5 ms·

Huxley seems to be more right in the long term, since Orwellian oppression is very visible, people work to fix it and eventually do. Not so for Huxly-an dystopi

by mjfl 5y ago

Huxley seems to be more right in the long term, since Orwellian oppression is very visible, people work to fix it and eventually do. Not so for Huxly-an dystopia.

NikolaeVarius 5y ago
> Orwellian oppression is very visible 1984 makes a fairly strong point that this is not true. The proles do not conceive of the fact that they are oppressed. Only the outer party can even think this, and at best its a muted response. Newspeak is about making it impossible to see or conceptualize oppression or injustice.
- jancsika 5y ago
  > Newspeak is about making it impossible to see or conceptualize oppression or injustice. But were the proles forced to use Newspeak? I thought they were singing folks songs and stuff...
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    I dont think the proles were, since they were already in a state where they could not recognize they were under the Party's boot. "The proles are free" Newspeak was supposed to stamp out "bad" thoughts from members the party.
  - robocat 5y ago
    Newspeak was primarily for the political classes, with the aim of absolute political control: ultimate authoritarianism of a system of thought (also see Sapir–Whorf hypothesis). By controlling language, all dissenting political opinions could be prevented, with the eventual goal that any thought that wasn’t the official line (such as liberty) could have only the single word ‘crimethink’ to describe it. Big brother and Emmanuel Goldstein (the revolutionary against the state) were fictions of the system, permanent idealised placeholders for the system. The system rules: people within the political system are trained by the system to be perfect cogs with zero independent thought, and the higher up in the hierarchy the less control and more mechanically thought-constricted the person became. Over time the system restricted thought, restricted language, and as the political class were replaced over the decades, the upcoming people were evermore controlled by the system. The only goal of the system was complete and total control. The proles made up the majority of the population, but are almost invisible in the book, which leads to some odd Internet comments. The proles have zero political thought, and they live short lives of poverty. The proles are programmed to be interested in meaningless songs (produced by the versificator machine), meaningless persuits (such as lotteries), and other diversions. The proles do not speak newspeak, because they are not political. They certainly didn’t sing traditional folk songs (English aka ‘oldspeak’ is slowly abridged, removing all political words and nuances, and old literature is destroyed by rewriting it to remove all political nuance). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Nineteen_Eighty-Four) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Nineteen_Eighty-F... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein
- native_samples 5y ago
  Ironically, the article and this discussion seems like a good case in point! "Totalitarianism was Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the state controlled everyone through the infliction of pain and terror" That sounds far closer to our current existence than BNW. Where are my bread and circuses? Circuses were shut down for much of the last two years, because of the need to fight an ever-shifting war against a terrifying virus ... a danger that cannot be directly perceived because almost everyone who gets it has mild symptoms and recover after a few days, but which rather, can only be truly perceived through the telescreen in our living rooms and the pronouncements of the ruling classes. The parallels to 1984 are everywhere recent times, yet the majority cannot see them. Newspeak is in abundance. Policies change overnight and yet the Party claims that the policy was always the same, previously famous people get erased instantly the moment they object, and the population is trained to demand their own oppression, believing ultra-harsh conditions to be an expression of love.
colecut 5y ago
Nearly everyone carries an internet connected camera microphone tracking device everywhere.
- Hnaomyiph 5y ago
  Does a camera, microphone and tracking device detect a slowly boiled frog?
time_to_smile 5y ago
The trouble is I'm perfectly fine with the Huxlian distopia. Ship me off to an island of intellectual dissidents and give me some good drugs, I'm down for that world. Kafka is the one who really got it right. I've never felt a more realistic depiction of my life than The Trial.
- cjbgkagh 5y ago
  I'd be down for 60 years of good health, I think of the amount of work that I could do. I think the problem is that they have to keep throwing the work away and the pointlessness of it all would kill me.
WillPostForFood 5y ago
Orwellian oppression is very visible, people work to fix it and eventually do. At least in 1984, oppression wins. It is a very bleak ending.
- mehlmao 5y ago
  It wins over Winston, but not forever. The appendix on Newspeak is written in past tense, implying that at some time it came to an end.
jabbany 5y ago
> Orwellian oppression is very visible Yes. > people work to fix it and eventually do. No? My understanding of Orwellian oppression is exactly that even though people are very aware that it exists, only a small minority of people care enough (or are personally harmed enough) to want to take actions change it. Just look at modern day China. All but the most naive are aware of things like censorship and surveillance. Most have first-hand interactions with both. People joke about it all the time (being "invited for tea" or such and such news was "harmonized" a.k.a. censored). Some of the language has evolved to be almost not that different from what was envisioned in Newspeak. And yet, the average person does not feel violated enough to actually do something about anything. It's much easier to just go with the flow and not do what the state doesn't like.
- Clubber 5y ago
  >And yet, the average person does not feel violated enough to actually do something about anything. It's much easier to just go with the flow and not do what the state doesn't like. The problem is it requires a lot of people to make a difference. A single person or a small group protesting gets thrown into a reeducation camp for 20 years (if they are lucky). That's one of the reasons mass surveillance is so nefarious; you can't start to plan a mass assembly/protest to address grievances without being noticed beforehand and thrown into a reeducation camp for 20 years (if you are lucky). You can't even talk about grievances with more than a few other people in a dark closet somewhere.
  - jabbany 5y ago
    Right, and that was the point of the Orwellian dystopia. Even if a single person sees the dystopia for what it is, they cannot get the masses to act.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      It's even more insidious than that. Even if the masses see the dystopia for what it is, they can't come together to fight it, because surveillance will be watching their coordination efforts. In North Korea I suspect most everyone knows the propaganda is bullshit, but even a whisper of dissent will send the police knocking at your door. We aren't as bad as North Korea of course, but it sure smells similar.
62951413 5y ago
How about Huxley is for 1st world rich countries like the US and Orwell for poor ones like the Soviet/Putin's Russia?
mrjangles 5y ago
There is a related thread on the problems Argentina is currently facing. It is worth reading through to see just how wrong you are. The problems Argentina is facing are well known and obvious and no one is doing anything about it, those problems have existed for decades. The newspeak is so strong in Argentina that even in that thread no one will say the real reasons out loud. Even when I was there 20 years ago, people had to hush whisper and look around to see who was listening when talking about the problems they were facing.
- bhelkey 5y ago
  > The newspeak is so strong in Argentina that even in that thread no one will say the real reasons out loud. What's stopping you from saying what you think are the real reasons?
  - mrjangles 5y ago
    Don't want to bother getting into a fight strangers on the internet. The reasons are obvious and well know. Just look at any country in South America that is suffering and it is always the same reason - socialism.

by mjfl 5y ago

Huxley seems to be more right in the long term, since Orwellian oppression is very visible, people work to fix it and eventually do. Not so for Huxly-an dystopia.

NikolaeVarius 5y ago

> Orwellian oppression is very visible 1984 makes a fairly strong point that this is not true. The proles do not conceive of the fact that they are oppressed. Only the outer party can even think this, and at best its a muted response. Newspeak is about making it impossible to see or conceptualize oppression or injustice.

jancsika 5y ago
> Newspeak is about making it impossible to see or conceptualize oppression or injustice. But were the proles forced to use Newspeak? I thought they were singing folks songs and stuff...
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  I dont think the proles were, since they were already in a state where they could not recognize they were under the Party's boot. "The proles are free" Newspeak was supposed to stamp out "bad" thoughts from members the party.
- robocat 5y ago
  Newspeak was primarily for the political classes, with the aim of absolute political control: ultimate authoritarianism of a system of thought (also see Sapir–Whorf hypothesis). By controlling language, all dissenting political opinions could be prevented, with the eventual goal that any thought that wasn’t the official line (such as liberty) could have only the single word ‘crimethink’ to describe it. Big brother and Emmanuel Goldstein (the revolutionary against the state) were fictions of the system, permanent idealised placeholders for the system. The system rules: people within the political system are trained by the system to be perfect cogs with zero independent thought, and the higher up in the hierarchy the less control and more mechanically thought-constricted the person became. Over time the system restricted thought, restricted language, and as the political class were replaced over the decades, the upcoming people were evermore controlled by the system. The only goal of the system was complete and total control. The proles made up the majority of the population, but are almost invisible in the book, which leads to some odd Internet comments. The proles have zero political thought, and they live short lives of poverty. The proles are programmed to be interested in meaningless songs (produced by the versificator machine), meaningless persuits (such as lotteries), and other diversions. The proles do not speak newspeak, because they are not political. They certainly didn’t sing traditional folk songs (English aka ‘oldspeak’ is slowly abridged, removing all political words and nuances, and old literature is destroyed by rewriting it to remove all political nuance). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Nineteen_Eighty-Four) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Nineteen_Eighty-F... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein
native_samples 5y ago
Ironically, the article and this discussion seems like a good case in point! "Totalitarianism was Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the state controlled everyone through the infliction of pain and terror" That sounds far closer to our current existence than BNW. Where are my bread and circuses? Circuses were shut down for much of the last two years, because of the need to fight an ever-shifting war against a terrifying virus ... a danger that cannot be directly perceived because almost everyone who gets it has mild symptoms and recover after a few days, but which rather, can only be truly perceived through the telescreen in our living rooms and the pronouncements of the ruling classes. The parallels to 1984 are everywhere recent times, yet the majority cannot see them. Newspeak is in abundance. Policies change overnight and yet the Party claims that the policy was always the same, previously famous people get erased instantly the moment they object, and the population is trained to demand their own oppression, believing ultra-harsh conditions to be an expression of love.

colecut 5y ago

Nearly everyone carries an internet connected camera microphone tracking device everywhere.

Hnaomyiph 5y ago
Does a camera, microphone and tracking device detect a slowly boiled frog?

time_to_smile 5y ago

The trouble is I'm perfectly fine with the Huxlian distopia. Ship me off to an island of intellectual dissidents and give me some good drugs, I'm down for that world. Kafka is the one who really got it right. I've never felt a more realistic depiction of my life than The Trial.

cjbgkagh 5y ago
I'd be down for 60 years of good health, I think of the amount of work that I could do. I think the problem is that they have to keep throwing the work away and the pointlessness of it all would kill me.

WillPostForFood 5y ago

Orwellian oppression is very visible, people work to fix it and eventually do. At least in 1984, oppression wins. It is a very bleak ending.

mehlmao 5y ago
It wins over Winston, but not forever. The appendix on Newspeak is written in past tense, implying that at some time it came to an end.

jabbany 5y ago

> Orwellian oppression is very visible Yes. > people work to fix it and eventually do. No? My understanding of Orwellian oppression is exactly that even though people are very aware that it exists, only a small minority of people care enough (or are personally harmed enough) to want to take actions change it. Just look at modern day China. All but the most naive are aware of things like censorship and surveillance. Most have first-hand interactions with both. People joke about it all the time (being "invited for tea" or such and such news was "harmonized" a.k.a. censored). Some of the language has evolved to be almost not that different from what was envisioned in Newspeak. And yet, the average person does not feel violated enough to actually do something about anything. It's much easier to just go with the flow and not do what the state doesn't like.

Clubber 5y ago
>And yet, the average person does not feel violated enough to actually do something about anything. It's much easier to just go with the flow and not do what the state doesn't like. The problem is it requires a lot of people to make a difference. A single person or a small group protesting gets thrown into a reeducation camp for 20 years (if they are lucky). That's one of the reasons mass surveillance is so nefarious; you can't start to plan a mass assembly/protest to address grievances without being noticed beforehand and thrown into a reeducation camp for 20 years (if you are lucky). You can't even talk about grievances with more than a few other people in a dark closet somewhere.
- jabbany 5y ago
  Right, and that was the point of the Orwellian dystopia. Even if a single person sees the dystopia for what it is, they cannot get the masses to act.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    It's even more insidious than that. Even if the masses see the dystopia for what it is, they can't come together to fight it, because surveillance will be watching their coordination efforts. In North Korea I suspect most everyone knows the propaganda is bullshit, but even a whisper of dissent will send the police knocking at your door. We aren't as bad as North Korea of course, but it sure smells similar.

62951413 5y ago

How about Huxley is for 1st world rich countries like the US and Orwell for poor ones like the Soviet/Putin's Russia?

mrjangles 5y ago

There is a related thread on the problems Argentina is currently facing. It is worth reading through to see just how wrong you are. The problems Argentina is facing are well known and obvious and no one is doing anything about it, those problems have existed for decades. The newspeak is so strong in Argentina that even in that thread no one will say the real reasons out loud. Even when I was there 20 years ago, people had to hush whisper and look around to see who was listening when talking about the problems they were facing.

bhelkey 5y ago
> The newspeak is so strong in Argentina that even in that thread no one will say the real reasons out loud. What's stopping you from saying what you think are the real reasons?
- mrjangles 5y ago
  Don't want to bother getting into a fight strangers on the internet. The reasons are obvious and well know. Just look at any country in South America that is suffering and it is always the same reason - socialism.