Was Huxley right, rather than Orwell?

[MB_722]

I’ve been seeing the word “totalitarianism” a lot these days. It’s not new for me. But when I see Jeff Wells writing about it , with utter seriousness, and with compelling evidence, as in yesterday’s post, I pay closer attention. I wonder how many others of us are thinking the same things. But. I confess that there is something about Orwell’s vision that doesn’t quite sync with what I see going on in the culture at large. I’m not talking about language repression, widespread disinfo campaigns, or militarism. There’s plenty of that, to be sure. What I don’t see is deprivation; what I don’t sense is widespread despair — and both are critical elements of Orwell’s dystopian vision.

I’ve been mulling this “un-synch” or “synch minus” (to employ a kind of Newspeak) problem over for a long time. At least, since the 2004 Presidential Election. At the time, I was working as a teaching assistant in a college writing class. The subject was Political Rhetoric and the Media, and Orwell’s 1984 was the first book on the reading list. I was eager to hear what younger people had to say about George Orwell’s work, and of the grim scenario he presents in the book. As part of their homework, students were required to watch the film version, the one starring John Hurt as Winston Smith, and then compare the two, always with a mind to the politics of language. It was a good class – interesting discussion. But.

It’s important to disclose that most of these students were incredibly jaded by wealth. Certainly, many were quite privileged. A couple had even met George Bush, and had attended school with his brother Neil’s children. Others in the class were self-identified “military brats.” One young man said his parents worked in the higher echelons of Enron. He had grown up in the Middle East, a rich white American boy. Early in the semester, I asked him if his family had suffered economic losses when Enron stock collapsed. I’ll never forget the incredulous look on his face. He obviously thought I must be slightly retarded for even thinking it. With a careless shrug, he said: “No, my dad heard about it way before it happened and took care of it.” I didn’t press him for details. I never spoke to him again, either.

Subsequent discussions on Orwell were revealing. The students were very interested in the concept of “Newspeak”, and marveled at the time and effort Orwell invested in creating an entire language. They wanted to know what made him write such a book. What had happened to him, they wondered, that caused him to imagine a world where Big Brother was watching everyone. We talked about Orwell’s deep fear of socialism, although, paradoxically, he was a socialist. We discussed the reality of living in a surveillance society, which they had already accepted as “the way things are.”

Did they think 1984 would ever come to pass?  No.  Clearly, these young adults considered the chance of Orwell’s dystopian vision coming to pass in present day America was virtually impossible; it simply could not happen.  In general, they acted as though 1984 was a quaint book, useful for understanding political language and its perversions, but the novel’s scenario was hardly pertinent to their current or future lives.  That gave me pause. And I’ve been pausing there ever since: why? Why didn’t Orwell’s totalitarian vision of a surveillance society waging a perpetual war, engaging thought police, mind control, and generating fake news frighten the leaders of tomorrow?  Did they not see it was already happening?

Here I am, months later, and, like I said, still thinking about it.

Now, Jeff Wells has decided that America is already a totalitarian state but we just don’t know it. I understand what he means, and I agree with him. But there is still a problem, an “unsynch” if you will, with what I’m seeing or not seeing, in the culture at large. That is to say, I don’t see widespread deprivation and despair.  Sure, people are griping about gas prices and the way Bush keeps sneaking his agenda past impotent Democrats. Sure, there are rumblings about impeachment. And down in Crawford, Texas, Cindy Sheehan is camping out, in hopes her protests over the Iraq War will bring the Bush Administration to its knees. Meanwhile the MSM talking heads speak derisively about Sheehan; Brian Williams, in particular, called her “that woman.” So what’s going on here?

The other night, I decided to watch 1984, and as I did, I tried to imagine the future landscape of the United States looking anything like the mise-en-scene of the film. It suddenly struck me that Orwell’s vision isn’t the one that will come to pass. Aspects of it will, yes, and already have done. The perversion of language, the disinfo, the surveillance, the militarism – the things that are easy to perpetrate on the unsuspecting populace – have already been done. But where are the squalorous living conditions? The bleak, blasted buildings? The chocolate rationing? The government imposed celibacy? The complete subjugation of individual will to The State?

I have to say I agree with my former students that Orwell’s dystopia certainly appears to be utterly unfathomable. I will go further: the level of suffering depicted in George Orwell’s 1984 will not manifest in The United States of America anytime soon, and perhaps never will.  Realistically, I must qualify this statement by also agreeing that an apocalyptic level of domestic catastrophe, or a series of catastrophes, of the magnitude of 9/11, will bring us close. I do not hold such a high level of scholarly hubris that I speak in absolutes, particularly about totalitarianism. However, in my heart of hearts, I think it highly unlikely. Instead, I believe that, as long as people have ways to earn money and commodities to spend it on, we will somehow manage to keep living conditions pretty close to the status quo. Indeed, I will argue that the totalitarian vision presented in Orwell’s 1984 could only happen in the complete absence of capitalism and conspicuous consumption.

However, if we examine Aldous Huxley’s vision of totalitarianism, with sanctioned drug use, open sexuality (without consequence of childbearing), conspicuous consumption, and genetically pre-determined social status (which makes class warfare a moot social determinant), Brave New World creates a scenario that makes far more sense, in terms of American culture and values.

Americans are highly trained consumers – and they will do anything to preserve that right, that ‘entitlement,’ even going so far as to allow their president to engage in pre-emptive war. Anything to keep the suffering of war far away from American soil. Ideology and partisan politics aside, what other reason could there be for the average Joe or Jane to allow the Iraq War to continue? After all, war itself is so unreal! Our kids aren’t fighting. It’s the other guy’s kids. It’s those people on the other side of town. Never us.  War is easy as long as it is happening someplace else and with someone else’s kids.  We have no problem with this cognitive dissonance.

Many of us have already accepted that war is a necessary evil in a post-9/11 world. However, few of us are touched by the reality of war. To most Americans, war is an action movie plot, or a Game Boy program. No real blood. No real dead bodies. In fact, I’ve often considered that many Americans were initially undisturbed by George Bush’s jump-suited, “Mission Accomplished,” antics precisely because they fit so perfectly into the bizarre, larger than life, video game culture that defines our lives.

The Main Stream Media delivers images that we have become conditioned to anticipate, and even welcome, in a media-mediated society.  Thus, we have accepted the delusion that, if we keep working and spending, life will go on. So what if there are troops in the streets – they’re keeping us safe! So what if we have to show our papers in order to travel to another state? It’ll keep out the terrorists. We have nothing to hide. We just want to get on with our lives. Aye – there’s the rub. It’s the “getting on with our lives” thing that makes us so vulnerable to totalitarian-style persuasion. But like I said, it won’t be the kind of persuasion that Orwell’s Ministry of Peace exerts on the unfortunate characters of Julia, Winston, and all the other thought-criminals of Oceania. It will be quite painless, really. At least, for most of us.

If culture can be simply defined as a shared set of values, it is fair to say that what Americans most value is our right to the good life. With that in mind, I think we should consider how easy it is to control people if you keep them fat and happy. If we accept that people are mostly concerned with maintaining the status quo, so they can continue to earn money, and spend it on luxuries, we should also accept the fact that the government will aid and abet them in their pursuits. Why? Because nobody is going to revolt against a government that gives tax breaks to the rich in times of war. That doesn’t, in fact, even ask for citizens to sacrifice anything for the war. Except for the poor, that is. And they don’t really count, do they? Second, as my Red State Sister is fond of pointing out – Americans have it better than anyone else in the world. And don’t we want to keep it that way? That is why the PNAC’s multi-theater war vision of the future will be so easy to implement. Not through deprivation and force, a la Orwell, but through the satisfaction of desire, a la Huxley.

Here’s something I read that is worth bringing to this discussion.

A while back, I read a fascinating book by Anthropologist Stephen Fjellman: Vinyl Leaves: Walt Disney World and America (1992), which presents multiple theses about the dizzying, disorienting, impact of Walt Disney World on American culture. His years of participant-observation style research at Disney World supports much of what I’ve already said about our consumer-driven culture and our problems with reality. In the chapter, “Consumption and Culture Theory,” Fjellman visits the Orwell/Huxley dichotomy I’ve just put forth:

“Postmodern culture is anchored in the breakdown of the signifying chain. The referential functions of normal, everyday language have been shattered and the signifier disconnected from the signified. Orwell wrote about one type of referential dismemberment, a relatively straightforward kind based on naked repression and lexical control. But the postmodern world is not Orwellian. It is Huxleyan – and the fortunes of signs, symbols, and human meaning have taken a different form” (299).

In seeking examples of symbols and meaning pertinent to a Huxleyan world, Fjellman cites writer Joel Achenbach, who analyzed the text on a package of Pepperidge Farm cookies to prove that people will accept any lie that feeds their perception of what is normal. Believing that a corporation as large as Pepperidge Farm (which is owned by Campbell’s Soup) would individually craft cookies is ridiculous. So why did the company design a machine that makes the cookies look like a human made them, and then confess to the fakery on the wrapper? Why doesn’t this bother us? Achenbach refers to this phenomenon as “creeping surrealism” – the general fear, brought about by manipulation of the narrative and public discourse, that “nothing is real anymore” [so why care?]. To wit:

“Americans … no longer think the distinction matters… lies have been raised to an art form in this country, information manipulated so delicately, so craftily, with such unparalleled virtuosity, that you can no longer tell the genuine from the fake, the virtuous from the profane” (Achenbach, in Fjellman 1992).

Fjellman takes the notion of unreality a step further:

“Human beings have been and are being decentered and fractionated, especially in the United States. Furthermore, the hyperreal is being forcibly exported around the world as the U.S. way of life and death. Living in a rich country, trained to expect an ever-increasing set of entitlements, and led to embody those entitlements not in any civic notions of the social good but in private accumulations of what George Carlin calls ’stuff,’ Americans insistently implicate themselves in this process.”

Satisfying our desire by acquiring things has become an American raison d’etre. We want fast cars, nice houses, cool clothes, exotic travel destinations, and the chance to become American Idols. Furthermore, it is precisely because we are conspicuous consumers, who believe themselves entitled to the ‘good life,’ that makes the continuation of the Iraq War and the Big Lie of 9/11 self-perpetuating.

As Fjellman argues, “As long as we act in terms of our shared symbolic universe, life – even if difficult – is explainable. Further, we will not threaten those who control the goodies.” He’s right! If you have a good job, a roof over your head, a car in driveway, food on the table, and can afford your medicine, why would you complain? Why would anybody want to rock the proverbial boat? Why care about people on the other side of the world, anyway? Their suffering is simply not real. Which is one reason why Cindy Sheehan’s protest is causing such a stir. It’s unpleasant. It’s disruptive. It’s a rude attempt to awaken people from their Soma-induced dream state and realize that war is not fun, not hip, not pain-free. As long as possible, Americans will resist the onslaught of reality. Perhaps it will never come – at least in the version that hurts and deprives.

As I see it, then, the problem with accepting a strict Orwellian future for America is that such a view ignores the American culture’s lust for ownership, and the need to carefully maintain the illusion of individual freedom of choice. The Huxleyan future, on the other hand, allows Americans to hold on to their illusions, along with their hard-earned collections of things. Remember that bumper sticker from the 1980s: “Whoever dies with the most toys wins”? It still applies. We’ve simply replaced it with a more appropriately virtuous, “Support Our Troops” – or “God Bless America.” Indeed, one might argue that the bumper sticker is just another commodity that helps to create, and to sustain, the prevailing cultural pastiche.

Finally, in support of my Huxleyan rather than Orwellian thesis, I’ll leave you with a quote by Neil Postman, from the foreword to his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business:

“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 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. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.” — Neil Postman, 1986.

Epilogue:

It troubles me to imagine just how much we, as a nation, will put up with to sustain our lifestyles. I think that’s the ultimate answer to why the Germans let Dolphy take over, and certainly, why they let him go so far. It was just easier to go with the flow. Did history teach us anything? Does it ever? As intellectuals, we like to believe we’re smart enough to learn from the past. If that were true, however, George Bush would never have been installed. I don’t for one minute think the conditions that allowed him to steal the 2000 election would have been in place had we leftists been paying close enough attention, and had done the hard work necessary to keep Bush, and his ilk, out of government. We had the chance to vote him out in 2004, but it didn’t happen. Not enough of us got involved. Not enough of us put it all on the line. Too many people didn’t bother to vote, for godsake. It goes back to the 1980s “culture of greed” and Ronald Reagan. That is when the Big Chill descended on the anti-war movement’s Flower Children. When the Boomers became part of the Establishment they once despised, it was all over. There’s no going back now, not without the requisite suffering and deprivation. Are we willing to do it?

http://morgansmusings.wordpress.com/2005/08/14/was-huxley-right-rather-than-orwell/

good read.

[Straw Man]

Huxley is one of my favorite authors

Brave New World and The Doors of Perception are both great books

[pillowtalk]

Huxley is one of my favorite authors

Brave New World and The Doors of Perception are both great books

Ever do 'Indole-alcholoids' (hallucinogens) ??

[pedro01]

It does appear that Huxley is closer to current reality than Orwell. Not just metaphorically but literally.

Apart from the fact that it has no mobile phones or internet, Brave New World could quite easily have been written last year as opposed to 1931.

If you look at how many kids with 'ADD' are being zoned out on Ritalin and how many 'depressed' people are on Prozac & the like, then it makes you wonder if we don't already have our Soma right here, right now.

HIV does rather stand in the way of the most titillating aspect of a Huxley-esque world though. You have to wonder where we'd be now without it...

[Straw Man]

Ever do 'Indole-alcholoids' (hallucinogens) ??

no, I've never even heard of it

[Hugo Chavez]

Ever do 'Indole-alcholoids' (hallucinogens) ??

WTF?

[MB_722]

I’m sick of hearing it.  Orwellian. This is Orwellian and that is Orwellian and everything is just so 1984.  Doublethink, Big Brother, Newspeak: George Orwell certainly gave us a glossary.  But, instead of inspiring thought, his novel has now become a shortcut to thought.

It’s a shame.  It was a good novel.

And I must confess, for a few years under the Bush regime, I thought Orwell was winning the dystopia war.  It almost seemed that Cheney sat down with a copy of 1984 and read it like a strategy manual.  And perhaps he did.  Other than shooting people in the face, I really have no idea what that fat, bald creep does for fun.

But 1984 is obsolete.

If Orwell was alive today, it is not the dystopia that he would have written.  Sure, some things have remained the same.  Some things may always stay the same.  The state, like murder, is an abomination.  Like murder, it has always been there, always will be and may even be necessary.  But it’s still wrong.

It’s apparatus is violence, its goal is power.

That’s not going to change.

But almost everything else has.

Nothing is so pitiably outdated as Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.“  Both have changed quite a bit since 1946.  Those who enjoyed that essay — and I was certainly one– would be better served by picking up a copy of Steven Poole’s “UNSPEAK.“  Political language is no longer meaningless. It’s loaded.

By experts.

And I’m not so terribly sure that our society ever had so much in common with Big Brother’s Oceania.  Orwell was writing primarily about Stalinism.  It’s about Eastern despots more than western democracies.  Both have common points and goals, to be sure, but they have different methods and different dangers.

While those in the East are typically controlled by the liberal application of pain, we in the west are typically controlled by the liberal application of pleasure.  It’s not the jackboot stomping on our face that we must fear, but the dose of soma and the trip to the talkies.

And no one saw this as clearly as Aldous Huxley.

His Brave New World is far more fantastic yet far more realistic than Orwell’s sordid state at eternal war.  It remains a thoroughly modern book.  And yet they both made a fundamental error.

Control through pain and fear can not so easily be separated from control through pleasure and love.  They are the same animal seen from different angles.   The endless war depresses us.  So we have a few drinks, maybe get a little high, and go see the new movie.  It feels trivial.  We turn the news back on.  And so forth.

And so on.

American politics are represented by two parties.  There is the Orwell Party –promising endless war on enemies– and there is The Huxley Party –promising endless love of allies.  These days the Orwell Party is looking a bit old and ragged.  People need a change.  The Huxley Party is looking hip, young and sexy.

But both of these parties have something in common.  They want control.

We’ve had eight years of Orwell.  Now people want their dose of soma and their talkie.  They want change.  It’s been 1984 for too long.  It’s time for a brave new world.  And we’ll get it.

The Huxleys will expand control into the areas the Orwells can’t.   But they’ll leave what the Orwells built alone.  Why not?  The Orwells do that for them.  After four (maybe eight) years of soma, we’ll feel decadent, trivial and a bit hungover.  Nothing actually changed but we took a break, got a little high and chilled out.  We’ll want some epic battle and a return to the fray.  We’ll need some fear to feel real again.  We’ll get it.

It’s a carrot and stick routine.  We chase the carrot or we get the stick.

http://thegrumpyowl.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/huxley-vs-orwell-who-you-got/

[MB_722]

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman 



D/L: http://depositfiles.com/files/mvutl7d5b

For anyone interested in exploring the meaning of the rapid eclipse of ordinary reality and how it is being changed and altered by the rise of the electronic media, this book is very important. From the introduction and Postman's tongue-in-cheek comments about the novel 1984, his observations regarding the cogency of British author Aldous Huxley's technotronic nightmare vision in "Brave New World" through out the book right up to its conclusion, Postman binds your interest by illustrating and documenting how the rise of the elecrtonic media and its manipulation of what you see in way of news and entertainment has inexorably changed the meanings,purposes and ultimate uses of politics, economics, and technology. As Huxley himslef warned, totalitarian societies need not arise through violent overthrow of the democracies using brutality, cruelty and violence, but can also occur whenever the citizenry is successfully deluded into apathy by petty diversions and entertainments, as well. Postman shows how the electronic media's presentation of facts and fcition in an entertaining fashion diverts us, channeling our attention, money, and energies in ways that make us much more susceptible to social, political and economic manipulation and eventual subjugation. The book is a bit difficult to read at points, but well worth a sustained effort and a little concentration. For any citizen concerned about how the media is rapidly changing the rules of political, social, and economic engagement, and what it portends for the future, this book is a must read. And follow it up with Postman's book "Technopoly", which picks up where this book leaves off.

[pillowtalk]

no, I've never even heard of it

'DMT' - LSD - Psilocybin Mushrooms - Peyote buttons (containing, psychoactive alkaloids, particularly Mescaline)

Well - on the same page now ??
The reason I ask is because 'Huxley' was taking all the above when being creative (echoes of the collective un-conscious ??)

[Straw Man]

'DMT' - LSD - Psilocybin Mushrooms - Peyote buttons (containing, psychoactive alkaloids, particularly Mescaline)

Well - on the same page now ??
The reason I ask is because 'Huxley' was taking all the above when being creative (echoes of the collective un-conscious ??)

I've heard of all those things but I don't know that Huxley was taking all of those things "when being creative".

I doubt he was doing any of them when he wrote Brave New World which was published in 1931

[pillowtalk]

I've heard of all those things but I don't know that Huxley was taking all of those things "when being creative".

I doubt he was doing any of them when he wrote Brave New World which was published in 1931

Glad you used those terms (I don't know) because I do !! LOLOLz.
I have done a fair bit of reading up on our friend Huxley.

'The doors of perception', FFS - HEEEEEEEEEEELLO !!  HAVE YOU EVEN READ IT ??

[Straw Man]

Glad you used those terms (I don't know) because I do !! LOLOLz.
I have done a fair bit of reading up on our friend Huxley.

'The doors of perception', FFS - HEEEEEEEEEEELLO !!  HAVE YOU EVEN READ IT ??

so you're saying you've read that Huxley was taking LSD, DMT, etc..prior/during 1931?

[pillowtalk]

so you're saying you've read that Huxley was taking LSD, DMT, etc..prior/during 1931?

NO.

Psilocybin Mushrooms - Peyote buttons (containing, psychoactive alkaloids, particularly Mescaline) - YES !!
You take me for being that daft ??

'LSD' A.Hoffman on the subject.

In the spring of 1929, on concluding my chemistry studies at the University of Zurich, I joined the 'Sandoz' Company's pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratory in Basel, as a co-worker with Professor Arthur Stoll, founder & director of the pharmaceutical department. I chose this position because it afforded me the opportunity to work on natural products, whereas two other job offers from chemical firms in Basel had involved work in the field of synthetic chemistry.

He first got it right in 1938 & became the first person in the world to experience a full-blown "acid trip" – that was on 'April 19 1943', which became known among aficionados as "Bicycle Day" as it was while cycling home from his laboratory that he got into the 'twilight zone'.

[Straw Man]

NO.

Psilocybin Mushrooms - Peyote buttons (containing, psychoactive alkaloids, particularly Mescaline) - YES !!
You take me for being that daft ??

'LSD' A.Hoffman on the subject.

In the spring of 1929, on concluding my chemistry studies at the University of Zurich, I joined the 'Sandoz' Company's pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratory in Basel, as a co-worker with Professor Arthur Stoll, founder & director of the pharmaceutical department. I chose this position because it afforded me the opportunity to work on natural products, whereas two other job offers from chemical firms in Basel had involved work in the field of synthetic chemistry.

He first got it right in 1938 & became the first person in the world to experience a full-blown "acid trip" – that was on April 19 1943, which became known among aficionados as "Bicycle Day" as it was while cycling home from his laboratory that he got into the 'twilight zone'.

peyote = maybe

that's it

everything else was well after Brave New World was published

[pillowtalk]

peyote = maybe

that's it

everything else was well after Brave New World was published

Maybe ??
You didn't even do a 'Google' on 'Huxley - mescaline' did you ??

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%27Huxley+-+mescaline%27&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=


You forget that 'Mexican Shrooms' would have been readily available at the time also.
Just look at all the examples of Genius that came from Byron/shelly - both opium freaks (Lordinum)

[Straw Man]

Maybe ??
You didn't even do a 'Google' on 'Huxley - mescaline' did you ??

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%27Huxley+-+mescaline%27&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=


You forget that 'Mexican Shrooms' would have been readily available at the time also.
Just look at all the examples of Genius that came from Byron/shelly - both opium freaks (Lordinum)

Mexican Shrooms were not readily available in 1931

regarding Huxley, this is from Wiki:

In October 1930, the occultist Aleister Crowley dined with Huxley in Berlin, and to this day rumours persist that Crowley introduced Huxley to peyote on that occasion. He was introduced to mescaline (considered to be the key active ingredient of peyote) by the psychiatrist Humphry Osmond in 1953.[8] On 24 December 1955, Huxley took his first dose of LSD. Indeed, Huxley was a pioneer of self-directed psychedelic drug use "in a search for enlightenment", famously taking 100 micrograms of LSD as he lay dying. His psychedelic drug experiences are described in the essays The Doors of Perception (the title deriving from some lines in the book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake), and Heaven and Hell. Some of his writings on psychedelics became frequent reading among early hippies. While living in Los Angeles, Huxley was a friend of Ray Bradbury. According to Sam Weller's biography of Bradbury, the latter was dissatisfied with Huxley, especially after Huxley encouraged Bradbury to take psychedelic drugs.

[gcb]

Keep the cattle as comfortable as possible before the slaughter - it's the humane way 

[pillowtalk]

Mexican Shrooms were not readily available in 1931

WOW  - only they have been available to humanity for Millennia !! are you - SURE - that Crowley didn't have a stash in Berlin ??
Only Huxley n=knows for sure what he took & when (WIKI - is not omnipotent, LOLOz) but I would wager that his work, is the biggest clue we have here 
 

[MB_722]

[SAMSON123]

Both men were high level Freemasons who talked/wrote about a world to come, where people would be controlled and manipulated by differing methods. Huxley methods involved genetic alterations and Orwell operating with psychological manipulation with the end result being a ABSOLUTE COMPLIANT PERSON.... Neither man was more right than the other, but rather each spoke of the way of attacking a human being both physically adn psychologically to create that IDEAL person the elite desire..

[240 is Back]

"However, if we examine Aldous Huxley’s vision of totalitarianism, with sanctioned drug use, open sexuality (without consequence of childbearing), conspicuous consumption, and genetically pre-determined social status (which makes class warfare a moot social determinant), Brave New World creates a scenario that makes far more sense, in terms of American culture and values."


Brave New World was a great book.   Ah, Soma!

[SAMSON123]

"However, if we examine Aldous Huxley’s vision of totalitarianism, with sanctioned drug use, open sexuality (without consequence of childbearing), conspicuous consumption, and genetically pre-determined social status (which makes class warfare a moot social determinant), Brave New World creates a scenario that makes far more sense, in terms of American culture and values."


Brave New World was a great book.   Ah, Soma!

The same can be said of Orwell with his BIG BROTHER system of track and control which is fast being seen coming into place. His vision of flat screen TVs with continuous news (propoganda) 24 hours per day, which can not be turned off and worst was/is TWO WAY to make sure you the viewer are getting your full dose of PROGRAMMING (mental) as well as making sure you are aware that BIG BROTHER is everywhere and can see you and what you do at any time. The double speak is so prominent in america society: WAR IS PEACE, SLAVERY IS FREEDOM, WEAKNESS IS STRENGTH is what is promoted today in america and other nations for compliance. Both writers views speak as though it was written yesterday for the society today and tomorrow... Frightening, but makes you aware that the Illuminati has planned this world society many decades even a few centuries ago.