
1984 v. Brave New World - js2
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/1984-v-brave-new-world.html
======
devnonymous
For those who found that interesting - There's an also a comic made using the
foreword to ' Amusing ourselves to death ' which also contrasts the two:

[http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-
huxley-v...](http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-vs-
orwell/)

It's a pity the comic had to be removed from its original site citing
copyright reasons. imho, it could have been considered as fair use. Sad.

~~~
dsfuoi
Some of the examples on the comic page starting with: _Huxley feared we would
become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies..._
, are not chosen well.

I think the opposite of a _trivial culture_ is a _culture of self improvement_
, and at least four of those six examples are ostensibly doing something to
improve themselves. One is a competitor in online gaming, one is debating
online, the two are watching and debating current politics, one is improving
his body. Those are all meaningful activities. I understand that they are not
intended to be in the context of the comic, and the visual space is limited.

Great comic by the way. Our society seems to be going the way of pleasure, but
I don't think it will ruin us.

~~~
geggam
_Great comic by the way. Our society seems to be going the way of pleasure,
but I don 't think it will ruin us._

your conditioning is complete... please report to the incinerator

~~~
dsfuoi
Yay, renewal!

------
digi_owl
I think its a bit of both. The masses being distracted and sedated in a BNW
fashion, with those that step outside being hit with the 1984 treatment.

The big irony being that this is not a willed construct, but a emergent
phenomena.

~~~
riprowan
I agree that the phenomena are not purely constructed, however I disagree with
the idea that the phenomena are purely emergent.

Maybe they are "curated emergent phenomena?"

~~~
grifter2000
pure emergence, nihilism. curated emergence, existentialism.

------
redsummer
North Korea, Belarus and perhaps a few others are Orwell. The rest are Huxley.
I've noticed that former Orwells, like East Germany and Poland, are thought to
be warmer in character, have closer families, and are less atomised than the
western consumerist equivalents.

------
vmorgulis
Zamyatin is the less known precursor of Huxley and Orwell:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Zamyatin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Zamyatin)

~~~
peatmoss
And his book Мы (English: We), is a fun read especially if you love paleo-
future.

~~~
vmorgulis
Yes! D-503 reminds me a lot THX 1138...

------
mattmaroon
Both ended up far wrong because they overestimated government's cohesiveness.
Most first world governments are far too inept to accomplish anything so
difficult as either book prognosticates. We've seen nothing but a slide toward
increasingly ineffective democracies since their era.

~~~
peatmoss
I tend to find the dystopian vision of Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil the most
utterly believable. In it, we have benign or benevolent actors, who are guilty
of nothing more than incompetence. Evil is an emergent property of the system
rather than a conscious act. People give up autonomy and privacy for retention
of their bourgeois lifestyle, and mostly ignore the economic underclasses. A
small number of malcontents are branded as terrorists and the government
ineffectually tries to treat the symptom rather than the underlying disease.

~~~
ricksplat
> benign or benevolent actors

This was Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" theory that she developed post WW2
when everybody was trying to figure out what happened. Evil acts are
perpetrated by dumb people "just doing their job".

------
justsaysmthng
"The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased
efficiency. " \- Huxley

vs today :

"Work less, enjoy more!"

\---

Of course it is much more efficient to keep the subjects well fed and well
hypnotized, rather than waste a lot of energy on keeping them subdued through
violence. It is harder, but the returns are much worth it.

And that's not only what the "elites" who realize (they only gain a slightly
higher standard of living), but also the mythical "AI singularity" which
should one day spontaneously arrive.

Our fears of "the machine" which kills all humans because we are pests are
unfounded - a hyper intelligent entity would quickly understand that violence
is a very weak tool of control. Pleasure is much more powerful and achieves
much more plus a thankful smile.

It is "efficiency", "pleasure", "less work", "more fun" that we should be wary
about ... but not me , I like to enjoy myself. And I welcome whatever overlord
(AI, aliens) that promises more pleasure and less pain any day.

~~~
PavlovsCat
I dislike pain because it keeps me from doing and being person things. So what
use is pleasure induced/increased to such degree that it ALSO keeps me from
developing as a person?

I have to ask, do you see yourself as nothing more dignified than a pet or a
slave? I don't mean to be rude, but you can't have your overlords without them
ruling me as well, and I don't want them, at all, and you basically said you
welcome "whatever" might force me and my offspring to live in what I would
consider a golden cage and utter depravity. So this is a discussion, if not
civil war, I'd rather have sooner than later :P

And besides, why would someone or something who sees you as pet or slave feel
the need to control you past the point where you are no longer a threat or
useful to them? Everything that makes you happy, they could simply take from
you, cutting out the middleman. Who genuinely cares about a "thankful smile"
from a drone?

It's a nice hypothesis, but here's mine: The pleasure stage comes before the
non-existence stage, and the wide-eyed and shallow cheerleading we have now is
a bit like the Nazis painting the red cross on the ad-hoc pits where they
would kill people who were too weak for transport. By the time you find out
what it is, it's too late. People and systems don't dissolve who you are and
could have been as a person to ultimately look out for you.

~~~
justsaysmthng
Well, I was being sort of sarcastic about it.

Fact is, the vast majority of people prefer pleasure over pain .. all time,
although not-pleasure (or pain) is one of the few _guaranteed_ things in life.
Pleasure is optional, pain and suffering are guaranteed and unavoidable,
because of our mortality.

Still, we want pleasure and not-pain and if possible - greater pleasure over
"just pleasure", since, well, it's more scarce.

> do you see yourself as nothing more dignified than a pet or a slave

If there's a choice between being a pet and a factory farm animal, I guess
being a pet is much nicer and desirable. I say this while my cat is purring
ecstatically on my lap. Not bad to be loved and cared for by a omnipotent
giant.

And I think in the end, this is the metaphor for "A brave new world" and
"1984" \- A society of pets vs a society of farmed animals.

Make your pick.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> Fact is, the vast majority of people prefer pleasure over pain .. all time,
> although not-pleasure (or pain) is one of the few guaranteed things in life.
> Pleasure is optional, pain and suffering are guaranteed and unavoidable,
> because of our mortality.

No parents would want their child to die, but if you offered grieving parents
some happy drugs that made them forget they ever had a child, do you really
think most would take them? Would you?

If someone offered you a drug that killed you, but somehow subjectively made
it feel like a million years of bliss, would you take it? Sure, you'd make the
people who love you sad, but you wouldn't notice that anymore, so why not,
wouldn't that be the most efficient thing you could ever do in your life?

Pleasure is something that I generate in myself. Based on stimuli, sure, but
those stimuli are not the pleasure. And I think it's not a stretch to say that
pleasure and pain exist for reasons (I know it can go wrong in all sorts of
ways, that there's plenty of pointless and chronical pain, but let's ignore
that for the sake of simplicity). Pain warns of things that harm us, pleasure
does the opposite, but this can be "hacked" and abused in all sorts of ways.
Comparing it to the feeling of hunger, you could take drugs that make you not
feel hunger and pain, then you'd simply starve happily, rather than also
getting what "not feeling hungry" _is supposed to mean_. And I think the same
would happen to people held as pets: yes, their bodies would still exist,
they'd "be happy", but they would cease to exist as the person that happiness
and pain as once a tool and advisor for. As they say, the lights are on, but
there's nobody home. (In my hearts of hearts, I believe this may have long
since happened, and that we might be the afterbirth of an afterbirth of an
afterbirth of an abortion. But if that is true, I can't lose anything valuable
by not giving up that I haven't lost already, and if it's not so, I could make
it so by believing it, making it self-fulfilling prophecy.)

When you see, say, a religious fanatic or deranged person, who _really_
believes in whatever floats their boat, and is happy 24/7, would you envy
them? Or would you shudder? Wouldn't you at least think "I wish I was that
happy, but not at that price"?

> If there's a choice between being a pet and a factory farm animal, I guess
> being a pet is much nicer and desirable.

Well, _if_. But those are not the only choices you have, and I'd even say
being a pet is a choice you might never have. From you having a cat doesn't
follow that you being the pet of someone will be an option for you. You're not
your cat and your overlords are not you. Who would keep you as a pet? The
people who sleep well while people starve? People who use fears and love to
bring about more of the things people fear and destroy more of what they love?
Machines ordered to be made by the same? Why would they, and what for? I'm
sure you're a great person and all, but what makes you think you'd not rather
be used as prey in hunting games, until more challenging prey is made? What
makes and billions of other people so great that a few thousand square miles
of private golf course or jungle wouldn't be more interesting?

When cars were invented, we didn't keep all the horses around to love and
cuddle. Where's the children of the horses your grandgrandgrandparents owned?
What's that, you never even _thought_ about that? Welcome to your own role in
the sight of your "overlords" :P

How are we treating the vulnerable so far? Last time I checked, every few
seconds a child dies of thirst. And that's just one thing in a long list. So
at what point would the drive for MORE power lead to LESS suffering, instead
of more, as it does until now? Can you at least see how that might come across
as a little kool-aid-ish, to believe it will suddenly change because that
would be nicer? It would also be nice for the millions of people who suffer
currently, but if they don't matter now, they won't matter then.

> I say this while my cat is purring ecstatically on my lap. Not bad to be
> loved and cared for by a omnipotent giant.

So you're thinking the cat is your pet, instead of the other way around? :)

But more importantly, you're a human, whatever turns you into a pet will be
made by humans. As Erich Fromm wrote:

> _The whole concept of alienation found its first expression in Western
> thought in the Old Testament concept of idolatry. The essence of what the
> prophets call "idolatry" is not that man worships many gods instead of only
> one. It is that the idols are the work of man's own hands -- they are
> things, and man bows down and worships things; worships that which he has
> created himself. In doing so he transforms himself into a thing. He
> transfers to the things of his creation the attributes of his own life, and
> instead of experiencing himself as the creating person, he is in touch with
> himself only by the worship of the idol. He has become estranged from his
> own life forces, from the wealth of his own potentialities, and is in touch
> with himself only in the indirect way of submission to life frozen in the
> idols. The deadness and emptiness of the idol is expressed in the Old
> Testament: "Eyes they have and they do not see, ears they have and they do
> not hear," etc. The more man transfers his own powers to the idols, the
> poorer he himself becomes, and the more dependent on the idols, so that they
> permit him to redeem a small part of what was originally his. The idols can
> be a godlike figure, the state, the church, a person, possessions. Idolatry
> changes its objects; it is by no means to be found only in those forms in
> which the idol has a so-called religious meaning. Idolatry is always the
> worship of something into which man has put his own creative powers, and to
> which he now submits, instead of experiencing himself in his creative act._

The only way that "overlord" can be "omnipotent" to you is by either lying to
you, or by keeping you in check. (Why am I suddenly thinking of gardens and
forbidden fruit? ^^) I had two cats, they were happy because they had a nice
place to stay, food, humans who loved them, and each other.. any powers of
mine beyond that they had no use for or interest in. A cat living on a farm
catching its own food is also happy, no "omnipotence" required.

And we are, right now, sitting in the warm, gentle lap of the sun. We could be
purring, too. The same motives that keep that from realizing now, will likely
still be around when the technology is there to completely control everybody
and everything. And I suspect that won't be for the purpose of making us happy
as we are, but to either make us fit or make us gone. That is, everything else
being the same, namely as it currently is and how it trends. I don't know the
future but I know my contemporaries. So my pick would be kicking Big Brother
in the dick, flirting with his sister and singing loudly as they drag me to
the guillotine.

~~~
justsaysmthng
Thanks for your thoughts, stranger.

My comments are a reflection on the outside world. My own philosophy is very
different.

Our (western) society is built on the premise of avoiding pain at all costs -
even if it means exporting it to other countries or species.

That's why I'm saying that people will choose pleasure over pain - not just
because it's convenient, but because we're constantly conditioned to do that -
take the pill, pain will go away.

So I agree with Huxley - a society based on offering unlimited pleasure is
even more insidious than a totalitarian state based on violence described in
1984. At least in a totalitarian state you can rebel...

\---

The idea about the horses really took me by surprise - I haven't thought about
that.

\--

My personal belief is that "rebirth" is only possible by passing through the
gates of suffering. By "rebirth" I mean "new, changed, evolved self" , rather
then physical reincarnation.

Suffering is a necessary ingredient for stepping onto the next level of
understanding. So I respect it and I accept it when it's unavoidable, although
it's never easy.

There's the idea that "suffering and pain" are what makes us "feel alive", but
if examined under a microscope, then the following can be observed: _Life_ is
the process of expending energy in order to _avoid_ suffering and pain and
optionally experience "pleasure".

To drift even further, I'd note that True human-like "AI" will only be
possible when the concepts of pain, suffering and pleasure and love are
somehow implemented into the AI's "brain"..

But to do that we'll have to somehow convince it that it's mortal.

------
nomoch
Orwell talked about this in one of his essays. The man who does not have
fascism beating in his breast can't understand the pleasure of smashing
someones have with a boot for all eternity. Sex, money and control have
nothing to do with the pleasure of destroying others and their work.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Just like Hitler wrote (and proved), if you just lie big enough, people will
be too "polite" to even suspect it a lie, and that works in many layers. E.g.
for many wars, there is the outermost facade which is usually "we have to save
X from the aggression of Y". Then there is "we meant well, but made mistakes"
as the next layer, then comes "we didn't really mean well, it was about
geopolitics and national power", then "it's not actually about national power,
but about transfer of tax payer money to the military-industrial complex which
ultimately has no ties to any particular nation, at the deliberate expense of
social development".

And then you have the same game with the people involved in that, first
there's how much they care for their children and are worried they might have
to grow up without private jets, or how they're just trying to prevent a job
someone would do anyway being done badly, and a whole host of other good
reasons (maybe they simply operate a "business" and it "makes sense" to "make
profit", no further questions). Then there's how they really just want power
and fame, because we're all just apes and that's what apes want, and so on...
but that they might simply be sociopath/narcissist and essentially stuck at
some point in their childhood they built a shell around, that they might be
merely a black hole chasing a fix they can never quite reach, now _that_ is
too much. Sure, we grant that it occurs here and there, but not as a major
driving force, as the underlying pattern for a lot of things. No, of course it
has to be more grandiose than that, if only because we're under the heel of
and/or doing it.

It boils down to this, "normal" people aren't that way, simply cannot fathom
the utterly alien and barren landscape some others operate in, and would
rather pile on rationalizations and faux complexity. Even you described as
"pleasure" which I would assume is more a temporary relief from the pain and
fear of existence someone who never got to develop a personality feels
constantly, and tries to instill in others.

TLDR:

> "I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be
> expected only from the strong."

\-- Leo Rosten

~~~
pm90
If I read what you're saying correctly, Hitler was ... weak? And that is what
made him cruel?

~~~
PavlovsCat
While I didn't put it that way, that's not the worst summary. Though I would
say whatever induced his narcissistic personality disorder made him weak, and
his disorder made him cruel. Lack of empathy and the inability to reflect are
not strengths.

Hitler came back from WW1 with the same rank he went in, which was a huge
disappointment for him, then he failed as an artist and ended up in homeless
shelter where he was disliked because, well, I guess he just wasn't very
lovable or interesting. He was driven by resentment and a feeling of
inferiority, which is narcissism 101, as is the fact that he put on a great
show which he and others fell for.

Generally, even when "just" talking about a sociopath desire for power and
less about the self-destruction of someone as sick as Hitler: any leash
transforms people on both ends, and the very desire to have power over others
betrays a lack of inner strength and integrity. I can't prove that, but I'll
claim it. And furthermore I think people pretend to themselves and each other
that power is an end in and of itself, because they're so scared of what it
covers up. When you walk on a landmine, you can't just go on pretending you
still have legs -- not so with abuse, trauma and neglect resulting in a
haywire personality development, where routing around things, in ourselves and
others, is often our default reaction.

P.S. If you're really interested in the psychology of Hitler as well as the
Nazis historically I can recommend the books by Sebastian Haffner, the titles
make it kind of obvious which ones apply.

------
uptownJimmy
Orwell was the better writer, Huxley the better prognosticator.

