6 ms·

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

by jmduke 13y 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. 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 egotism. 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." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us. ~ Neil Postman

baddox 13y ago
It's a popular quote, but not one I find very accurate according to my interpretations of the two books. For example, in 1984 the government did a lot of censorship, but it's also true that there were very few people who would want to know the truth. This is why Winston is so alone. Presumably the censorship efforts would no longer be necessary if the government's goals of spreading Newspeak and eliminating the few remaining Winstons were accomplished. 1984 also featured a population "reduced to passivity and egotism" and truth was also drowned in a sea of irrelevance (namely, the persistant and perhaps partially fictional global war). A few of the differences are real, but most of the main points are false dichotomies.
- jccc 13y ago
  But these are closer to end results. The contrasts being drawn between Orwell and Huxley are about the means toward those results -- fear, force, violence vs. drowning entertainment, drugs and distraction. I think the point is that if we can recognize which is which we're better able to resist going down a dark road.
  - baddox 13y ago
    I think that governments in Western society do use a lot of fear, force, and violence, and I also think that the government in 1984 used entertainment and distraction (drugs not so much, unless you count the rationing of cigarettes and victory gin).
    - cstross 13y ago
      Note that at the time Orwell was writing, the only epidemiological research linking lung cancer and heart disease with smoking had been carried out by doctors working in Nazi Germany -- research which was tainted with guilt by association. (It took epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll another decade to independently make a conclusive case that the lung cancer epidemic was the result of smoking.) Smoking was tending towards a habit shared by 50% of the male population of the UK Orwell lived in; it was as unexceptional as tea or coffee. Alcohol is a depressant and exactly the sort of bad habit a dictatorship with an unhealthy interest in its' subjects mental states might want to encourage. Think too much: anaesthetize yourself! It's also very hard to clamp down on bathtub distilleries.
      - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
        Reading your comment, I was reminded of the hypothesis that the 17-18th century cultural shift from alcohol to coffee was a contributing factor in the Enlightenment.
        cstross 13y ago
        Also note that drinking one of small beer or coffee (substitute tea to taste) was a great way of ensuring that your fluid intake wasn't contaminated with viable cholera bacilli. Adding alcohol or boiling water would kill them before they killed you. Which, before the discovery of the germ theory of disease and the development of sewage treatment farms, was pretty important.
irickt 13y ago
In the East poets are sometimes thrown in prison – a sort of compliment, since it suggests the author has done something at least as real as theft or rape or revolution. Here poets are allowed to publish anything at all – a sort of punishment in effect, prison without walls, without echoes, without palpable existence – shadow-realm of print, or of abstract thought-world without risk or eros. ... America has freedom of speech because all words are considered equally vapid. — Hakim Bey http://hermetic.com/bey/taz1.html http://hermetic.com/bey/taz1.html
- disgruntledphd2 13y ago
  Thanks for reminding me about Hakim Bey. Fun fact: (may not actually be a fact) Richard Stallman and the whole idea of copyleft, is borrowed from the works of Hakim Bey (which is where I read about it first).
  - Zircom 13y ago
    >Richard Stallman and the whole idea of copyleft, is borrowed from the works of Hakim Bey (which is where I read about it first). >Richard Stallman...is borrowed from the works of Hakim Bey. I find it somewhat funny that Richard Stallman stole the idea of himself from someone else. (Also, who you're referring to as Hakim Bey, is in fact, Peter Lamborn Wilson, or as I've recently taken to calling him, Peter Lamborn Wilson plus anonymity.)
    - Ziplex 13y ago
      For those that don't get the last part, I'm pretty sure he's referencing Stallman's spiel about "GNU plus Linux"[1]. [1]http://ohinternet.com/Richard_Stallman http://ohinternet.com/Richard_Stallman
InclinedPlane 13y ago
I highly recommend people who find 1984 and Brave New World interesting also read Jules Verne's lost novel "Paris in the 20th Century". It's dystopian in an entirely different way. It talks not about the extremes of state-based censorship from 1984 or of the indifference of the blissed-out citizens of Brave New World but the far more realistic likelihood of rampant self-censorship. Of culture which willingly bends itself to what amounts to the same thing as oppression.
- sho_hn 13y ago
  From the plot summary on Wikipedia: "Michel discusses women with Quinsonnas, who sadly explains that there are no such things as women anymore; from mindless, repetitive factory work and careful attention to finance and science, most women have become cynical, ugly, neurotic career women." Is the novel really that off-putting or is the character holding this view an anomaly? From what I can find in reviews, it sounds like the book predicts women will become better educated and career-oriented, and depicts them as acting and appearing masculine as a result. If so that reads to me as pretty shallow dystopia - a lack of understanding of human nature and a lack of imagination (as evidenced by simplistic views on gendered traits) do not compelling speculative fiction make Doesn't make me have the intellectual hots for the work.
  - thomasjoulin 13y ago
    It was written in 1863, you can't expect the author to have the same view on women that we have today.
    - sho_hn 13y ago
      But that's my point: If you're trying to write about the future but are getting held back by the narrow views of your present, you may at best produce an entertaining curiosity, but not something of lasting use. The other works discussed here have prevailed because they contain still-valid insights on human behavior and do a pretty good job avoiding falling into period-conventional thinking. That said, I actually think not being sexist in storytelling is pretty easy, it's about thinking about people instead of genders, and good writers have known that at all times and put characters first. Basically, I'm not saying Verne's views (or perhaps that character's views -- I'd like to hear more from someone who's actually read it) can't be explained in context, I'm saying if that's representative of how the work tries to extrapolate into the future I'm not getting the vibe it's any good at it and actually still relevant today.
skrebbel 13y ago
Before the PRISM leak, I hadn't realized that both Orwell and Huxley could very well turn out to be right.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  They're both books about vast conspiracies that control the masses. Reality is worse than that, there is no conspiracy, just a bunch of well meaning people that think they are doing the right thing. Of course, reality is also better than that. Many of the people that would ostensibly be equivalent to the party members in 1984 are the ones that are making noise about the dangers of what the government is doing. And the fascist hell hole aspects of Brave New World are certainly not our everyday (society more or less treats excessive use of things like alcohol and marijuana as serious problems. More so for individuals with higher levels of civic engagement...).
cousin_it 13y ago
Neil Postman misses the point by a mile. BNW and 1984 were effectively written about different countries, it's just a curious accident that both are set in London. BNW is a first-world dystopia, 1984 is a second-world dystopia. (While Huxley was living in Hollywood, Orwell was fighting in the Spanish civil war for the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification.) Go visit the Checkpoint Charlie museum in East Berlin and then tell me 1984 is "less true". It fucking already happened there. Just like BNW is starting to happen in Western countries now.
iterationx 13y ago
People love this quote and the comic that goes with it, but its much deeper than most are willing to take it. For the intrepid I recommend: "Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation & Political Control"

by jmduke 13y ago

baddox 13y ago

It's a popular quote, but not one I find very accurate according to my interpretations of the two books. For example, in 1984 the government did a lot of censorship, but it's also true that there were very few people who would want to know the truth. This is why Winston is so alone. Presumably the censorship efforts would no longer be necessary if the government's goals of spreading Newspeak and eliminating the few remaining Winstons were accomplished. 1984 also featured a population "reduced to passivity and egotism" and truth was also drowned in a sea of irrelevance (namely, the persistant and perhaps partially fictional global war). A few of the differences are real, but most of the main points are false dichotomies.

jccc 13y ago
But these are closer to end results. The contrasts being drawn between Orwell and Huxley are about the means toward those results -- fear, force, violence vs. drowning entertainment, drugs and distraction. I think the point is that if we can recognize which is which we're better able to resist going down a dark road.
- baddox 13y ago
  I think that governments in Western society do use a lot of fear, force, and violence, and I also think that the government in 1984 used entertainment and distraction (drugs not so much, unless you count the rationing of cigarettes and victory gin).
  - cstross 13y ago
    Note that at the time Orwell was writing, the only epidemiological research linking lung cancer and heart disease with smoking had been carried out by doctors working in Nazi Germany -- research which was tainted with guilt by association. (It took epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll another decade to independently make a conclusive case that the lung cancer epidemic was the result of smoking.) Smoking was tending towards a habit shared by 50% of the male population of the UK Orwell lived in; it was as unexceptional as tea or coffee. Alcohol is a depressant and exactly the sort of bad habit a dictatorship with an unhealthy interest in its' subjects mental states might want to encourage. Think too much: anaesthetize yourself! It's also very hard to clamp down on bathtub distilleries.
    - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
      Reading your comment, I was reminded of the hypothesis that the 17-18th century cultural shift from alcohol to coffee was a contributing factor in the Enlightenment.
      - cstross 13y ago
        Also note that drinking one of small beer or coffee (substitute tea to taste) was a great way of ensuring that your fluid intake wasn't contaminated with viable cholera bacilli. Adding alcohol or boiling water would kill them before they killed you. Which, before the discovery of the germ theory of disease and the development of sewage treatment farms, was pretty important.

irickt 13y ago

In the East poets are sometimes thrown in prison – a sort of compliment, since it suggests the author has done something at least as real as theft or rape or revolution. Here poets are allowed to publish anything at all – a sort of punishment in effect, prison without walls, without echoes, without palpable existence – shadow-realm of print, or of abstract thought-world without risk or eros. ... America has freedom of speech because all words are considered equally vapid. — Hakim Bey http://hermetic.com/bey/taz1.html http://hermetic.com/bey/taz1.html

disgruntledphd2 13y ago
Thanks for reminding me about Hakim Bey. Fun fact: (may not actually be a fact) Richard Stallman and the whole idea of copyleft, is borrowed from the works of Hakim Bey (which is where I read about it first).
- Zircom 13y ago
  >Richard Stallman and the whole idea of copyleft, is borrowed from the works of Hakim Bey (which is where I read about it first). >Richard Stallman...is borrowed from the works of Hakim Bey. I find it somewhat funny that Richard Stallman stole the idea of himself from someone else. (Also, who you're referring to as Hakim Bey, is in fact, Peter Lamborn Wilson, or as I've recently taken to calling him, Peter Lamborn Wilson plus anonymity.)
  - Ziplex 13y ago
    For those that don't get the last part, I'm pretty sure he's referencing Stallman's spiel about "GNU plus Linux"[1]. [1]http://ohinternet.com/Richard_Stallman http://ohinternet.com/Richard_Stallman

InclinedPlane 13y ago

I highly recommend people who find 1984 and Brave New World interesting also read Jules Verne's lost novel "Paris in the 20th Century". It's dystopian in an entirely different way. It talks not about the extremes of state-based censorship from 1984 or of the indifference of the blissed-out citizens of Brave New World but the far more realistic likelihood of rampant self-censorship. Of culture which willingly bends itself to what amounts to the same thing as oppression.

sho_hn 13y ago
From the plot summary on Wikipedia: "Michel discusses women with Quinsonnas, who sadly explains that there are no such things as women anymore; from mindless, repetitive factory work and careful attention to finance and science, most women have become cynical, ugly, neurotic career women." Is the novel really that off-putting or is the character holding this view an anomaly? From what I can find in reviews, it sounds like the book predicts women will become better educated and career-oriented, and depicts them as acting and appearing masculine as a result. If so that reads to me as pretty shallow dystopia - a lack of understanding of human nature and a lack of imagination (as evidenced by simplistic views on gendered traits) do not compelling speculative fiction make Doesn't make me have the intellectual hots for the work.
- thomasjoulin 13y ago
  It was written in 1863, you can't expect the author to have the same view on women that we have today.
  - sho_hn 13y ago
    But that's my point: If you're trying to write about the future but are getting held back by the narrow views of your present, you may at best produce an entertaining curiosity, but not something of lasting use. The other works discussed here have prevailed because they contain still-valid insights on human behavior and do a pretty good job avoiding falling into period-conventional thinking. That said, I actually think not being sexist in storytelling is pretty easy, it's about thinking about people instead of genders, and good writers have known that at all times and put characters first. Basically, I'm not saying Verne's views (or perhaps that character's views -- I'd like to hear more from someone who's actually read it) can't be explained in context, I'm saying if that's representative of how the work tries to extrapolate into the future I'm not getting the vibe it's any good at it and actually still relevant today.

skrebbel 13y ago

Before the PRISM leak, I hadn't realized that both Orwell and Huxley could very well turn out to be right.

maxerickson 13y ago
They're both books about vast conspiracies that control the masses. Reality is worse than that, there is no conspiracy, just a bunch of well meaning people that think they are doing the right thing. Of course, reality is also better than that. Many of the people that would ostensibly be equivalent to the party members in 1984 are the ones that are making noise about the dangers of what the government is doing. And the fascist hell hole aspects of Brave New World are certainly not our everyday (society more or less treats excessive use of things like alcohol and marijuana as serious problems. More so for individuals with higher levels of civic engagement...).

cousin_it 13y ago

Neil Postman misses the point by a mile. BNW and 1984 were effectively written about different countries, it's just a curious accident that both are set in London. BNW is a first-world dystopia, 1984 is a second-world dystopia. (While Huxley was living in Hollywood, Orwell was fighting in the Spanish civil war for the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification.) Go visit the Checkpoint Charlie museum in East Berlin and then tell me 1984 is "less true". It fucking already happened there. Just like BNW is starting to happen in Western countries now.

iterationx 13y ago

People love this quote and the comic that goes with it, but its much deeper than most are willing to take it. For the intrepid I recommend: "Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation & Political Control"