
1984 v. Brave New World - moritzfelipe
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/1984-v-brave-new-world.html
======
wmnwmn
BNW is a deeper book than 1984 because with BNW the first task is to say why
that world is even bad to begin with. BNW represents the logical conclusion of
a philosophy in which happiness is the top priority. In my opinion it shows
that happiness can _not_ be the top priority of life, contrary to the
propaganda of marketers and psychologists over the past century. Life is not
inherently happy and the attempt to make it that way destroys it. One of the
many paradoxes is that if you accept unhappiness and just get on with the job,
greater happiness can follow.

~~~
genghisjahn
So...life is pain?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqaNi0UfOoI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqaNi0UfOoI)

~~~
PuercoPop
Life is Struggle.

“Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness. Though I did lay it down
at the beginning that consciousness is the greatest misfortune for man, yet I
know man prizes it and would not give it up for any satisfaction.”[0]

[http://dostoyevsky.thefreelibrary.com/Notes-from-the-
Undergr...](http://dostoyevsky.thefreelibrary.com/Notes-from-the-
Underground/1-10)

------
roel_v
I never quite understood was was 'dystopian' about Brave New World. A world in
which everybody is happy and content with who they are and the circumstances
they live in, how is that dystopian? He threw in some bad things (the people
in the reserves, the people who didn't take their meds, the 'conditioning' of
the children) but never really justified why they'd be necessary. All of them
(and the 'orgy-porgies') were, I felt, added to be able to make the argument
that the society he was portraying was morally wrong.

~~~
devindotcom
Boy oh boy. Well, the thing is it is a society that is completely in thrall to
a system of basic pleasure orchestrated with the questionable justification
that a life without real pleasure or pain is a better one. The people are
oblivious to all art and real achievement, they have no desires and no
ambitions, they create nothing and have no desire to, they feel no real
emotions and all sex is mechanical, and they happily march to their own deaths
at a certain age. If a vision of humanity as infinitely complacent, all
advancement come to an end, a billion pampered babies with their unremarkable
and entirely calculated lives engineered since before birth — if that doesn't
strike you as a dystopia, an "inverted utopia" in which what is meant to be
perfect is anything but, well brother, I don't know what should!

~~~
pistle
How is now not what you describe? Maybe there are no clear puppet-masters
driving it, but vast swaths of people in the US live like this and fervently
support it right now.

~~~
ecocentrik
Yes, this is now. Welcome to the ultimate revolution. Enjoy your stay.

------
aprdm
Illustrates it well:
[http://postimg.org/image/ue0pdq56r/](http://postimg.org/image/ue0pdq56r/)

~~~
johnvschmitt
That illustrates it very well.

It's a shame that recombinantrecords.net has removed that from his site, even
though it's original work, because lawyers sued him for using the title of a
(good) book "Amusing Ourselves to Death". Then, 9GAG & other sites have no
problems copying the content. It just goes to show you that you can't stop
information flow. All you can do it stop legitimate players from controlling
it.

------
stormbrew
Right now it rather seems Orwell had it closer to right on the predictions in
the letter:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/US_incarc...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/US_incarceration_timeline-
clean.svg)

Some of this stuff is expanded on in Huxley's forword to BNW[1], btw, written
in 1947. I have always been fascinated by this assertion in it:

    
    
         As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase.
    

He doesn't support this axiom in the forword (or this letter), and I've always
wondered if anyone has ever written a compelling, historically-based, argument
for this idea.

[1]
[http://www.wealthandwant.com/auth/Huxley.html](http://www.wealthandwant.com/auth/Huxley.html)

~~~
notahacker
I'm not convinced by the thesis that sexual freedom is inversely related to
political and economic freedom, but if you were to chart virtually any of
indicator "sexual freedom" over the same time period as that graph of prison
population the trend line would certainly be moving in the same direction.[1]
Same goes for "level of alarm at the apparent 'decadence' of modern society
expressed by economically poorer and religiously strict cultures" which is a
pretty major theme in the book.

For all Brave New World's glib exaggeration for comic effect, I'd argue that
anticipating sexual liberation (and mass consumerism and distraction-based
mass media strategy) was a far more perceptive view of the future than
Orwell's ideological slavery. Whatever the intended or actual psychological
effects of the "War on Drugs" may be, those prison sentences certainly aren't
an Orwellian attempt to unite the population in support of the executive. Then
again, Huxley was satirising what he perceived as relatively novel trends
emerging in the United States whereas Orwell directed his ire at the Soviet
Union, fascism and highlighted tendencies present in virtually every other
authoritarian state that had gone before.

~~~
stormbrew
I admit I'm actually kind of caught up in a potential self-contradiction here,
where I'm arguing that people _are_ largely freer than they were before while
also pointing out that the government does seem to act in a fairly orwellian
way and seems to desire to do so more (both in terms of surveillance and
imposition of a prison-driven police state). I think that both these things
_can_ be true, but I haven't completely convinced myself of that.

So what I'd really like is an example of a state that undisputably reduced in
political and economic freedoms while also undisputably increased in sexual
freedoms. Maybe Rome? But I think sexual freedoms probably only increased for
the most privileged classes there. I'm not aware of a sexual renaissance in
Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany or Soviet/American client states with brutal
puppet governments.

------
netcan
These are two giants in science fiction, in political philosophy and in pop
culture. I'm a big fan of both. Great to read a discussion between them.

First, there's the artistic stele of the books. 1984 has got this graphic
novel, Noir feel to it, like Walking Dead or Sin City. Brave New World has
this brightly colored surreal feel to it. It's hard to compare books that are
different in this way.

Overall, Orwell's world felt more real to me, like it could have been brought
about by real political circumstances. The system itself is evolved around the
principle that whatever improves control survives. It feels like a political
system that has devolved into its current state with the original vision or
rhetoric of the ideology that brought it about remaining as a vestige, like
Marxism in China.

Huxley's world feels a little more fake to me. It's like some political genius
designed it head to tail and things went ahead as planned. It's like Canberra
(If you go there, you'll see what I mean). That makes it feel more like a made
up word to me, inorganic.

Orwell's "mechanisms," training society to gradually train their minds using
language, euphemism, historical revisionism, social penalties for bad thought
patterns and as much control over what people see & hear as possible… it feels
real to me. We see that stuff at work now as Orwell saw it in his time. It
feels possible, though I think Winston's are inevitable too. Euphemisms to
control thought is stronger today than it was in Orwell's time.

Huxely's mechanisms of Soma, infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis feel less
real. I can't count that against the author or the book though. Brave New
World is distant future. That's inevitably more fantastical and less
realistic. I think he's right though about using pleasantness over direct
confrontation. Humans are pleasure seeking and denied pleasure, there will
always be a force of instability.

The point where 1984 slips ahead though is the book-in-the-book 'The Theory
and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein.' In
particular, it describes how the system must allow some non hereditary class
movement. If the class system is too rigid, pressure builds up as talented
individual press against the ceiling. If some are allowed to progress and
there are prominent examples the class system becomes less explicit and more
stable. I don't know if it's some of my earliest political exposure being
socialist, but that just rings true to me. I see it today. Statistically,
classes are fairly rigid, but individually, they are malleable.

I'm very biased though I think 1984 is one of the most important books I read
as a teenager. It shaped how I saw things.

~~~
Loughla
See, I'm just the opposite. With as hedonistic as human nature seems to be, it
makes perfect sense that the pursuit of happiness leads to nothing but; in
other words, A Brave New World.

1984 felt just too dystopian. It just tasted wrong; like someone would have
stood up and said, "No thank you" well before the point the book stepped into.

A Brave New World? That's simply distraction taken to the nth degree.
Perfectly plausible.

I read Huxley's book when I was a teenager, and as you said, it shaped how I
see things. Moderation and critical thinking are key in everything
(moderation, even in moderation).

~~~
ChrisAntaki
> A Brave New World? That's simply distraction taken to the nth degree.
> Perfectly plausible.

Good point. Technology can help create newer, more engaging distractions.
Magic Leap hopes to offer a new "magical" layer on top of reality, when their
devices are "on", for instance.

> 1984 felt just too dystopian. It just tasted wrong; like someone would have
> stood up and said, "No thank you" well before the point the book stepped
> into.

This is part of why there's such a push towards punishing intelligence
community whistleblowers. When the public is made aware of the mass
surveillance programs, they do say "No thank you."

Both books examine a different facet of human nature, and they both remain
relevant to this day.

~~~
nobbyclark
> Technology can help create newer, more engaging distractions.

Watching how people react to the Occulus, "OMG it's sooo real!" I can't help
thinking how badly screwed we are as a species when it goes mainstream.
FarmVille addiction, World of Warcraft will look like a walk in the park to
Occulus addicts who no longer know or care what reality is. Perhaps I'm just
overly pessimistic

~~~
krapp
I don't think that's going to happen.

No matter now realistic Oculus appears, it's still just a device strapped to
your face - it's not _that_ immersive.

~~~
Consultant32452
Eventually it will just be a pair of contact lenses, or even an ocular
implant.

~~~
krapp
Even then, you're aware of the contacts or the implant, unless you're living
in the Matrix and were genetically engineered with a AV jack in your spinal
column.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Their overall point stands, though.

If people can get this addicted and consumed to World of Warcraft or Facebook
games, imagine what will happen when that's literally at eye-level.

~~~
Sammi
I imagine much of the same will happen. People will live their lives like
always, and sometimes escape to a fantasy world, just now using a different
new technology. Also like now, some will be addicts. We've had many new
entertainment technologies come and go, each one thought to be more engaging
than the last, but the fundamental behaviors of human beings seem to be the
same.

------
codeulike
At the time of this letter, Aldous Huxley was very into 'Animal Magnetism' and
Hypnotism (read his novel 'Island' to see his utopian vision for such things).
He seems to somewhat overrate their potence. 65 years later Animal Magnetism
is long forgotten and hypnotism is slightly helpful for giving up smoking or
being a bit less angry.

I feel sorry for past thinkers who could only stumble upon ideas from books
and digest them one at a time, rather than instantly find the history and
connections and evidence and counter-arguments for an idea as we can now.

~~~
monochr
Yes, what a horrid fate to have the weeks and months needed to think ideas
through. How horrible to go to a library to find what you need. The sheer
inhumanity of going 20 minutes without compulsively checking a glowing screen
because you feel restless.

~~~
codeulike
_Yes, what a horrid fate to have the weeks and months needed to think ideas
through._

Thing is, thinking ideas through on your own sometimes doesn't help much. For
ideas to really develop, they need dialogue, and experimentation and evidence,
and for people to communicate with each other. IMHO People who are left to
think about things on their own for too long can become defensive and obsessed
with their own ideas and end up in dead ends, like Huxley did with his ideas
about drug-enhanced hypnotism.

The internet is like a Large Hadron Collider for Ideas.

 _How horrible to go to a library to find what you need._

Well, frankly yes I find the notion of going to a physical location to find
out simple bits of knowledge pretty horrible. You really shouldn't
underestimate the immense potential we now have to access knowledge very
quickly. Its fashionable to disparage it but frankly I think its a wonder of
the modern world.

 _The sheer inhumanity of going 20 minutes without compulsively checking a
glowing screen because you feel restless_

"Haha they made a handheld device that contains all human knowledge and now we
make fun of each other for looking at it too much"
[https://twitter.com/Arr/status/309565153924505601](https://twitter.com/Arr/status/309565153924505601)

------
dicroce
I think the problem with Huxleys predictions come from his not realizing how
blunt an instrument narcotics are... Fine work and subtle tweaks are beyond
our power (just look at the side effects)... Using drugs to adjust personality
is like using a sledgehammer to rearrange porcelain figurines. Not that we
might not get there of course.... but we'll have many years of boots stomping
on faces in the interim.

~~~
solitus
What about all those anti-anxiety, anti-depressant and ADHD drugs ?

Many students I know were on ADHD drugs even though they didn't really need
it.

Many professionals are on anti-anxiety and anti-depressants now too...

~~~
chiaro
While true, it's a pretty uniquely American problem. Not many other countries
even allow for prescription medicine to be advertised to consumers.

~~~
emiliobumachar
Mass obesity was also a pretty uniquely American problem, until it wasn't.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Well yes, but both are because America exports its problems.

------
tikhonj
I actually agree with some of the other commenters in this thread: Huxley's
dystopia is, well, far less dystopian than Orwell's. Or, in a more nuanced
look, Huxley's book suffers an unfortunate dichotomy: the things that are bad
are not realistic and the things that are realistic are not bad.

The legitimately dystopian part of _Brave New World_ are often technical in
nature—effectively mind control through drugs and a caste system propped up by
genetic engineering. These don't just require advances in technology but also
a surprising level of social organization. Where _1984_ feels like a
continuous progression from a Soviet Union that never collapsed, these core
parts of _Brave New World_ comes of as discontinuous, a jump both socially and
technically.

And without these extreme social and technical changes, it stops being a
dystopia. If not for the eugenics, genetics and soma, it sounds like a nice
place to live! Freer sex, freer entertainment, more automation, more
leisure... It's radical, certainly, but not in a bad way—a radical departure
from our current almost Puritan work ethic and our obsession with certain
abstractions (the poorly defined "real vs superficial", "honor", "the dignity
of work"¹...etc) sounds like just what we need.

I like giving people what they want, even if I think it's shallow or
superficial. Then again, I've never been one to treat hedonism as a bad word.

That cartoon people like to pass around really captures my thoughts—in a way
that's opposite to its intended message! It shows how some of the believable
things in _Brave New World_ are believable, but never shows why they're _bad_.
It just assumes, and ties into cultural ideas (like "hard work is good" or
"your life must have meaning") that many people don't question. But it misses
the mark because it ignores the parts that are _not_ plausible but actually
created the dystopian environment.

The cartoon (much more than the book itself) is also a bit grating because I
sense some condescending overtones. "Look at all those people who don't care
about the world but just distract themselves with popular entertainment. How
shallow!" Obviously you, the reader, do not belong to this group. And hey, I
don't disagree _per se_ —I think most popular distractions _are_ shallow and
have much better alternatives—but I also think there's nothing inherently
wrong with enjoying them. I mean, I follow the news, I care about recent
events and where does it get me? Nowhere. I guess I could vote² a bit better,
but all it's done is sour me on all major candidates. Is this meaningfully
better than comfortable ignorance? No, but people tell me it is. And here I
am.

Really, _Brave New World_ minus the implausible bits and with a larger dash of
individual freedom thrown in is pretty much as far from dystopian as it can
get. Radical, certainly, and jarring—very different from our current social
order—but fundamentally _good_. It feels like it's just a few exaggerated
risks thrown in to make leisure and entertainment seem crass and indolent.
_1984_ , on the other hand, doesn't feel all that different from my parents'
tales about the Soviet Union.

I know which one _I 'm_ more afraid of!

footnotes

¹ I've always really disliked this phrase. It's one part rationalization and
one part a way to keep people down and working even if they don't want to.
Doing something menial or boring or easily automatable _just for the sake of
working_ is not my picture of dignity!

² Haha, no I can't, because I'm not a citizen. So I'd have to become a citizen
first. It doesn't matter, but it _is_ annoying.

~~~
jonnathanson
_" If not for the eugenics, genetics and soma, it sounds like a nice place to
live! Freer sex, freer entertainment, more automation, more leisure... It's
radical, certainly, but not in a bad way"_

Well, it's all fun and games if you happen to win the genetic dice roll and
end up as an Alpha. I imagine it's considerably less fun if you're a Gamma.

More to the point, the world in _Brave New World_ isn't dystopian on account
of torture suffered, atrocities committed, or free expression squelched, a la
_1984_. The real horror of _Brave New World_ is the complete reduction of the
human race to a soulless, animalistic state. Or a robotic state, if you prefer
that sort of analogy.

The humanity we encounter in _Brave New World_ is a dead end: artistically,
culturally, technologically, philosophically, and evolutionarily. This
humanity will never reach beyond its comfort zone to achieve anything else. It
will never colonize the solar system, or explore the stars. It will never make
brilliant art, or profound discoveries. It will never question anything, and
because it will never question anything, it will never improve itself. If you
believe that humanity's crown jewel is its capacity for self-improvement and
progress, then the world in _Brave New World_ is a severely bleak one. It is a
vision of the human race infantilized, neutered, and forever trapped in that
infant state. (If there are any ihyperintelligent beings out there, bent on
conquering Earth and rendering humanity a null threat, _Brave New World_ reads
like a perfect playbook).

On a visceral level, sure, I suppose I'd rather live in Huxley's dystopia than
in Orwell's. That doesn't make Huxley's vision any less scary for me. Big
Brother puts us in a cage; Huxley's society convinces us the cage doesn't
exist.

From the standpoint of literary merit, _1984_ is the superior book. But that's
a whole different discussion, and I digress.

~~~
epidemian
As the grand parent, i also see the society of Brave New World as much less
dystopian than usually portrayed.

> _Well, it 's all fun and games if you happen to win the genetic dice roll
> and end up as an Alpha. I imagine it's considerably less fun if you're a
> Gamma._

Yes, from the external point of view of a book reader, i would prefer to "win
the genetic dice roll". But if i were decanted as a Gamma, i wouldn't mind, i
wouldn't prefer to be an Alpha, with all that complex work they do, i'd prefer
my simpler life. The casts system in BNW works only because the members of
each cast feel happy to belong to their cast.

> _It will never question anything, and because it will never question
> anything, it will never improve itself._

This is actually why i think the vision of Huxley in BNW is not as dystopian
as 1984 [spoilers of both books ahead!]: they not only not kill or get rid of
the free thinkers (Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson) as they do in 1984, they
actually send them to an island with an environment more suitable for their
mental fostering, thus allowing new ideas to be born, and maybe very _very_
gradually be introduced in the society.

Yeah, it's quite a bummer that no radical improvement can happen; the society
could stuck in a local maximum. But it's a trade-off for stability, peace and
abundance.

Would Huxley live today, i'd wager his vision of BNW would not include such a
restrictive casts system. BNW's society had a great desire for efficiency, so
it is expected that they would use computers to thoroughly automate as much
labor as possible. And with that thorough automation, there'd be no need for
conditioning humans to accept and do the worst kinds of labors that Deltas,
Gammas and Epsilons do.

I guess the means of control applied to higher casts would still "make sense"
in order to maintain social stability, which is rather discomforting. But
without the restrictive casting system, that future doesn't seem as bleak.

~~~
barrkel
We already have a caste system, in the form of unearned wealth, and that
divide is increasing rapidly.

I think that media, public discourse, entertainment and most especially
industrial schooling are already tuned to condition people to accept servility
to capital. There's a whole economic religion set up to perpetuate the
superiority of the top 1% of the capitalist caste.

There's more to it, but it's not a conspiracy, it's not a conscious thing, but
it is an emergent properly of the system we've set up, and individual
incentives exist that perpetuate the system.

I think it's unstable - the trends observed by Piketty cannot continue for
more than a few more decades without significant risk of social upheaval. But
for now, the system is fairly unassailable, and it is very like BNW already.

~~~
webXL
I think you mean _undeserved wealth_ , via inheritance, rent-seeking and
downright theft. The wealth was created and actually earned by someone.

The sheer number of sports/movie stars, well-off politicians and entrepreneurs
in the US with humble beginnings don't give weight to your claim. Sure, there
might be a top "caste" that controls who can belong to that "caste", and very
much tries to use the law to protect their collective wealth, but they don't
have much control on the rest of the population's "caste mobility":
[http://www.verisi.com/resources/prosperity-upward-
mobility.h...](http://www.verisi.com/resources/prosperity-upward-mobility.htm)

~~~
barrkel
I'm not worried about "undeserved" wealth or lack of mobility, I'm worried
about increasing inequality.

It doesn't matter if there's a different 1% every year, if 1% owns 90+% of the
wealth - and that's where trends are headed.

I think "deserved" wealth often isn't; a lot of it is luck of birth and
opportunity, and more of it is being in a position of leverage to earn more by
being high up in a hierarchy. But even if it is fully "deserved", it is still
problematic.

What does "deserved" even mean in this context, anyway? It is not enough for
wealth to be gotten by moral means, "deserved" must reflect a judgement by
society as a whole, that everyone is in aggregate and justly better off by
rewarding any particular person their particular share of everyone's future
production (viewing wealth as a claim on future production).

------
DontBeADick
Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death is a great continuation of this
topic. I only wish they were still around to see how right they were.

~~~
mturmon
Good point. It's an excellent book.

I also thought of Mark Crispin Miller's re-vision of the parallels between
Orwell's _1984_ and TV advertising culture, in his essay, "Big Brother is You,
Watching" [1]. It's a long essay but it is very insightful on the current
significance of Orwell's book. Just substitute "internet" for "TV" and you can
update it to today.

[1]
[http://books.google.com/books?id=Lhsg1ZZ3hMQC&pg=PA331&lpg=P...](http://books.google.com/books?id=Lhsg1ZZ3hMQC&pg=PA331&lpg=PA331&dq=big+brother+is+you+watching+mark+crispin+miller&source=bl&ots=-waheGYLTy&sig=OvJnitgApGdaA88Eqi8xa3q4zzo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=n0RJVM2BEMm3iQKUqIGoDg&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=big%20brother%20is%20you%20watching%20mark%20crispin%20miller&f=false)
(and scroll up to the start of the chapter)

------
vikingo
I think Neil Postman wrote the most concise examination of this topic in the
foreword to "Amusing Ourselves to Death"[1]:

"We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't,
thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal
democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had
not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. But we had forgotten that alongside
Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well
known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. 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 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."

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-
Busi...](http://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-
Business/dp/014303653X)

------
hiou
I've always believed that Huxley was closer in regards to the wealthy and
upper middle class of society, whereas Orwell's predictions appear to line up
better with the experiences of the poor and lower middle.

~~~
humanrebar
I think Huxley hit some interesting notes for those with lower income levels,
especially if you consider consider cheap entertainment and junk food to be
opiates. As far as sexual mores, marriage rates are at an all-time low, and
pornography is basically free.

------
dredmorbius
Something I realized only recently regarding _Brave New World_ and _1984_ :
the former is a criticism of its _own_ society, that is, Western
commercialism, capitalism, entertainment, and escapism. The latter is a
criticism of the _other_ society, that is, Soviet Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist
Communism.

From the point of view that criticism of your own enemy is often far easier to
swallow than criticism of yourself, it isn't quite so surprising that 1984 is
the more popular and better-known work.

 _Both_ are tremendously prescient.

As noted elsewhere in comments, Neil Postman, particularly _Amusing Ourselves
to Death_ , continues Huxley's critique. Postman himself is very strongly
influenced by (and studied under) Marshall McLuhan. You'll also find this
theme in Jason Benlevi's _Too Much Magic_ , and other more recent works.

~~~
a3_nm
The foreword to _Amusing Ourselves to Death_ (which I haven't read otherwise)
does a fair job of comparing _Brave New World_ and _Nineteen Eighty-Four_:

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.

------
chiaro
I think the central thesis of BNW, insofar as it is relevant to western
societies and their possible futures, is that escapism is bad in excess.

In the information age, access to entertainment is utterly unfettered, and
it's shockingly easy at times to get caught in a dopamine loop (example:
Zynga, candy crush). While this is, I believe, a valid concern, I find the
conspiratorial aspects a little absurd. Claims that this is orchestrated
specifically to prevent the unwashed masses seizing power describe such an
undertaking so as to be unfeasible. We're in this position due to very, very,
rapid changes in technology that as a society, we have yet to fully adapt to
and understand.

------
paypaul
I have always liked this excerpt from the video game Deus Ex. It to me
foreshadows where the security state seems to be heading \--- When one maniac
can wipe out a city of twenty million with a microbe developed in his
basement, a new approach to law enforcement becomes necessary. Every citizen
in the world must be placed under surveillance. That means sky-cams at every
intersection, computer-mediated analysis of every phone call, e-mail, and
snail-mail, and a purely electronic economy in which every transaction is
recorded and data-mined for suspicious activity. We are close to achieving
this goal. Some would say that human liberty has been compromised, but the
reality is just the opposite. As surveillance expands, people become free from
danger, free to walk alone at night, free to work in a safe place, and free to
buy any legal product or service without the threat of fraud. One day every
man and woman will quietly earn credits, purchase items for quiet homes on
quiet streets, have cook-outs with neighbors and strangers alike, and sleep
with doors and windows wide open. If that isn't the tranquil dream of every
free civilization throughout history, what is? \-- Anna Navarre, Agent, UNATCO

------
programmarchy
Related, there's some very interesting connections between Huxley and MKULTRA,
the CIA program that performed experiments on people with drugs (LSD) and
hypnosis, among other things. So it appears that he was more than just an
author, and actually a key player in pushing the Brave New World "agenda"
forward.

[https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6FBA86B0-0C57-9FCA-5CF9...](https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6FBA86B0-0C57-9FCA-5CF9-D742DA541AAA#-671)

Quoting his speech at UC Berkeley in 1962:

> If you are going to control any population for any length of time you must
> have some measure of consent. It’s exceedingly difficult to see how pure
> terrorism can function indefinitely. It can function for a fairly long time,
> but I think sooner or later you have to bring in an element of persuasion.
> An element of getting people to consent to what is happening to them. Well,
> it seems to me that the nature of the Ultimate Revolution with which we are
> now faced is precisely this: that we are in process of developing a whole
> series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have
> always existed and presumably always will exist, to get people actually to
> love their servitude!

------
javajosh
Orwell's rulers seem to have a much more _satisfying_ experience of ruling. I
don't think it's enough to have mere control; I think "lust for power" implies
a certain sadism. They want to be Trujillo[1] or Kim Jong Il[2] - someone to
be respected, feared, and absolutely obeyed. The _point_ of being Big Brother
was to attain the pleasure of torturing Smith, inside and out. (It wouldn't
surprise me, or anyone I think, if they killed Smith after all was said and
done.)

Huxley discounts the pure pleasure of putting your boot on someone's face, of
being able to raping anyone in your country at will (as Trujillo was
particularly fond of doing). Intriguingly, I think it is this class of evil
people that will _actively prevent_ humanity from turning into the Brave New
World cul-de-sac, since it represents a steady-state that absolutely denies
the kind of sadism that they crave.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Trujillo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Trujillo)
[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong-
il](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong-il)

~~~
claren
What? No, the despotism is part of the control as much as it is malevolence,
control is the vehicle. Lack of a reason might as well be deception, or
despair of Orwell, as he was writing the end in his last years in sickness
after WW2.

I'd say _Ignorance is Strengh_

------
billgraham
"Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover
that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments
of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just
as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by
flogging and kicking them into obedience."

------
hyperion2010
Why do people think that BNW represents a dystopia? The whole point of the
work is that it is in fact a utopia or as close as you can get. The reason for
this is to undermine the notion that one should even want to organize a
society around happiness in the first place (undermining one of the central
assumptions of nearly 2500 years of western political philosophy). To this end
I think Huxley succeeds brilliantly. Furthermore he raises far deeper
questions of what it means to be human in ways that Orwell simply does not
address. Finally the fact that many identify his depiction of the future as
dystopian is a good sign that he successfully gets readers to reevaluate their
own thinking about what it means to live a fulfilling life, since I think
almost all of us here would agree that the world Huxley depicts is in some
ways thoroughly empty of any real fulfillment or achievement.

------
vvpan
Also, a little known fact is that 1984 is essentially a remake of a 1924 novel
by Yevgeny Zamyatin "We".

~~~
notahacker
There are certainly enough similarities to make Orwell's review[1] in which he
describes the plot of _We_ as "rather weak" and suggests Huxley borrowed
heavily from it rather uncharitable.

[1][http://theorwellprize.co.uk/george-orwell/by-
orwell/essays-a...](http://theorwellprize.co.uk/george-orwell/by-
orwell/essays-and-other-works/freedom-and-happiness-review-of-we-by-yevgeny-
zamyatin/)

------
DanielBMarkham
Sadly, we are learning this is not an either-or proposition: it's perfectly
logical that some elements of society will seek to narcoticize us while others
worry about increasing our surveillance and control.

And the worst part? Both of these elements do these things because we ask them
to.

~~~
mjevans
The very worst enemy operates on the belief that they are helping you/the
majority. The only way to win against such an enemy is to educate them on the
error of their ways.

Support transparency. Support sunset clauses (continue to justify a thing is
necessary). Support full accountability.

------
wetfossils
I love BNW. It is such an magnified representation of the post-war world. Like
all literature, it's a metaphore, not to be taken too literally as a prophecy
--although it was clearly a possibility in Huxley's mind. BNW may never be,
but we're already there, in many ways. We are not clones, but we are expected
to specialize, to identify with roles that aim to produce value, get paid, buy
things, entertain ourselves, to feed the system and forget about it. It is a
really seducing utopia--compared to the more openly overt dystopia of 1984, at
least. Huxley, I believe, saw it coming and wanted to warn us about its costs
and limitations.

People said about Aldous Huxley that he could have an in-depth conversation
about virtually any subject. As a well read person, he was aware the current
developments at the time in the fields of psychology, management and life
sciences--to name a few. It is no surprise that he came to speculate about the
rise of advertisement and human resources management, which turned psychology
on its head by applying it as a tool to generate and maintain a compliant
supply of consumers and producers before anything else. His utopia is one
where life is ruled by convenience, from the crib to the death. The more
alarmist speculations of managed births and intitutionalized overmedication
are simply logical extensions of this philosophy. It may be too easy to just
go along with it without asking ourselves if life shouldn't be about something
else than finding purpose through our given social functions. There's
something deeply tragic about BNW, which isn't so unfamilar and requires us to
take a step back from such ideals. The questions it raises are terribly
current to us.

BNW is far from perfect, but the last century showed us that Huxley was right.
Most of us want to love their servitude, and we're willing to work pretty hard
in order to do so. The spectre of 1984, of surveillance and repression, is
mainly reserved for those who stray away from what's expected of us. It stands
as a menace to keep us in check. When people occupy the streets or participate
in activity that undermine the accepted order, only then does it show its ugly
head. In a way, 1984 and BNW are complements to each other.

------
arca_vorago
This comparison comes up fairly regularly in my circles, both online and
offline, and my response is usually the same. Note that Huxley says, "Whether
in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems
doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous
and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these
ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World."

This is why my response is almost always that it is Brave New World for the
people, and 1984 for anyone who dares resist.

And if you doubt the veracity of Huxley's claims about hypnosis, and other
mental manipulations, just refer to MKULTRA and similar programs.

Another factor that most people don't like to hear about, because it leans too
far on the side of "conspiracy theory", but the reason Huxley and Orwell both
were so fearful of the coming future was because they were actually insiders
of the power elite that has largely guided this progression. Orwell was
trained at Eton college, and was a member of the Fabian society. Huxley was
less involved, but from what I understand his younger days he did talk with
Bertrand Russell, but as far as I can tell he didn't really interface with the
elite, so I consider his point of view more independently insightful.

Now, at the risk of going off the deep end a bit, I would like to introduce HN
readers to the origins of Orwell's Fabian society: The British East India
Company. Overlap this with the secret "rings within rings" will of the
Rothschild backed Cecil Rhodes (the goal of which was to establish and
maintain anglosaxon dominance of the west), and the picture of the elite will
make more sense. It was the Rhodes and Fabians behind the round table groups,
including but not limited to, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral
Commission, and Committee of 300.

Unfortunately, I have found very few places on the internet where modern talk
of this subject isn't quickly overrun with the less fact-based "conspiracy
theories". I said in about 2009 to one of my British friends that this is why
we are going to see an increasing attack on the internet (TPP anyone?). As the
last bastion of free speech, it won't be allowed to stand unified much longer.

I'll end it on that note for now.

------
lmm
I'd recommend the BBC television play _The Year of the Sex Olympics_. Brave
New World but tuned down to something more realistic, and astonishingly
prophetic: in the 1960s, it predicts a society kept passive by media full of
empty sex, and the invention of reality TV (semi-scripted, of course) to
improve the process. I watched it in a group and at the end we just said "wow,
it's all come true".

------
scardine
I think the climate in Venezuela, Bolivia and Brazil is heading to a
combination of both dystopias.

On one side, Chaves, Evo Morales and Lula assembled fantastic propaganda
machines in order to ensure their respective parties continue in power. They
claim that those countries are at war against the "imperialists".

On the other, they provide plenty of "soma" in the form of popular sport and
music events and public subsidies.

------
alecco
I don't understand why everyone is obsessed with which of the novels got it
right. I think both made amazing predictions as there's no the triviality
culture (Facebook and narcissism) and a fearsome Big Brother (NSA, GCHQ...).

It would be better if we focus our energy on how we can help fix that before
it's too late.

------
netcan
It's interesting Huxley addresses him as Mr. Orwell (a pen name) even though
they knew each other personally.

------
exelius
Interesting. The "final revolution" that Huxley describes could also be called
"the singularity" from transhumanism. In the end, we all become subservient to
"the system" through our own choice. The system need not be run by humans.

The thing is, the indoctrination of children and coordinated use of
psychotropic drugs as a means of control would be morally repugnant to a
human. But for a non-human ruling class, morality does not apply and the
efficiency argument makes more sense.

Obviously, neither of these men could have predicted computers the way they
exist today. It is now plausible to think that a malicious AI could undermine
our entire system of government without us knowing. No such AI exists today,
but if it did, it would have near unfettered access to communications and data
globally simply based on today's technology systems. The levers for control
are already in place.

Ultimately, when the machines take over, it'll probably be because we
willingly hand over the keys. What happens to us after that is anyone's guess.

~~~
chiaro
It's very interesting to consider what kind of social structures could
eventuate in a post-scarcity society.

~~~
arethuza
The obvious example of an extreme post-scarcity society is, of course, the
Culture from the novels of Iain M. Banks.

Interesting to note the emphasis in both BNW and the Culture on drug taking.
In the case of the culture their bodies are engineered to produce a wide
variety of drugs on demand:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture)

You could argue that the humans in the Culture are effectively kept as pets by
the god-like AIs that run that civilization. However, this is probably less
threatening than it sounds as the Culture seems to be quite open to people (or
AIs) leaving for whatever reason and seems to be slightly reticent about
encouraging immigration as they are aware that it looks like a form of
disguised colonialism.

------
ivan_ah
I looked up the names mentioned in the last paragraph and ended up on
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_magnetism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_magnetism)
, which seems to me to be the Europeans' name for chi.

Funky stuff.

------
bmod420
Here's a great comic comparing Orwell's and Huxley's ideas.

[http://imgur.com/3lnAy1l](http://imgur.com/3lnAy1l)

------
phesse14
Nobody has found strange how two individuals with apparently common interests
met? French lessons? For such cultivated men? Weird...

------
robbiep
Interesting that Huxley refers to Orwell as Orwell instead of Mr Blair

