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What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to r

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. 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."

littlestymaar 5y ago
> What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. And in the middle there's Bradbury, who was convinced that practically no one would read books anymore (because those would be replaced by few sentences-long stories and videos clips, like Twitter and Tik Tok) but at the same time wrote a book about how the few people who still want to read books for some reasons would be prosecuted.
- decasteve 5y ago
  Bradbury covered the spectrum of from literal book burning to idea burning through his characters. In my opinion it's through Faber he hit the nail on the head. It's not just books, but the quality and "texture" of the information, having time to reflect and contemplate it (leisure), and having the ability and willingness to act upon it.
- JetAlone 5y ago
  Hmmmm, it's considered okay to read the books, but any conclusions you communicate had really better fit the boundaries of a given dominant orthodoxy or your effectiveness will need to be curtailed. That's how it's almost always been, and that's how it's almost always going to be.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    Nuance is alt-right. Free speech is for fascists. Discussion with the opposition is forbidden, they're to be ignored.

littlestymaar 5y ago

> What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. And in the middle there's Bradbury, who was convinced that practically no one would read books anymore (because those would be replaced by few sentences-long stories and videos clips, like Twitter and Tik Tok) but at the same time wrote a book about how the few people who still want to read books for some reasons would be prosecuted.

decasteve 5y ago
Bradbury covered the spectrum of from literal book burning to idea burning through his characters. In my opinion it's through Faber he hit the nail on the head. It's not just books, but the quality and "texture" of the information, having time to reflect and contemplate it (leisure), and having the ability and willingness to act upon it.
JetAlone 5y ago
Hmmmm, it's considered okay to read the books, but any conclusions you communicate had really better fit the boundaries of a given dominant orthodoxy or your effectiveness will need to be curtailed. That's how it's almost always been, and that's how it's almost always going to be.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Nuance is alt-right. Free speech is for fascists. Discussion with the opposition is forbidden, they're to be ignored.