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1984 v. Brave New World

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Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#131

Post by gweinberg »

jjoonathan wrote: post #120
wtbob wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. And that's why Brave New World is far more frightening: an educated, intelligent person looks at it now and thinks, 'that's not so bad!'

Then it should be easy to argue the point instead of offering feigned surprise that someone might think that way.

Good and bad are fundamentally subjective. If you look at BNW and think "that's not so bad", we;ll just have to agree to disagree.

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#133

Post by chiaro »

efa wrote: post #68
aprdm wrote: post #6

Illustrates it well: http://postimg.org/image/ue0pdq56r/

Wow excellent! I'm always been more drawn to Orwell. But I think this illustrates how we are definitely headed more towards Huxley's vision.

It does cherry pick from Huxley to make the point. There's little uptake of genetically engineered class systems in modern society, for example. Regardless, I think that between the two texts, 1984 is by far the closest to our reality. Not here, of course, but in North Korea. No western country can be drawn as either without some major overreaches.

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#134

Post by chiaro »

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…

The US is big exception here, and the supposed inverse relation between sexual liberty and incarceration rates evaporates when you look at the bigger picture. Western European countries are arguably more liberal in this area (take a look through what is acceptable in advertising, for one example) and have much lower prison rates than the US, at least.

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#135

Post by chiaro »

solitus wrote: post #34
dicroce wrote: post #8

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.

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...

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

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#136

Post by chiaro »

exelius wrote: post #44

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, moral…

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

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#137

Post by kirsebaer »

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…

If you've read Brave New World or you like psychedelics, you should really check out Island, the novel Huxley wrote after taking mescaline (PDF version is online).

Island is pro-drug (magic mushrooms), pro-sex, pro-enjoying life, sensible use of sperm banks, sensible non-coercive education, playful response to religion.

Sado-masochism is presented as child abuse or a kinky adult game, not as in BNW as a nobel response to an immoral world (BNW ends with the savage whipping himself, getting into an orgy with curious onlookers, and then hanging himself in disgust).

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#138

Post by 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.

Re: 1984 v. Brave New World

#139

Post by lmkg »

tikhonj wrote: post #98

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…

I think comparing Brave New World to 1984 misses a bit of the point. The books came out near each other and deal with similar themes, so they very often get compared to each other. But they are also significant and important books in isolation.

Yes, BNW is a better dystopia to live in than 1984. But... it's still a dystopia. Free thinkers are socially ostracized, personal preferences (outside a certain set) are ignored, personal destiny is decided at conception (one case where the world of 1984 is preferable). It's a shocking world, and one that I wouldn't want to live in.

And inevitably, the discussion revolves around the fact that it's not as bad as 1984. As if "actually only the second-worst dystopia in classic fiction" is anything but damning.

Having a dystopia-off distracts from a significant part of the value that these works have to us as members of a society: There is more than one road to hell (and more than one hell to reach). 1984 shows an example of a possible future, why it is bad, and how it got that way. BNW shows an example of a very different future, why it is bad, and (less clearly) how it got that way. They give useful common ideas for possible outcomes of current actions. While BNW is preferable to 1984, it still shows that avoiding a 1984 outcome as hard as you can is not enough because there are other ways that freedom can be destroyed. To simply say "I would prefer my freedom be destroyed in one of these two ways" is not the most useful thing one can take away from reading these two books.

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