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News :: Miscellaneous |
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THE IDEA MILL |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sam Smith
(No verified email address) |
06 Jun 2001
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Orwell & Huxley |
Fifty-two years ago today, George Orwell's "1984" was published. Working on his forthcoming book, "Why Bother?," your editor reread both Orwell's work and "Brave New World," written much earlier by Aldous Huxley and far less cited these days. Struck by how much closer in some ways Huxley's dystopia was to ours, I wrote:
"If your goal is the economic well-being of the inner party rather than the general welfare, a strong case can be made that most people will accept their exclusion with quiet desperation. Thus you can cut their services and deny them aid and they will not revolt. For those few who show signs of trouble, you simply write laws that restrict their employment, take away their driver's license, or ensure them incarceration using whatever ruse, such as drug laws, that works.
"We know who might cause trouble. They are black, latino, and white males with a high school education or less. They are the only sizable socio-economic minority in the country without a movement, without advocacy organizations, without media support. If they act out, if they smoke pot, have the wrong papers or otherwise get into trouble, we simply throw them in jail.
"For less disruptive members of the society, the goal is not that they feel pain but that they not feel restless. Writing before the rise of Hitler, Aldous Huxley in "Brave New World" understood this principle; the people of his world took daily drugs, had plenty of access to sex, and were absorbed in such pre-Nintendo activities as obstacle golf. There were "feelies," movies that allowed you to touch as well as hear and see, diseases had been abolished, and death had been made as pleasant as possible. Some of traits of Huxley's world sound eerily familiar, such as genetic engineering, a stress on identity instead of individuality, psychological conditioning, the planned and controlled pursuit of happiness, the use of drugs as a cultural sedative, mindless consumption and the destruction of the family."
Neil Postman has also remarked on the less noted prescience of Huxley:
"Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive of culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us." |
See also:
http://prorev.com/indexa.htm
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