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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOrwell's 1984 is getting renewed interest but Huxley's insight that our appetite for distraction
and pleasure is what we will lead to our downfall hits the mark. "In short, ...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."
snip
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 Huxleys 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.
http://citizenactionmonitor.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/was-huxley-right-will-our-infinite-appetite-for-pleasurable-distractions-be-our-downfall/
Proud Public Servant
(2,097 posts)who said something like, "By 1984, 1984 hadn't happened yet -- but only because Brave New World already had."
snagglepuss
(12,704 posts)Proud Public Servant
(2,097 posts)reformist2
(9,841 posts)I think I even read somewhere that Huxley didn't even write it as a cautionary tale, but instead just wanted to show the futility of trying to preserve the old ways of doing things, which would be doubly chilling.
snagglepuss
(12,704 posts)rurallib
(62,373 posts)with each being applied as needed.
Right now in the US it seems as if it is mostly going the Huxley way with a bit of Orwell applied to the news, to certain people (Bradley Manning).
But it has amazed me how easily people are willing to dump their rights for some pleasure.
southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)roamer65
(36,744 posts)The drugs are there and plentiful is you just want your "soma". If you want to get serious and try to change things, then your face is obliterated by the boot.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,262 posts)Certainly not among anyone who's actually read them both, and I don't think many educated people would offer an opinion if they hadn't read them both.
If Postman thought that, he's extremely disappointing. That foreword gives rather a misleading impression of BNW, too - it's a fundamental point of BNW that its people are explicitly bred and conditioned to like what they get, but that foreword glosses over that.