4 ms·

Talking about 1984 and A Brave New World, I think these might have been dystopian in the past, but not now. Technology (including surveillance technology) was

Talking about 1984 and A Brave New World, I think these might have been dystopian in the past, but not now. Technology (including surveillance technology) was the missing piece and we've closed that gap not long ago, making Oceania and World State a reality. Now its up to the elected politicians to implement a particular incarnation of one of these novels. There are more and more places in the world which look and feel like 1984 (or are quickly getting there), while a big chunk of the 'western' world lives in a Brave New World already. I guess these books are so popular now not because of what might happen to our world in the future, but because of how accurately Orwell and Huxley described the world we live in today.

arca_vorago 9y ago
The way I have been putting it is like this: It's a brave new world until you resist, and then it's 1984.
clarkmoody 9y ago
Perhaps children are forced to read these books in school precisely because it causes them to hate them. That way, they are sure to avoid those books at all costs later in life, when the lessons are more readily received.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Are these books mandatory reading? Where?
gorkonsine 9y ago
How is Brave New World really all that dystopian? If you're highly conservative and think having big families and lots of babies is your life's goal, then sure, BNW is going to seem hellish. But considering today's low birthrates, and the fact that so many children in rich nations are born into poverty, BNW seems to offer a better society in many ways. Most other dystopian sci-fi predicts a future plagued by wars, violence, a breakdown of the rule of law, extreme unfairness or gap between haves and have-nots, and other factors which generally lead to the majority of the population being downright miserable. 1984 had constant wars and ubiquitous surveillance by the state looking for "thoughtcrime". Elysium had a society where the elites lived in nice orbiting habitats and everyone else lived in squalor on the surface. The Running Man (the movie) had an authoritarian government shooting people in food riots and using a game show to pacify people and keep them from rebelling, with most people starving but a few elites living well (again, similar to 1984--the "outer party" members had decent standards of living but the "proles" didn't). Honestly, BNW sounds like a step up from today's world: plenty of casual sex (lots of people already do this now), no worries about child-support payments, no kids raised by welfare mothers, kids raised by professionals instead of by asshole parents who disown them at 18 because they didn't turn out the way they wanted (honestly, I think I see one of these every day on /r/personalfinance), no failed marriages (because no one gets married: today's marriage stats show that it's a failure of an institution with less than 50% success rate, and today's singledom stats show that fewer people are even bothering to give it a first try). It's a big departure from traditional society to be sure, but all indications are that the traditional society of the past is no longer working for us. From the article: "Today, we can define dystopia as 'an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.'" (This definition comes from the OED.) BNW does depict a totalitarian system, but not an environmentally degraded one, nor one where everything is unpleasant or bad. In fact, it isn't even completely totalitarian: people who don't fit in are allowed to opt out, and become "savages", living outside the society. Normal totalitarian systems don't do that: you can't leave, and people who try are usually shot, as became infamous in Berlin during the Cold War. The society of BNW may not seem wonderful to many people today, but to the people living in that fictional society, all indications were that they were quite happy with their lives.

arca_vorago 9y ago

The way I have been putting it is like this: It's a brave new world until you resist, and then it's 1984.

clarkmoody 9y ago

Perhaps children are forced to read these books in school precisely because it causes them to hate them. That way, they are sure to avoid those books at all costs later in life, when the lessons are more readily received.

icebraining 9y ago
Are these books mandatory reading? Where?

gorkonsine 9y ago

How is Brave New World really all that dystopian? If you're highly conservative and think having big families and lots of babies is your life's goal, then sure, BNW is going to seem hellish. But considering today's low birthrates, and the fact that so many children in rich nations are born into poverty, BNW seems to offer a better society in many ways. Most other dystopian sci-fi predicts a future plagued by wars, violence, a breakdown of the rule of law, extreme unfairness or gap between haves and have-nots, and other factors which generally lead to the majority of the population being downright miserable. 1984 had constant wars and ubiquitous surveillance by the state looking for "thoughtcrime". Elysium had a society where the elites lived in nice orbiting habitats and everyone else lived in squalor on the surface. The Running Man (the movie) had an authoritarian government shooting people in food riots and using a game show to pacify people and keep them from rebelling, with most people starving but a few elites living well (again, similar to 1984--the "outer party" members had decent standards of living but the "proles" didn't). Honestly, BNW sounds like a step up from today's world: plenty of casual sex (lots of people already do this now), no worries about child-support payments, no kids raised by welfare mothers, kids raised by professionals instead of by asshole parents who disown them at 18 because they didn't turn out the way they wanted (honestly, I think I see one of these every day on /r/personalfinance), no failed marriages (because no one gets married: today's marriage stats show that it's a failure of an institution with less than 50% success rate, and today's singledom stats show that fewer people are even bothering to give it a first try). It's a big departure from traditional society to be sure, but all indications are that the traditional society of the past is no longer working for us. From the article: "Today, we can define dystopia as 'an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.'" (This definition comes from the OED.) BNW does depict a totalitarian system, but not an environmentally degraded one, nor one where everything is unpleasant or bad. In fact, it isn't even completely totalitarian: people who don't fit in are allowed to opt out, and become "savages", living outside the society. Normal totalitarian systems don't do that: you can't leave, and people who try are usually shot, as became infamous in Berlin during the Cold War. The society of BNW may not seem wonderful to many people today, but to the people living in that fictional society, all indications were that they were quite happy with their lives.