Orwell vs. Huxley

[MaybeNever]

Here is a nice comic contrasting Brave New World to 1984. It's revealing: some of the elements Orwell wrote about hold true, because, well, it was a book motivated by the rise of Stalinism in Europe; Huxley's dystopian vision, meanwhile, far better describes the rise of plutocratic corporate state, i.e. the United States (among a few other contenders).

I don't think either has it exactly right, because a good tyrant mixes up his bag of tricks. For example the Romans used bread and circuses, a Huxleyite approach, but it was Caligula who gave us the phrase "oderint dum metuant" - let them hate, so long as they fear. Still, the parallels of Brave New World to modern society are interesting even if they aren't total.

[itachirumon]

I remember an english prompt to compare the two, one is society destroyed by what it hates, the other is society destroyed by what it loves and all that. It was interesting. This basically touches on it at the very end.

Edit 2: In fact, that part, seeing as it came from Neil Postman and that name sounds remarkably familiar, was probably what inspired the essay prompt itself..

[sylvana]

The thing is, if you take both ends of the spectrum and add them together, you get a far more powerful version of dystopian elitist control. Like the part on control through inflicting pain and control through pleasure. If you discourage some behaviors through pains and encourage others through pleasure you form a much stronger domain of control. If you limit it to just one of the two you end up with a reinforced behavior, but people (few people) still doing the discouraged behavior.

To be honest, both are two sides of the same coin, and relying on either one exclusively is destined to fail. Using both simultaneously is the most effective.
However, I think we can take a small measure of comfort knowing that most tyrants are not the types to bother reading books like these, or at the very least disinclined to integrate them together.

[Haseen]

I can't get the link to work, but anyways, I see Farenheit 451 as a bit closer to the present than 1984 or Brave New World. People are kept oblivious to world events through stupid entertainment, extremely materialistic, and anti-intellectual (hence, the book burning). Even that is carried out to make news-as-entertainment stories. Brave New World has a lot of the shallow materialism, but the whole thing is meticulously planned out by a centralized authority, rather than being a self-inflicted dumbing down of everything. 1984 is just a brutal, oppressive regime built to last, because fuck you, that's why.

[lighthorseman]

Sept 22, 2011 3:35:05 GMT -5 Haseen said:

I can't get the link to work, but anyways, I see Farenheit 451 as a bit closer to the present than 1984 or Brave New World. People are kept oblivious to world events through stupid entertainment, extremely materialistic, and anti-intellectual (hence, the book burning). Even that is carried out to make news-as-entertainment stories. Brave New World has a lot of the shallow materialism, but the whole thing is meticulously planned out by a centralized authority, rather than being a self-inflicted dumbing down of everything. 1984 is just a brutal, oppressive regime built to last, because fuck you, that's why.

Good point.

I think it probably varies between countries... but I can certainly see a Farenheit 451 tendency in the US at present (Michelle Bachman, seriously!)

But then in the UK, we see things like this...

A completely unironic poster supposed to be making people feel better about the UK obsession with public CCTV...

[tolpuddlemartyr]

I think a Huxlian state would still be willing to go all Ministry of Truth on the arses of anyone who seriously threatened it. It might be easier, given that most of the would be too self obsessed and busy enjoying themselves to notice and/or care.

[scotsgit]

I think we're sort of between the two - Governments can bring in legislation to control more and more of our lives, but there seems to be an attitude now of "Who cares so long as we can fuck and take drugs" amongst far too many people. Depressingly, it seems people are far more concerned with who wins on The X Factor, who they screwed last night or what amount of coke they snorted, rather than worry about how the Government encroaches on your personal freedoms.

[Oriet]

I fail to see any real difference between deprivation of information and concealing the truth, simply because people interacting will find something to talk about, whether it be the difference in flavour of the water from the cooler or the faucet or who is sleeping with whom (or wants to, at least). This basically has to come hand-in-hand with irrelevant (or at least fairly unimportant) information, though, or people will either notice that they don't know what's going on from it just being withheld, or they'll still be able to fully know what's going on if you just pump more info at them.

An excellent example of such information occlusion and preponderance is Murdoch's News Corporation, which because of its financial success other companies have sadly decided to mimic.


[Also, Firefox, why the fuck did you not have "faucet" in your spell-check dictionary?]

[N. De Plume]

I don’t think any dystopian novel really ever had the whole thing. They all tend to pick one specific horror and then run with it. They generally have to to keep the message coherent. But in the real world, the threats will all be combined. Real dystopia won’t look like 1984. It won’t look like Brave New World, nor will it look like Farenheit 451. It will look like some mash-up of these three and every other dystopic novel ever written.

Disclaimer: I have read neither 1984 nor Brave New World. However, I have a passing familiarity with bits that seep through Popcultural Osmosis.

I have read Farenheit 451. Twice.

Sept 22, 2011 3:40:59 GMT -5 lighthorseman said:

But then in the UK, we see things like this...

A completely unironic poster supposed to be making people feel better about the UK obsession with public CCTV...

Damn, UK! What is wrong with you?