81–86 of 86 posts
Since that basic structure of the human condition won't change anytime soon, pray for them profiting from your guilty little pleasures. The time the machine stops, the pain will return.
The money quote from the article: “…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.” – Aldous Huxley, from a 1949 letter to George Orwell.
Here's another interesting excerpt, from Neil Postman's "Amusing ourselves to death": 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 ple…
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If he had predicted that the primary means of conditioning the public would be T.V. instead of hypnopedia, there would be no doubt that we're living in something like BNW -- or at least one of its spiritual progeny.
Hypnopedia was really just continuous repetition of "facts" until they were an autonomous response. I'd say he was pretty damn close.
Kids believe in the tooth faerie, but can reconcile this belief later because it never showed up on a test. Now I’m going to piss off everybody. Try to reconcile your beliefs with observable facts about King Leonidas or Helen Keller. Or if you went to a fundamentalist school, try any religious figure. Those are minor beliefs that have little consequence for society. There are major ones too.
At some point, you should realize that you live in a fictional belief system. And I mean you, not just people who you think have been brainwashed. If you’re really truly brilliant and skeptical, you may reconcile 0.1% of these beliefs, but even then subject to “Murray Gell-Man” amnesia for 99.9% of your beliefs. The only people who can possibly escape this are those who are labeled as imbeciles for their inability to convert between memory of fact and assumption of belief.
For instance, there are ‘idiot savants’ that can memorize an entire book just for fun, but will never assume that anything written in any book is actually true. These people are completely unable to assimilate culturally, and we institutionalize them for that reason.
A a side note, just as soma (and nearly all popular drugs) create suggestibility, I think it should be possible to reverse this and become more like an idiot savant. An example might be an antagonist of dopamine, serotonin, or opiate receptors, but I’m not sure. If anybody has any other ideas or experience with currently-available compounds, I would like to hear them.
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They both missed (but the film Brazil caught) that the dystopia will be run by a bureaucracy of bumbling idiots.
Anytime I am forced to navigate a maze of bureaucracy and/or paperwork, my mind goes to this movie. It seems more relevant with every passing day.
i.e. if you need to do some menial paperwork (i.e. file with city that you are changing plumping, the a.i. handles it for you).
Basically an interface that is human friendly and can keep governments informed/processed/licensed as needed.
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This really isn't a useful axis of distinction, not least because (iirc) the work under discussion effectively disposes of it during Mond's disquisition. You'd do better to distinguish between John's self-ownership and Lenina's total lack of awareness that she might even have any responsibility of self-determination. That I think is what you're groping toward with this ill-defined, handwavey claim around "individual"…
I appreciate your challenge here. You're right that my reply was handwavy. I'd love to read your analysis of the question if you'd oblige me. I'll also make another attempt as you ask. I ultimately believe that there's a progression system of consciousness related to the nature of our being. Modifying our being by forming different kinds of attachments and detachments, in the Jungian sense of alchemy, allows us to ac…
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I appreciate your challenge here. You're right that my reply was handwavy. I'd love to read your analysis of the question if you'd oblige me. I'll also make another attempt as you ask. I ultimately believe that there's a progression system of consciousness related to the nature of our being. Modifying our being by forming different kinds of attachments and detachments, in the Jungian sense of alchemy, allows us to ac…
That's one hell of a reading of Matthew 5:8. In this deontology of yours, how are "superior" and "inferior" defined, precisely?