
Aldous Huxley was right, not George Orwell - dotcoma
http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-Death.html
======
dflock
This is a false dichotomy. It's quite possible - and indeed, probably much
more likely - that aspects of both are becoming bigger parts of our lives at
the same time. These two aspects of human culture - authoritarianism and
dissipation have always been with us, this isn't new; 'dictatorship' & 'bread
and circuses' would both be familiar concepts to citizens of ancient Rome.

~~~
arethuza
So are there any novels that portray such a "hybrid" dystopia?

~~~
starkfist
Wouldn't any novel set in contemporary times be portraying the hybrid dystopia
that we all currently inhabit?

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geophile
I think the movie Network (made in 1976!) was really close to exactly this
hybrid.

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william42
People seem to assume it's a choice between Huxley, Orwell, or the combination
of the two. They miss a very big option, which is that humanity is in fact
better off than it used to be. Marx was dead wrong about the future(remember,
he thought that global communist revolution was _inevitable_ ) but he was dead
right about the time that he lived in. Up until the 1950s or 60s or so, a good
half of the population wasn't able to hold any but a rare few jobs. During the
early days of the Industrial Revolution up until about the decade of the
1900s, you would be considered lucky if you were paid in money rather than
company scrip that would be useless outside of the company town you lived in,
meaning that if you wanted to change jobs you pretty much lost all your money.
In the Middle Ages, ...if I have to explain to you why the Middle Ages sucked
compared to today, you're already a lost cause. I could go on.

Want a real dystopia? Read a history book.

~~~
dstorrs
You're absolutely right -- things are much better now than any time in
history, for a majority of the world's population.

But "better" really means "more choices are available." We should try to make
sure that we make the best choices, and that's what posts like these are
trying to help us do.

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GiraffeNecktie
Orwell was specifically warning about the dangers of a communist totalitarian
state. He was one of the few left-leaning writers that spoke out against
Stalinism. North Korea has become, in every sense, a '1984' state. China and
the former Soviet Union seem to be in transition from '1984' to 'Brave New
World'.

~~~
JustinSeriously
Funny, I was just reading about this.

"A young man Demick interviewed read 1984 after he escaped to [South Korea].
He was startled to learn that George Orwell, back in the 1940s, had perfectly
understood the thinking of modern North Koreans."

[http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/24/robert-
fulfor...](http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/24/robert-fulford-
north-korea-an-antique-nightmare/)

~~~
narrator
Orwell was just predicting what the future would be like if Stalinism took
over the world in 1984. He had plenty of experience with it while fighting in
the Spanish Civil War on the side of the anarchists POUM and often in conflict
with the Stalinist backed factions.

The government of North Korea was founded by Kim Il Sung who was hand picked
by Stalin to run the country, so it's only natural that they would try to
implement the model Orwell was talking about.

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wheels
Blog spam, the original is here:
[http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-
Ourse...](http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-
Death.html)

And the original discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=627476>

Edit: (article link was changed by moderator)

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iaskwhy
Yap, Brave New World is much more interesting to those who want to understand
what might be our future than 1984. I believe that's common sense to those who
read both novels.

Also interesting is Brave New World Revisited, a book written 30 years after
he's other book where he compares it with 1984 by Orwell. He also makes some
guesses about the future[1].

I love dystopias and Brave New World is the best.

 _spoiler_

[1] _The most important one being about soma and how it's so similar to lsd._

~~~
iterationx
No one ever mentions We <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)>

~~~
zzzmarcus
We is great, and remarkably similar to Brave New World. I like the mini-
controversy surrounding it, here it is as summarized on Wikipedia:

"...in a 1962 letter to Christopher Collins, Huxley says that he wrote Brave
New World as a reaction to H.G. Wells' utopias long before he had heard of We.
According to We translator Natasha Randall, Orwell believed that Huxley was
lying. Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952) he "cheerfully
ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped
off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We.""[1]

If Huxley hadn't read We he was def. channeling Zamyatin's aura somehow or
another.

Vonnegut is too hard on himself saying Player Piano was a rip off of Brave New
World. It is great in it's own right.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)>

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hjkl
This comic rings mostly true for me, but I disagree a bit with the claim that
information in 1984 was restricted; Good information was hard to find, but if
I recall correctly, bad information was abundant.

For example, even when Winston begins to realize that he's being fed B.S.
information by the government, the book he reads for "real" information is
also (probably) filled with lies. I find this point to be especially poignant
today as some niche alternative news outlets (such as conspiracy theory web
sites) are as inaccurate as the outlets they seek to criticize.

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igravious
Francis Fukayama made this very same assertion years ago in an essay in The
Times Literary Supplement or The New York Review of Books. I remember reading
this maybe six, seven years ago and his assertion was that the Huxlean(?) view
of the future and not the Orwellian view of the future was coming to pass. I
thought that it gelled with his capitalistic view of the world in general.
It's a futile debate because clearly our present world exhibits traits from
both of Huxley's and Orwell's imaginings. Arguably Orwell was by far the
superior craftsman and wordsmith which is why I think his images carry more
weight and are more current. Their visions are both culturally very important
and this kind of "who's better?" malarky is ... um, malarky! Like I said
before Eric Blair to Tony Blair in < 50 years ftw!

~~~
absconditus
I am not disagreeing with anything you wrote or trying to be argumentative,
but I wanted to mention that Amusing Ourselves to Death is 25 years old.

~~~
igravious
I'll check it out

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aardvark
The cartoon notes that the comparison was taken from Neil Postman's book
"Amusing Ourselves to Death".

Postman wrote this 25 years ago. If anything, his observation is even more
true today.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
RIP Neil Postman. His keen intellect and warm humanity are missed.

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dbz
A cute cartoon, but seeing as I just ([imo]unfortunately) read "Brave New
World" in a very in depth literature class (apologize for the fallacy call to
authority) , I don't find the Cartoon to be accurate at all.

For example, books _were_ banned in "Brave New World" -remember all that
Shakespeare drama? Huxley was saying people are going to be controlled by the
government because in the Brave New World, the government breeds humans for
different purposes, and all those humans know are pleasures which are
completely dependent on the government, like daily rations of _soma_ , a drug
which prevents aging and sadness.

~~~
SamAtt
But there's a difference between the banning in Brave New World and what we
consider the term to mean today (or what it meant in 1984). Most World State
citizens couldn't read at all so banning books was done so they wouldn't be
tempted to learn. The government wasn't taking something away as much as they
were simply not giving the population access to it.

Books were essentially like illegal drugs in our society. The Government had
decided they were harmful to the citizenry and attempted to restrict them from
coming in. But it's clearly a fairly minor thing (again equivalent to our drug
policy where most personal use offenders get drug treatment rather than
punishment).

For example, John the Savage is allowed both to quote Shakespeare and to
interact with those who come to the reservation. Yet there's no Government
repression and it's certainly not like in 1984 where you get a lobotomy. So
the banning of books really reinforces the cartoon's point because what the
government has done is to convince the population that books are bad for them
and then offered the ban as a way to keep the population from being harmed by
them.

~~~
dbz
imho, you have a very misleading point where the government is just _not_
providing access akin to drugs; however, books contain knowledge, and drugs do
not. The government in the Brave New World isn't just "not providing a
service," it's actively attempting to make a dumb citizen through not only the
means of censorship, but injecting fetuses with alcohol to lower the
intelligence of the individual. Our government has a ban on drugs to protect
us citizens(theoretically), whereas the Brave New World has a ban on books to
protect itself.

I'd also like to note:

Most personal offenders in our government get treatment instead of punishment
(drugs). Most personal offenders in the Brave New World get banished
(reading).

~~~
DougBTX
Plenty of people have claimed enlightenment while taking drugs, which might
well lead to knowledge and understanding.

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JoachimSchipper
[Note that there's a _ton_ of Brave New World that's not in the comic, as
pointed out by dbz. I'm reacting to the comic's version.]

Note that, unlike Orwell's dystopia, Huxley's doesn't require squashing every
voice of dissent - as long as the majority of people don't care, there is
little danger in allowing some dissidents.

Some would say that this, in fact, has already happened - Berlusconi controls
a sufficiently large part of the population via the media that he's
effectively untouchable. In the American situation, there's Fox News and its
competitors.

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harscoat
Orwell predicted the 20th Century, Huxley predicts the 21st

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mattmaroon
The reason is that Aldous Huxley's vision was far easier to implement. It
didn't require a massive conspiracy, which is extremely difficult. Anyone who
has ever been a checkout supervisor at Wal-Mart will tell you how hard it is
to coordinate a large number of people with individual personalities, desires,
etc. even if the end goal is something as simple as everyone taking a 15
minute break without having too few cashiers at once.

Huxley's vision just required a bunch of people independently trying to make
money and becoming good at it, which is pretty much what people do best.

~~~
JanezStupar
It doesn't take conspiracy to implement 1984. All it takes is bureaucrats
doing their jobs and letting bureaucrats to tweak their job description.

~~~
mattmaroon
I don't think that's true. Bureaucrats are mostly well-intentioned. They're
not working toward 1984, they're working toward what they see as a well-run
government. When it comes to government people easily fail to see the forest
for the trees, and view it as a living, breathing, single organism hell-bent
on power. It's not though, it's a collection of people who are for the most
part competent and well-meaning and who are simply facing a monumental task.

The entire first world routinely asks our politicians to provide us more
services and more securities for less money, and then gets upset when they
fail to deliver the impossible. They're not working toward 1984, they're just
trying to stay in office and leave their offices a little better than when
they found it.

~~~
DuncanIdaho
Well have you ever heard that road to hell is paved with good intentions? I
have seen more than fair shair of this saying being true in practice.

Bureaucrat may be well-intentioned, but they are mostly more prone to "do
their job" than to question the correctness and impact of their deeds.

And that is without considering office politics or politics in broader sense.
I'm working with government and I wouldn't rely on bureaucrat to do the "right
thing".

They say that bureacracy is organization whrere group of people that think all
"A" agree on compromise "B".

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geden
Huxley, of course, wasn't all doom and gloom. His last, wonderful, novel
'Island' describes a very sensible, somewhat libertarian utopia, the antidote
to BNW.

His utopia is based on a very open education and a love and understanding for
the natural world. It reminds me of Iain Bank's 'Culture', sans the
technology.

It's relatively overlooked as a work. My guess is the same factors that make
doom and gloom sell newspapers make BNW the more popular novel.

I'd recommend it as a read to anyone.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_(novel)>

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pope52
Original Source (2009): [http://www.recombinantrecords.net/2009/05/24/amusing-
ourselv...](http://www.recombinantrecords.net/2009/05/24/amusing-ourselves-to-
death/)

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TGJ
It seems that they both are right in a sense. Overindulgence of the self
(Huxley) leads to destruction while overindulgence of Others (Orwell) does the
same. Indulging in the personal pleasures leads people to forget about
everything else while trying to take care of others too much leads to trying
to run their lives when they don't listen to you even though you think you are
right.

~~~
dotcoma
Orwell wrote about overindulgence of others? How so?

~~~
arethuza
The only example I can think of is the way the Party controls the Proles - by
making sure they have plenty gin, beer, porn, trashy novels and gambling.
Which was presumably based on the observations of working class life he did
for "The Road to Wigan Pier".

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Semiapies
Beyond just that the cartoonist misses (or outright distorts) the points of
_Brave New World_ , ey makes the truly bizarre (and yet oddly common)
assumption that at some golden age in the past, "the people" were less
distracted by their own lives and what entertained them and were more civic
and more aware.

They weren't. Before they were playing video games, they were playing ping
pong, board games, cards, or catch. Before they were watching YouTube, they
were watching TV or listening to radio shows. Despite the journalistic myth-
making about their own industry, the news has always been cluttered with
trivialities and partisanship in every medium.

And there have always been people complaining how everyone but they has
descended into terrible trogolodytes who only care about their own lives and
interests - and not what smart people like themselves find important.

~~~
starkfist
A bit pedantic, but: the cartoonist didn't really write anything, he just
illustrated text Neil Postman wrote in "Amusing Ourselves to Death."

~~~
Semiapies
Yes, that's pedantic.

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pedalpete
Let us not forget about the great skill our minds have at making connections
between things which many not actually be true.

Just as startuprules points out that while many in the US are thinking that
they have big brother looking over them, when they are compared to China they
realize that it is mostly just their imagination.

What I find most interesting is how many of us would say we are part of the
problem? So if it affects everybody, but we're not a part of it, does it
really affect everybody.

Also, lets not forget about the drop in things like tv ratings, where a big
show in the 80's was 10s of millions of people, and a big show today has a
much smaller viewership.

We still think everybody is watching American Idol (or whatever) because it's
everwhere, but in reality, it seems very few are actually watching or even
taking an interest.

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Tichy
I am not convinced. Somehow the 1984s still seem to be just around the corner
all the time. Any kind of incident, and politicians try to make a case for
1984 laws and censorship.

At least if my neighbors amuse themselves to death, I am not forced to
participate. I also don't think average people of all ages (as in centuries,
eons) were usually preoccupied with highly intellectual endeavors. So the
lament of us all becoming more stupid is probably also an old one.

~~~
Ardit20
And of course intelligence has been rising as measured by IQ.

I think the books are a warning and contain some truth. I have not read BNW,
but 1984 can be used as Machiavelli's Prince, as a prescription, rather than
description, of how it could be.

So the book is a warning.

Also, I wanted to say, although it might have been written to describe
communism, I think unless you take it literally, much of it resonates with
democratic societies also. For example, how the three states keep being at war
one day and friends another and how everyone forgets this and how they always
are at war. That is quite a good description of the west in some ways.

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StavrosK
The world in Brave New World was portrayed in a very negative light, but I
found it to be a utopia where everyone is happy. I don't see why a future
where people have everything they may want and are happy all the time without
fear is a bad world to be in...

~~~
lincolnq
Well, I would rather live in a world that is making technological progress
than a world where everyone was happy all the time. I think people need to be
at least a little unhappy to drive progress.

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ckuehne
Neil Postman made the same observation already in 1984:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death>

EDIT: Just read aardvark's comment. So never mind.

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jdminhbg
The elitism in this comic has rubbed me the wrong way every time I've read it,
as has the historical tone deafness. You have to basically assume the premise
to Idiocracy for it to be valid.

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startuprules
I would propose that there currently exist a third reality: a combination of
the two scenarios described in the comics. An authoritarian state which
restricts materials that are hazardous to the state's health, but also
encourages huge debt taking/mindless consumption that zombifies the majority
of the population.

Case in point: US. It restricts information that would undermine its authority
as the world's dominant power, such as BP spill, bankruptcy of its
banks/cities/states, ineffectiveness at resolution in afghanistan, etc. The
government offers discounts/low rates for large home mortgages, expensive
cars, and big student loans that would shackle the majority of the population
in debt chains. It also condones mindless consumption such as reality TV,
sports, celebrity news, and facebook games by not taxing them as addictive
hazards.

Case in point: China. It restricts, well, pretty much anything it doesn't want
the people to know with the great internet firewall and state news programs.
It also encourages huge risk taking in mortgages, which recently has seen home
prices go up to 30X average income. It encourages its citizens to forget about
the abysmal living condition by allowing internet game cafes to spread like
wildfire and trapping the players in pointless alternative realities. So they
don't realize they are doing slave labor at $1/day to make ipads.

I further propose that this will continue as long as these governments
worldwide can keep feeding its citizens at a minimum (food stamps,
unemployment benefits, carb/sugar loaded cheap food), while offering cheap,
mind-numbing entertainments to keep people at home, so they don't go out and
riot on the streets. They can then keep on taxing/raising the retirement age
on the productive workers

Until oil is at $150/middle class is wiped out/Iran is attacked/North Korea
attacks/US defaults on SS and medicare/Japan defaults on its bonds/food prices
double/Israel is attacked/automation renders most of population useless,
anyways.

~~~
narrator
The important stuff in the U.S is controlled by creating false dichotomies
between different alternatives that both assume a uniform underlying reality
and are different in practically meaningless ways. Anything that's different
from these false alternatives is assumed to be one of the false alternatives,
will be viewed as kook material or will take several hours to explain. There
is also plenty of genuine kook material mixed in to all of this that makes it
hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The only thing that can really knock the average American out of this is long
term exposure to alternatives that exist in other cultures. Ever notice how
people who are well traveled often have a more nuanced understanding of most
contemporary topics?

~~~
LaPingvino
true; anything I see from the US is seen as one point or exactly the contrary,
never as the way more complex reality it really is...

