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While I love 1984, I think Fahrenheit 451 has become more true than Orwell's novel. People have willingly given into an information bonanza that is the internet

While I love 1984, I think Fahrenheit 451 has become more true than Orwell's novel. People have willingly given into an information bonanza that is the internet, with headphones always in (seashells). We don't need the TV walls, as our cellphone has taken that role, altogether with the hyperactive delivery of such content. A collectivist state has not become the dominating power, but wealthy individuals and corporations have, although with similar results--while that part wasn't really part of Montag's universe, the part that is is that we have given up to the "firemen" on our own freewill, because it fits our narrative or it's our safe space. Nonetheless, I am very optimistic. I think for all the faults that the internet and mobiles and social networks and globalization has wrought us, the world today still is a better world it was say 20 or 30 years ago. When ontop of oscillations, they are never obvious from the vantage point of a single wiggle. I still feel that despite many of the shortcomings of the previous few decades and years and months, we can still arrive on net at a better place than we were yesterday.

knieveltech 10y ago
I feel that if you honestly believe the world is unambiguously better now than it was 20-30 years ago this reflects either your youth or privilege more so than any objective truth. I'll just leave this here: http://thebulletin.org/timeline http://thebulletin.org/timeline
- akiselev 10y ago
  If you honestly don't believe the world is unambiguously better now than it was 20-30 years ago, you've been living under a continental plate the entire time. The world has gotten better in almost every way including the rapid fall in poverty rates, more reliable sources of food and medicine, and better access to technology for even the poorest folk. All the problems that seem so overwhelming now like the threat of nuclear war, growing confrontationalism between and within countries, or extreme nationalism were way worse before the 90s (unless, of course, you honestly believe that the United States is the only nation on the planet and you have a nostalgic predilection for the "good ol' days"). Not to mention that the majority of the world has finally recognized and united around solving the single greatest threat to our civilization, a threat that pretty much irreversibly changed our climate by the time we identified it and became completely unavoidable by the 1990s. If all you're going to do is provide a link to an arbitrary countdown with scary words like "nuclear" and "catastrophe" as your evidence, might as well skip the sciency sounding fluff and just link one of Nostradamus's books. Until then, I'll fondly remember just how priveleged I was growing up in the Soviet Union and reconstruction-era Russia. /s
  - pmyjavec 10y ago
    "and better access to technology for even the poorest folk" I hear this one a lot, I don't think it matters or is relevant. I've spent time in third world countries I met people sleeping, working and eating in rubish dumps, and they're not even considered the poorest! I didn't see them running around with technology, nor do I see how that would change there situation much.
    - akiselev 10y ago
      > I hear this one a lot, do you have a source to prove this? What kinds of source would be most convincing for such a broad question such as this? How about the fact that as many people have escaped extreme poverty since 1990 as there are human beings alive in Europe [1]? Average global purchasing power more than doubling [2]? Or maybe global agricultural output growing more than twice as fast as the world population since 2000 [3]? Life expectancy at birth increasing by more than 10% [4]? The massive decline in fatalities from armed conflicts [5]? Growths in industrial productivity that dwarfs even the industrial revolution [6]? How about access to technology that can instantly connect you to half of the world [7]? Price of renewable energy finally at parity with fossil fuels even in the face of the Republican party [8]? The number of people living under elected representatives instead of authoritarian regimes nearly doubling [9]? Better yet, what evidence do you have that invalidates all of the above? Even if you're the world's ultimate nit-picker, the data is overwhelmingly positive. > I've spent time in third world countries and not even the poorest people were working and eating in rubish dumps and guess there slept? I didn't see them running around with technology. The only region in the world where less than half the population has access to at least mobile broadband is Subsaharan Africa. Even now the wealthiest nations have citizens that fall through cracks in the system and live in destitution but the big picture is clear: the world is better off now than it ever has been. [1] http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/report-2013/mdg-report-2013-english.pdf http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/report-2013/mdg-report... [2] http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=xx&v=67 http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=xx&v=67 [3] http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1860 http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do... [4] https://www.clio-infra.eu/datasets/search https://www.clio-infra.eu/datasets/search [5] http://www.hsrgroup.org/docs/Publications/HSR2013/HSRP_Report_2013_140226_Web.pdf http://www.hsrgroup.org/docs/Publications/HSR2013/HSRP_Repor... [6] http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/global-economic-monitor http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/global-economic-monit... [7] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.P2 http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.P2 [8] http://sunmetrix.com/sunmetrix-grid-parity-map-for-residential-solar-energy-in-the-united-states/ http://sunmetrix.com/sunmetrix-grid-parity-map-for-residenti... [9] https://ourworldindata.org/democracy/ https://ourworldindata.org/democracy/
zamalek 10y ago
Indeed. In addition to your points, Orwell has to do with both an overreaching left (thought crime) and right (surveillance state). The government even associates itself with socialism. That being said, it's not a stretch to imagine that it takes two successive and opposed politicians to set up and orwellian state. Trump would set up the surveillance state (as he threatens to do), and some future authoritative Democrat could outlaw freedom of speech.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Orwell has to do with both an overreaching left (thought crime) and right (surveillance state). No, the surveillance state is certainly not a right-wing-specific thing, and in fact Orwell was probably inspired by the Stasi and other Soviet secret police agencies. Just to give you an idea: By 1995, some 174,000 inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (IMs) Stasi informants had been identified, almost 2.5% of East Germany's population between the ages of 18 and 60. 10,000 IMs were under 18 years of age. The last line is significant, since the book talks on children denouncing their own parents, who live afraid of them.
  - zamalek 10y ago
    Thanks for the correction, I clearly interpreted it incorrectly.
  - PhoneAccount 10y ago
    > in fact Orwell was probably inspired by the Stasi You know when 1984 was written?
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Yes; a couple of years after the Stasi was created, though it was called Kommissariat 5 back then, before the GDR was officially established and could have official agencies.
      - PhoneAccount 10y ago
martinpw 10y ago
> When ontop of oscillations, they are never obvious from the vantage point of a single wiggle. I am reminded of the Martin Luther King quote: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."
- humanrebar 10y ago
  That was probably a theological opinion, for what it's worth. People forget MLK was a pastor.
  - bb611 10y ago
    I disagree, he was paraphrasing early 19th century abolitionist Theodore Parker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Parker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Parker Another theologian for sure, but pretty squarely in the context of black rights in the US.
    - humanrebar 10y ago
      Some of King's best work was putting civil rights in a theological context. That's basically what Letters From A Birmingham Jail was about. Despite the passive voice, I still think God and Christ were on King's mind when coining that. I'm sure if he were still alive, he'd agree.
- gozur88 10y ago
  He was probably wrong about that. It's more like a pendulum that swings in both directions.
wallace_f 10y ago
> the world today still is a better world it was say 20 or 30 years ago Are you sure? Can you tell me why you think this? Domestic crime has increased. We're bombing seven countries. Civil rights have been diminished. Human rights have been diminished. The last administration went to far greater lengths to go after whistle blowers and journalists than any in history. Income inequality is at all time highs. More than ever struggle to afford a home or to pay off debt (student loans). The biggest improvements seem to have been isolated to those in technology.
- RangerScience 10y ago
  Google variations on "graphs to make you feel better about the future". http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-that-will-restore-your-faith-in-humanity-2013-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-that-will-restore-your...
  - andai 10y ago
    Thanks, that's somewhat uplifting.
    - RangerScience 10y ago
      You're welcome! There's also a good Ted Talk with an animated graph of life expectancy v wealth, with country blobs moving around from ~1700ish? to now. Hint: Everything goes up and to the right, although in some pretty interesting ways.
- iainmerrick 10y ago
  Not all those things are actually getting worse! Crime is falling in the long term, not rising, at least in the US. Much of the world now allows same-sex marriage, which I think is an important civil rights advancement. I take your points on war, the crackdown on whistleblowers, income inequality. But on the upside, we have tremendous advances in medicine (is that "just" technology?) It's a mixed picture, not a universally gloomy one.
zczc 10y ago
Another classic anti-utopia becoming relevant today is 'Brave New World' by Huxley. See brilliant comparison with '1984' on comic [1] which summarizes Neil Postman's book 'Amusing Ourselves to Death'. [1]: http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-vs-orwell/ http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-v...
- htaunay 10y ago
  I can't recommend "Amusing Ourselves to Death" enough, especially in the light of the most recent election processes the world is witnessing. Neil Postman's thesis is both timely and - unfortunately - eerie.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  This is an interesting comic, but I'd like to point out that becoming a society concerned with triviality is nothing new. Just look at the crap they were watching on TV in the 50s and 60s. And even if you go back in time to before TVs, there was plenty of crap that people occupied themselves with. It's just a lot easier now since so many of us no longer have to struggle just to survive every day. Wishing for the entire population to be highly educated and interested in important matters is, I think, a fool's errand. You're never going to get that from people unless you start culling less-intelligent people, which obviously isn't a good idea for many reasons.
  - fnl 10y ago
    Which begs the question: Is modern's "occupied with crap" better, equal, or worse than the ancient "struggle to survive"? While in the measurable numbers game, the world certainly has become a better place (less child deaths, more literacy, longer life expectancy etc.), the actual question to ask oneself is if those numbers indeed are good proxies for a "better" world or life. Is living longer, assisted by mechanical and pharmaceutical products plus surgical procedures, really that great? In general, we now are working more hours then ever before in history, and hence have less time for being creative, having hobbies, or simply to behold one of "Goethe's moments," because we always are in a hurry. Are we really happier, and even if we were, is that maybe only due to every second adult over 40 or 50 using anti-depressants? Actually measuring if we are indeed living in a "better world" or a "better life" is very hard to do objectively with the parameters we have, and I honestly doubt it is possible. In the end, I believe the answer probably is: In many cases, it depends more on what you make of the time you were given than in which year you were born.
applecore 10y ago
>A collectivist state has not become the dominating power, but wealthy individuals and corporations have, although with similar results... Seriously? The current state of affairs is nothing compared to the socialist/communist nightmares of the twentieth century. It's not even close.
- spectrum1234 10y ago
  Exactly. People are looking at a ~2 decade window like its a large sample size.
- binaryabyss 10y ago
  At least communist states didn't destroy the world through overconsumption.
  - pizzetta 10y ago
    But they did engage in grand designs (like the Aral water diversion project, and more recently the three gorges dam project) and lax environmental concerns. So it's not clear to me that they were "better" however they were perhaps worse because ideology dictated what they did moreso than some other considerations.
  - maw 10y ago
    No, but their environmental record hasn't been great, either. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea for one particularly spectacular example.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    Only because they were too inefficient - they didn't do anything very well beyond controlling the people. And, come to think of it, not even that.
briantakita 10y ago
Two other good books that explain the geopolitical history/algorithms: Propaganda - by Edward Bernays http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html > THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. > We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. Tragedy & Hope - by Carroll Quigley > The powers of financial capitalism had [a] far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.
Lasher 10y ago
The Roger Water's album titled 'Amused to Death' is also a perfect predication of where we've ended up, particularly the title track on the album.
- midwestcode 10y ago
  Was just planning on picking up the book. Didn't even know about this album.. listening now! Thanks for sharing.
- 0x445442 10y ago
  While the album is based off the Postman novel I think Waters deserves a lot of credit for expanding on the theme and conveying the idea in a remarkable piece of work. Whenever fellow Pink Floyd fans ask me what my favorite Pink Floyd album is I always tell them Amused to Death. I understand it's not technically Pink Floyd but it is Roger Waters at the height of his Jedi Powers and Jeff Beck's performance is amazing.
  - dTal 10y ago
    As a Pink Floyd fan who finds Roger Waters egotistical annexation of the band name obnoxious, I would be annoyed at this response. Roger Waters was not the heart and soul of Pink Floyd, despite his claims, and his solo work has a fundamentally different character (that I do not especially enjoy). By all means recommend his stuff if you enjoy it, but if someone asks you your favorite Floyd album - name a damn Floyd album. It's like naming a Paul McCartney album as your favorite Beatles work (only worse, since Paul never flew off the handle claiming to BE the Beatles) - you're gonna piss people off.

knieveltech 10y ago

I feel that if you honestly believe the world is unambiguously better now than it was 20-30 years ago this reflects either your youth or privilege more so than any objective truth. I'll just leave this here: http://thebulletin.org/timeline http://thebulletin.org/timeline

akiselev 10y ago
If you honestly don't believe the world is unambiguously better now than it was 20-30 years ago, you've been living under a continental plate the entire time. The world has gotten better in almost every way including the rapid fall in poverty rates, more reliable sources of food and medicine, and better access to technology for even the poorest folk. All the problems that seem so overwhelming now like the threat of nuclear war, growing confrontationalism between and within countries, or extreme nationalism were way worse before the 90s (unless, of course, you honestly believe that the United States is the only nation on the planet and you have a nostalgic predilection for the "good ol' days"). Not to mention that the majority of the world has finally recognized and united around solving the single greatest threat to our civilization, a threat that pretty much irreversibly changed our climate by the time we identified it and became completely unavoidable by the 1990s. If all you're going to do is provide a link to an arbitrary countdown with scary words like "nuclear" and "catastrophe" as your evidence, might as well skip the sciency sounding fluff and just link one of Nostradamus's books. Until then, I'll fondly remember just how priveleged I was growing up in the Soviet Union and reconstruction-era Russia. /s
- pmyjavec 10y ago
  "and better access to technology for even the poorest folk" I hear this one a lot, I don't think it matters or is relevant. I've spent time in third world countries I met people sleeping, working and eating in rubish dumps, and they're not even considered the poorest! I didn't see them running around with technology, nor do I see how that would change there situation much.
  - akiselev 10y ago
    > I hear this one a lot, do you have a source to prove this? What kinds of source would be most convincing for such a broad question such as this? How about the fact that as many people have escaped extreme poverty since 1990 as there are human beings alive in Europe [1]? Average global purchasing power more than doubling [2]? Or maybe global agricultural output growing more than twice as fast as the world population since 2000 [3]? Life expectancy at birth increasing by more than 10% [4]? The massive decline in fatalities from armed conflicts [5]? Growths in industrial productivity that dwarfs even the industrial revolution [6]? How about access to technology that can instantly connect you to half of the world [7]? Price of renewable energy finally at parity with fossil fuels even in the face of the Republican party [8]? The number of people living under elected representatives instead of authoritarian regimes nearly doubling [9]? Better yet, what evidence do you have that invalidates all of the above? Even if you're the world's ultimate nit-picker, the data is overwhelmingly positive. > I've spent time in third world countries and not even the poorest people were working and eating in rubish dumps and guess there slept? I didn't see them running around with technology. The only region in the world where less than half the population has access to at least mobile broadband is Subsaharan Africa. Even now the wealthiest nations have citizens that fall through cracks in the system and live in destitution but the big picture is clear: the world is better off now than it ever has been. [1] http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/report-2013/mdg-report-2013-english.pdf http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/report-2013/mdg-report... [2] http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=xx&v=67 http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=xx&v=67 [3] http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1860 http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do... [4] https://www.clio-infra.eu/datasets/search https://www.clio-infra.eu/datasets/search [5] http://www.hsrgroup.org/docs/Publications/HSR2013/HSRP_Report_2013_140226_Web.pdf http://www.hsrgroup.org/docs/Publications/HSR2013/HSRP_Repor... [6] http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/global-economic-monitor http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/global-economic-monit... [7] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.P2 http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.P2 [8] http://sunmetrix.com/sunmetrix-grid-parity-map-for-residential-solar-energy-in-the-united-states/ http://sunmetrix.com/sunmetrix-grid-parity-map-for-residenti... [9] https://ourworldindata.org/democracy/ https://ourworldindata.org/democracy/

zamalek 10y ago

Indeed. In addition to your points, Orwell has to do with both an overreaching left (thought crime) and right (surveillance state). The government even associates itself with socialism. That being said, it's not a stretch to imagine that it takes two successive and opposed politicians to set up and orwellian state. Trump would set up the surveillance state (as he threatens to do), and some future authoritative Democrat could outlaw freedom of speech.

icebraining 10y ago
Orwell has to do with both an overreaching left (thought crime) and right (surveillance state). No, the surveillance state is certainly not a right-wing-specific thing, and in fact Orwell was probably inspired by the Stasi and other Soviet secret police agencies. Just to give you an idea: By 1995, some 174,000 inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (IMs) Stasi informants had been identified, almost 2.5% of East Germany's population between the ages of 18 and 60. 10,000 IMs were under 18 years of age. The last line is significant, since the book talks on children denouncing their own parents, who live afraid of them.
- zamalek 10y ago
  Thanks for the correction, I clearly interpreted it incorrectly.
- PhoneAccount 10y ago
  > in fact Orwell was probably inspired by the Stasi You know when 1984 was written?
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Yes; a couple of years after the Stasi was created, though it was called Kommissariat 5 back then, before the GDR was officially established and could have official agencies.
    - PhoneAccount 10y ago

martinpw 10y ago

> When ontop of oscillations, they are never obvious from the vantage point of a single wiggle. I am reminded of the Martin Luther King quote: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

humanrebar 10y ago
That was probably a theological opinion, for what it's worth. People forget MLK was a pastor.
- bb611 10y ago
  I disagree, he was paraphrasing early 19th century abolitionist Theodore Parker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Parker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Parker Another theologian for sure, but pretty squarely in the context of black rights in the US.
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    Some of King's best work was putting civil rights in a theological context. That's basically what Letters From A Birmingham Jail was about. Despite the passive voice, I still think God and Christ were on King's mind when coining that. I'm sure if he were still alive, he'd agree.
gozur88 10y ago
He was probably wrong about that. It's more like a pendulum that swings in both directions.

wallace_f 10y ago

> the world today still is a better world it was say 20 or 30 years ago Are you sure? Can you tell me why you think this? Domestic crime has increased. We're bombing seven countries. Civil rights have been diminished. Human rights have been diminished. The last administration went to far greater lengths to go after whistle blowers and journalists than any in history. Income inequality is at all time highs. More than ever struggle to afford a home or to pay off debt (student loans). The biggest improvements seem to have been isolated to those in technology.

RangerScience 10y ago
Google variations on "graphs to make you feel better about the future". http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-that-will-restore-your-faith-in-humanity-2013-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-that-will-restore-your...
- andai 10y ago
  Thanks, that's somewhat uplifting.
  - RangerScience 10y ago
    You're welcome! There's also a good Ted Talk with an animated graph of life expectancy v wealth, with country blobs moving around from ~1700ish? to now. Hint: Everything goes up and to the right, although in some pretty interesting ways.
iainmerrick 10y ago
Not all those things are actually getting worse! Crime is falling in the long term, not rising, at least in the US. Much of the world now allows same-sex marriage, which I think is an important civil rights advancement. I take your points on war, the crackdown on whistleblowers, income inequality. But on the upside, we have tremendous advances in medicine (is that "just" technology?) It's a mixed picture, not a universally gloomy one.

zczc 10y ago

Another classic anti-utopia becoming relevant today is 'Brave New World' by Huxley. See brilliant comparison with '1984' on comic [1] which summarizes Neil Postman's book 'Amusing Ourselves to Death'. [1]: http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-vs-orwell/ http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-v...

htaunay 10y ago
I can't recommend "Amusing Ourselves to Death" enough, especially in the light of the most recent election processes the world is witnessing. Neil Postman's thesis is both timely and - unfortunately - eerie.
Arizhel 10y ago
This is an interesting comic, but I'd like to point out that becoming a society concerned with triviality is nothing new. Just look at the crap they were watching on TV in the 50s and 60s. And even if you go back in time to before TVs, there was plenty of crap that people occupied themselves with. It's just a lot easier now since so many of us no longer have to struggle just to survive every day. Wishing for the entire population to be highly educated and interested in important matters is, I think, a fool's errand. You're never going to get that from people unless you start culling less-intelligent people, which obviously isn't a good idea for many reasons.
- fnl 10y ago
  Which begs the question: Is modern's "occupied with crap" better, equal, or worse than the ancient "struggle to survive"? While in the measurable numbers game, the world certainly has become a better place (less child deaths, more literacy, longer life expectancy etc.), the actual question to ask oneself is if those numbers indeed are good proxies for a "better" world or life. Is living longer, assisted by mechanical and pharmaceutical products plus surgical procedures, really that great? In general, we now are working more hours then ever before in history, and hence have less time for being creative, having hobbies, or simply to behold one of "Goethe's moments," because we always are in a hurry. Are we really happier, and even if we were, is that maybe only due to every second adult over 40 or 50 using anti-depressants? Actually measuring if we are indeed living in a "better world" or a "better life" is very hard to do objectively with the parameters we have, and I honestly doubt it is possible. In the end, I believe the answer probably is: In many cases, it depends more on what you make of the time you were given than in which year you were born.

applecore 10y ago

>A collectivist state has not become the dominating power, but wealthy individuals and corporations have, although with similar results... Seriously? The current state of affairs is nothing compared to the socialist/communist nightmares of the twentieth century. It's not even close.

spectrum1234 10y ago
Exactly. People are looking at a ~2 decade window like its a large sample size.
binaryabyss 10y ago
At least communist states didn't destroy the world through overconsumption.
- pizzetta 10y ago
  But they did engage in grand designs (like the Aral water diversion project, and more recently the three gorges dam project) and lax environmental concerns. So it's not clear to me that they were "better" however they were perhaps worse because ideology dictated what they did moreso than some other considerations.
- maw 10y ago
  No, but their environmental record hasn't been great, either. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea for one particularly spectacular example.
- gozur88 10y ago
  Only because they were too inefficient - they didn't do anything very well beyond controlling the people. And, come to think of it, not even that.

briantakita 10y ago

Two other good books that explain the geopolitical history/algorithms: Propaganda - by Edward Bernays http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html > THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. > We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. Tragedy & Hope - by Carroll Quigley > The powers of financial capitalism had [a] far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.

Lasher 10y ago

The Roger Water's album titled 'Amused to Death' is also a perfect predication of where we've ended up, particularly the title track on the album.

midwestcode 10y ago
Was just planning on picking up the book. Didn't even know about this album.. listening now! Thanks for sharing.
0x445442 10y ago
While the album is based off the Postman novel I think Waters deserves a lot of credit for expanding on the theme and conveying the idea in a remarkable piece of work. Whenever fellow Pink Floyd fans ask me what my favorite Pink Floyd album is I always tell them Amused to Death. I understand it's not technically Pink Floyd but it is Roger Waters at the height of his Jedi Powers and Jeff Beck's performance is amazing.
- dTal 10y ago
  As a Pink Floyd fan who finds Roger Waters egotistical annexation of the band name obnoxious, I would be annoyed at this response. Roger Waters was not the heart and soul of Pink Floyd, despite his claims, and his solo work has a fundamentally different character (that I do not especially enjoy). By all means recommend his stuff if you enjoy it, but if someone asks you your favorite Floyd album - name a damn Floyd album. It's like naming a Paul McCartney album as your favorite Beatles work (only worse, since Paul never flew off the handle claiming to BE the Beatles) - you're gonna piss people off.