

Amusing ourselves to death - Huxley vs Orwell - cloudhead
http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-Death.html

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tommusic
I'm reading this book at the moment, and liking it very much.

Postman goes deeper than this, though. He isn't saying that TV's weakening of
the discourse is directly because of trash programming, but that the medium
itself is modifying what messages people take in.

Taft was over 300 lbs when he was elected president. There is no way he would
be elected in the age of television. He wouldn't have the look for TV.

Political speech in the time of Lincoln assumed of the audience a long
attention span, ability to parse arguments and complex sentences, and up-to-
date knowledge of current events.

I'm not halfway through, but I'm finding it compelling so far.

~~~
aswanson
_Political speech in the time of Lincoln assumed of the audience a long
attention span, ability to parse arguments and complex sentences, and up-to-
date knowledge of current events._

 _But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of the question
manifested by the framers of the original Constitution. In and by the original
instrument, a mode was provided for amending it; and, as I have already
stated, the present frame of "the Government under which we live" consists of
that original, and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted since. Those
who now insist that federal control of slavery in federal territories violates
the Constitution, point us to the provisions which they suppose it thus
violates; and, as I understand, that all fix upon provisions in these
amendatory articles, and not in the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in
the Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which provides
that no person shall be deprived of "life, liberty or property without due
process of law;" while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents plant
themselves upon the tenth amendment, providing that "the powers not delegated
to the United States by the Constitution" "are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people."_

Can you imagine 10 percent of the populace following Lincoln on this today?
It's like a legal deposition. To a far less educated electorate.

Some of the rhetoric of that age has a level of thought-density that is
nonexistent in modern speech. I always thought that was due to the selection
bias of the speakers back then (you had to be extraordinary to even register
in the public consciousness, but there were several counterexamples to this).

[EDIT: added snippet of Lincoln speech.]

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jdminhbg
> Can you imagine 10 percent of the populace following Lincoln on this today?

No. Not sure I can imagine 10 percent of the populace in 1860 following
Lincoln either. Of course, with 60-70% of the adult population excluded from
voting, narrowing your appeal wasn't such a huge problem.

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madair
How about BOTH Huxley and Orwell being right?

We've got the great firewall of Australia & China, and the camera on every
street-corner in England, and coming soon to Chicago, New York, and more.

And we've also got American Idol.

We've also got the propaganda war of Iraq, the jackboots on the neck of
countless vilified populations worldwide, the haves and the have-nots.

I'm not quite so sure it's wise to linger on pop culture while military power
still murders many every day, keeps untold others in the dark, and the all-
seeing panopticon is part of the effect of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg,
and others.

Focusing on pop-phenomena and wringing hands over the trite uselessness of pop
culture can be just another way to be self-righteous and better than thou. In
a perfect world perhaps all we'd worry about is social networks and gossip.
But we can't because Orwell's world is real and true, and power continues to
absolutely corrupt.

I could go on and on. The treatise is interesting and thought provoking, but
weak.

~~~
billswift
They are both combined to large extent in the later dystopian novel
"Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury. The authorities have outlawed books, so the
only source of information and entertainment is the internet, which they
control.

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epe
While there are valid reasons to fear both the "Orwell dystopia" and the
"Huxley dystopia", the former tends to send more of a chill down my spine. I
think this is because it seems much more possible, on a personal level, to
resist or opt out of the Huxley dystopia than the Orwell one. Postman may have
a compelling point that much of it has happened already, but it has happened
through individual choices that I don't have to share -- the books are still
there to be read, the tools & techniques are there to filter the information
overload & focus on the good stuff. Admittedly this is not easy, but in the
Orwell dystopia it's not even a possibility.

disclaimer: I haven't read the book and am responding to the (likely
oversimplified) line of argument presented in the comic.

~~~
wheels
Article is dead, so just commenting on your post:

Huxley's dystopia is set up to be more subtle and in fact, not one that you
would choose to opt out of; that's the crux of it.

He compares to Orwell's writing both in his retrospective, _Brave New World
Revisited_ and in his talk titled _The Ultimate Revolution_ (great listen, by
the way). Here's a bit from there:

 _"The state of servitude the state of being, having their differences ironed
out, and being made amenable to mass production methods on the social level,
if you can do this, then you have, you are likely, to have a much more stable
and lasting society. Much more easily controllable society than you would if
you were relying wholly on clubs and firing squads and concentration camps. So
that my own feeling is that the 1984 picture was tinged of course by the
immediate past and present in which Orwell was living, but the past and
present of those years does not reflect, I feel, the likely trend of what is
going to happen [...]"_

<http://100777.com/node/812>

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stcredzero
In the long run, suppressing people with distraction and pleasure is more
profitable than overt fear dispensed by jackbooted thugs. You have to pay the
thugs. Addicts of distraction will pay you! What's more, fear, in the form of
induced insecurity, can be synergistically added to the mix.

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patrickg-zill
I would like to mention the movie "Idiocracy" as a complement to this
discussion. The trailer on YouTube gives you a good sense of the movie.

~~~
coconutrandom
That's a great movie! I've used it as a sort of litmus test on my friends.
Peoples' reactions to this film are most interesting. Only those who recognize
how similar it is to our world are amused. Anyone else is annoyed.

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menloparkbum
The link to this article is dead. Did it have any new insights on this book?
It's pretty old, I read my dad's copy in junior high.

~~~
tommusic
Nope. It was some slick illustration for the assertion discussed in the
beginning of the book; that we are closer to being destroyed by Huxley's
vision than Orwell's.

