in their own right. Investors can sponsor and invest in
people's ego shares based on their future potential in accumulating wealth. Citizens
who cannot work and pay for their insurance and security are also thrown out of
the World Union.
Culpa Innata means innate
culpability for being born, and every citizen must pay for that original sin of
being born by paying their debt to society and to the investors who brought
them into the world. There is an elaborate pyramidal system called Human-Development Index, which classifies every citizen into the class they belong to.
Over 90% of the population is at the bottom of the pyramid and cannot aspire to much in life. All Rogue-States inhabitants are under the 70% HDI while in the
World Union you work your way up from a disciple starting at 70% up to a
Supreme Self at 98% to 100%. When you reach a 90% HDI you get an Arrivee tattoo
on your forehead.
Children no longer have
parents; natural birth is deemed too traumatic an experience for any new-born.
All children are brought up in Child-Development Centres where some sort of
early conditioning to the ways of the World Union can be achieved. You will
meet an 8th grader (an eight-year-old) in the novel who speaks just like you
would expect a banker or politician today to speak like in private. Emotions
like altruism and love are considered archaic instincts. And physical training
is important since everyone aspires to be healthy, wealthy, with perfect genes.
There does not seem to be
any censorship since any threatening idea seems to have been eliminated from
everyone's mind a long time ago. However there is still a censorship of the
press; they are prevented from talking about the first murder of a World Union
citizen in 14 years, from fears they will never get any other scoop from the GPSN
in the future.
Culpa Innata is perhaps
the closest dystopian novel to our situation; it shows where we might end up if
we are not careful and if we fail to operate a radical change in our ways as a
society. And now here is the interview with the author B. Barmanbek in order to
clarify certain key concepts of the novel.
