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1984 v. Brave New World

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Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#41

Post by stormbrew »

nickff wrote: post #36
stormbrew wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the issues I have with Huxley's view of things is that I think it makes a massive leap from the idea of people being content to that being pathologized into being oppressed. Part of that is that I'm not sure there's ever been a point in history in which the majority of people actively contribute to the political sphere on a regular basis. They have always been distracted by something (often mere survival). Eve…

The people of "Brave New World" (BNW) are not truly content, they are merely happy. The BNWers are terrified of being without their soma, because without the soma, they realize their lives are empty and unfulfilling. The soma is a way to escape the reality of their lives, and avoid any self-awareness or unpleasant truths. If you were to examine their lives under almost any metric, such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs,…

Sure. To be clear, I'm not saying that they are happy in BNW. BNW is deliberately an exaggeration of trends that Huxley feared in his present, though. And, as can be seen in other threads (see the comic someone linked to) is taken as a meaningful depiction of the current state of affairs.

So I'm here arguing about the idea that Huxley would see the state we're in now as being representative of his dystopic ideas in principle if not in fact. And given his own commentary on his and others' work, I think he probably would.

The question then is: is the contentedness of the masses right now reflective of a 'drug/distraction-induced ignorance' of a Huxleyan style? It's often asserted, but I don't think I've seen a compelling argument. People are largely free to be discontent, and what means the state actually seems to use to work against popular discontent look more like Orwell than Huxley to me.

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#42

Post by 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.

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#43

Post by baddox »

devindotcom wrote: post #29
roel_v wrote: post #13

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,…

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 hap…

> The people are oblivious to all art and real achievement

Or, maybe the people in our real society are oblivious to the peace and happiness experienced in A Brave New World's society.

> 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.

Are any of those differences actually useful things inherently, or only in pursuit of happiness? If you've got your happiness from another source (a drug), why keep doing the things that were previously necessary to attain happiness?

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#44

Post by 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.

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#45

Post by stormbrew »

notahacker wrote: post #35
stormbrew wrote: post #3

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... 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…

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 re…

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.

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#46

Post by genghisjahn »

wmnwmn wrote: post #42

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…

So...life is pain?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqaNi0UfOoI

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#47

Post by nobbyclark »

oceanstone wrote: post #40
Loughla wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

> 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

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#48

Post by pessimizer »

roel_v wrote: post #13

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,…

You can poison someone and feed them to your dogs without them suffering or having a moment of unhappiness.

The problem is with using behaviorist methods to train (and breed) out all possibilities of choice or creativity outside of specified bounds for human beings, who are naturally creative and whose choices of what to think and consider doing are nearly limitless.

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#49

Post by [deleted] »

roel_v wrote: post #13

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,…

[deleted]

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#50

Post by notahacker »

stormbrew wrote: post #15
bpodgursky wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO Huxley's predictions are much harder to appreciate given the relativity of cultural norms to what we grew up experiencing. While it's certainly possible to be desensitized to totalitarian oppression, I think it's harder to really appreciate the a more gradual cultural shift wrt acceptance of mood-altering prescription drugs, sexuality, mass market entertainment, etc. Not scientific in the slightest, I just think…

One of the issues I have with Huxley's view of things is that I think it makes a massive leap from the idea of people being content to that being pathologized into being oppressed. Part of that is that I'm not sure there's ever been a point in history in which the majority of people actively contribute to the political sphere on a regular basis. They have always been distracted by something (often mere survival). Eve…

Huxley's anti-sex Savage in Brave New World was ridiculous in his extremism (and the World Controller wise) for a reason. Whilst his views on drugs certainly mellowed over time he was never really a committed puritan.
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