12 ms·

Amusing ourselves to death

226 points by akbarnama 13y ago

llamataboot 13y ago
If you are interested in a rather in-depth examination of this line of thinking, I highly recommend Adam Curtis's 2002 documentary "The Century of the Self" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
- digitalengineer 13y ago
  Here is the entire series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAD989035A4E8883D https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAD989035A4E8883D Edit: It's there alright, but it's blocked by the BBC. Sorry guys. It's on the interwebs but you'll have to do a quick look. I highly recommend it.
  - andyjohnson0 13y ago
    Full copies of all four episodes are downloadable from archive.org at https://archive.org/details/AdamCurtis-TheCenturyOfTheSelf https://archive.org/details/AdamCurtis-TheCenturyOfTheSelf
- andreaja 13y ago
  And if you're interested in Adam Curtis, I recommend this parody/critique: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg Not saying that Curtis's documentaries are without merit, just lending a little context.
macrael 13y ago
What made Brave New World far more interesting to me than 1984 is that the bad guys in 1984 are really clearly bad guys who hide behind an impossibly thin veneer of public mindedness in order to live exactly as grandly as they want whereas in Brave New World the man at the top truly believes that he is a force for good in the world. His life is not a selfish one, not in the same way, he just believes that most people are happier living in his pleasure dome. He doesn't hate or fear the protagonist but instead he wants to help him by spiriting him away from the happy drugged masses to let him live out his life with the other people who don't want to live that way. It's an entirely different kind of conflict and much much more compelling.
- timje1 13y ago
  I agree, 1984 always seemed a bit 'Lord of the Rings' to me, with the dark lords scheming in their towers. Huxley presented a future in which the ruling class knows what the lower classes need to be happy, and set that up nicely. Everyone wins!
  - teekert 13y ago
    Actually they create a lower class by adding alcohol into their incubation chambers. The rich/smart make them stupid. They make them cheap laborers like a dictator keeping the value of a currency low with respect to other countries.
    - eru 13y ago
      That always bugged me about the novel. On the one hand, they say that they can't have automation: they tried, and the lower castes got too bored. On the other hand, they need the lower castes as menial labours. Do away with the alcohol, and add robots, and you'll have a much nicer society.
      - macrael 13y ago
        Yeah, I felt like you could consider the novel without the class system and it would be more interesting.
jbb555 13y ago
We seem to have got both
- nekopa 13y ago
  I would take it a step further and say we have Orwell because we've fallen into Huxley.
ChristianMarks 13y ago
Now we have indications of the worst of both the Huxleyan and Orwellian dystopias: an Internet designed to exacerbate the proclivity toward hyperbolic discounting of the future, and runaway surveillance on a planetary scale.
- sebastianconcpt 13y ago
  yeah, I agree that we have signals of both. It's like the two guard rails of our runaway towards World State
swombat 13y ago
Anyone actually read that book? Would you recommend it?
- lmm 13y ago
  As an interesting piece of fiction? Yes. As moral philosophy? No.
  - andyjohnson0 13y ago
    I'm fairly sure that @swombat is referring to Postman's book, not Huxley's.
- dingfeng_quek 13y ago
  I read the book (Amusing Ourselves to Death), and I would recommend it for these reasons: - It explores a contemporary topic of significance. Relevance will depend on your interests. I do think it's an essential perspective for analysing the impact of media on society, and since the impact has been huge and is still increasing, it's relevant to all kinds of public and policy decisions. - I haven't read any other works that discusses the topic in a similar perspective and in comparable or greater detail. I've come across few works on this topic. * Postman's later books and essays aren't anywhere close to this either. - It is dated, and talks about last century's media - however, it is even more applicable to this century's computers, games, and internet, which are much more "addictive".
- da02 13y ago
  Alan Kay recommended it. He kept bringing it up. I finally read it last week. It's awesome. I think you can apply what people did with the TV to how people use social media: a series of interruptions. Someone posted the pdf of the 20th anniv. edition. Google: Amusing Ourselves to Death pdf
  - dingfeng_quek 13y ago
    It could be depressing as well, since the described effects correspond to the erosion of many important public institutions (like democratic governance). Seems like this decade is a good time for an update on this issue, now that entertainment technologies are ubiquitous and totally attention grabbing, and cognitive psychology gives it good scientific grounding.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
detcader 13y ago
I never finished 1984 but both seem to ignore the ultimate driving force behind both authoritarianism and consumerism that continues to rule the world, money and capitalism. In 1984, or at least this comic, power and violence seems to happen for their own sake, "power corrupting power", and similarly for Huxley's hedonism. The comic claims "Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity..." uh no, no one just gives us TV and distractions, they sell it to us. Maybe that's a shallow analysis, and if so, tell me: where is the aspect of capital in either work?
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
- dalek_cannes 13y ago
  > ultimate driving force behind both authoritarianism and consumerism that continues to rule the world, money and capitalism I would say the problem is any social structure that allows money to buy power, i.e. that allows the translation of economic power into political power (and vice versa). Either we should prevent that, or consider placing a cap on maximum per-capita economic power (preferably as a factor of the average, not unlike the Swiss proposal for CEO salaries). A person should be able to buy as many yachts, castles or private jets as he wants, but using his money to lobby, campaign or otherwise influence political process -- perhaps that should be severely limited? Civilization and technology today allows individual human beings to wield far higher concentrations of power than our psychology evolved to deal with. A good social system should cap it below the threshold where people go crazy (i.e. where our brains malfunction).
  - m_mueller 13y ago
    As a Swiss and living within the Swiss political system I firmly believe that laws alone can never be enough to keep people from getting too much power. Instead, implementing and defending a democracy that actually deserves its name, as in a system where the majority of people keep the last say in the law making process, instead of just letting them delegate that right every few year, is what keeps the system stable and everyone in check. Besides the direct effect on the law, this has two positive effects that most people don't quite seem to grasp when arguing about direct vs. indirect democracy: - People tend to be more content with the laws they need to follow. Even if they lost on a vote its easier to accept in a system where its an actual majority behind it instead of just some removed cabal that you can only elect based on some pamphlet information every few years. - Politicians in such a system tend to think ahead in terms of what can and cannot be popular with the people. They do so not only for the election years (which don't have that great of an importance here, not only because of direct democracy but also because of the way our federal government is formed by all major parties) but whenever delicate issues are coming up. One example I'd attribute to this effect is our liberal online piracy laws and our seemingly better protected privacy. When we had our own small scale Snowden affair in the 80ies it blew up into a huge scandal leading to the resignation of a federal council member ('Fichenaffäre', http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_files_scandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_files_scandal).
bigs204 13y ago
What's sad is that the original author of the comic was forced to take it down due to request from Estate of Neil Postman's. You'd think their estate would want his ideas spread.
rikkus 13y ago
If you like your depressing stories in musical form, try listening to 'Amused to Death' by Roger Waters, inspired by the book. Great album. If you want to amuse yourself while listening, make sure you have your speakers set up so the stereo effect on the barking dog at the start sounds like it's coming from outside. Also make sure your system can cope with the sound of the bomb dropping.
- hexasquid 13y ago
  Apparently titled as a reference to the book.
mietek 13y ago
Better quality direct from the comic author: http://web.archive.org/web/20110411085435/http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-Death.html http://web.archive.org/web/20110411085435/http://www.recombi... Removed from his website on request of Neil Postman estate: http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/cartoon-blog/amusing-ourselves-to-death/ http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/cartoon-blog/amusing-ours...
- mxfh 13y ago
  as with any original content that is older than the average HN user memory threshold, which somewhere between 9 months and 3 years, there is also an old thread for it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=627476 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=627476 1687 days ago | 17 comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1554733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1554733 1259 days ago | 81 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4607098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4607098 461 days ago | 79 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5433283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5433283 289 days ago | 17 comments [EDIT] well, there at least 5 now, including this one.
mercer 13y ago
So here's a question that has been on my mind for a while. I regularly read articles on some aspect of our society that is distressing. Articles such as this one, as well as articles on 'consuming devices killing creativity', 'bite-sized articles keeping us from reading bigger material like books', 'our school system turning us into automatons', and so on. While I find myself agreeing with some of these articles based on my observation of myself and others, I can't help but wonder to what degree they actually apply to 'the larger population'. All these people mindlessly consuming memes on their devices could be creating something new instead. That's wasted potential. But would they in any other time period, faced with the societal dangers of those times, be any more creative? All these people reading bite-sized articles could be reading meatier material instead. Again, wasted potential. But there was a time were much of these people couldn't even read, or didn't have access to much information, so any reading and awareness of the world at large by chunks of the population is a win anyways. And before we had schools, didn't most people follow some other kind of pre-determined path that shaped them to function appropriately in their respective societies, losing potential in the process? Basically, when discussing these supposed problems, are they really problems, or do these things just fall short of what we can imagine, some potential that we project on the entire population (which is not a bad reason for discussing them, of course)? Isn't it the case that in any time period there are only smaller subsections of people who create, research, and/or people who are autodidacts that eschew a traditional education for something different? Would those of us who are amusing ourselves to death not simply do something else 'mindless' in previous generations?
- dingfeng_quek 13y ago
  Here's a partial answer: You gain some, you lose some, but in different things. There's a tradeoff, e.g. automatons can do things a lot faster/cheaper, at the expense of "creativity". The nature of society changes in a multi-dimensional way, so it's hard to say whether it has become more or less "mindless".
- gtirloni 13y ago
  If you think only about creating content, I think you have a very good argument. Historically, not everybody was fit/interested in creating. However, the underlying theme in these books seems to be one of freedom and our destiny. I don't think they focus much on creation but more on assessing reality and being able to change it. In the past, at least in my 3rd world country, people were much more interesting in politics, health, education, etc. Nowadays, most people are happy to be distracted so I fully agree with the author here. Over and over, political scandals abound, corruption is everywhere and made plain clear to anyone who wants to see it.. yet, I don't see anyone complaining as they did in the past. It seems we've reached a plateau and we're comfortable enough. Distracted enough perhaps. Perhaps the potential to create has kept the same, not very high, lots of wasted potential. But the potential to be angry/worried about things that matter seems to be going down the toilet lately. Just see how nobody besides IT people and the media cares about the NSA scandal.
sidcool 13y ago
What is the solution of this quandary?
- kristofferR 13y ago
  And what's the problem with it? I surely think a lot of popular culture is stupid/a waste of time, but as long as I (and others) have the freedom to freely chose more "fruitful" things to do with our time - then what's the big deal?
  - VLM 13y ago
    "have the freedom to freely chose" Do you? All it takes is social and cultural ostracism? That seems a bit expensive for something that should be very cheap if not freely encouraged. Do you have the freedom to choose more fruitful housing architecture, or just a slightly different shade of beige? Can you marry whomever you please in any state you like? Can you teach your children your religion, or none at all, or will state sponsored schools tell them some creation myths are more equal that others? If there's one core value of all conformists, its trying to legislate their conformity, which is in direct opposition to your supposed freedom. This is aside from PR issues, the embrace extend extinguish model of civil liberties. We'll kill brown people and take their oil because they hate our freedumbs. Whoops, that was an epic fail. Well guess we don't need this "freedom" thing anymore. No problemo, "Survivor" is on tonight so its all good.
  - normloman 13y ago
    You have less freedom than you think. Timesinks are addictive. We've all clicked on a link-bait headline, even though we knew it would waste our time, because the text was so enticing. And most can remember playing a boring video game longer than they wanted because they were distracted by some manipulative aspect of the game (need another level / badge / chicken on my farm). It's gotten so bad, people regularly refer to MMORPGS as "skinner-boxes." With effort, and focus, we all can give up today's addictive timesinks. But when we're assaulted by the timesinks on an hourly basis, it's not as easy as you think.
    - 13y ago
cooop 13y ago
Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931. Is anyone aware of the technologies or behaviours at the time that inspired the novel? I've always assumed (perhaps wrongly) that culture was very different then and have been always been curious as to how he came to his prediction.
- hershel 13y ago
  Maybe opium ? It was more loosely used before the 1926 law that created stronger controls.
- VLM 13y ago
  1920s flappers? Early nationwide radio networks and the related rise of radio coverage of sports and the original soap operas?
- greenyoda 13y ago
  The selective breeding of humans as "alphas", "betas", etc. may have been inspired by the eugenics movement[1], which had prominent supporters in the U.K. at the time (e.g., Winston Churchill).[2] Except that in the novel, instead of just getting rid of "inferior" people, they actively bred them into a servant caste. (After Hitler gave eugenics a bad name, it became much less respectable.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Supporters_and_critics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Supporters_and_critic...
clienthunter 13y ago
I don't think it's off-base to say that this is an attack on the current state of society - the oft-repeated wail that capitalism and the opportunities it has brought (including technology) has made us all a despicable group of hedonistic thrill seekers. This is universally construed as a bad thing. I have problems with this. In order to decide that something is bad, we need to have an idea of what is good. Where does that come from here? The past? Your imagination? Do you 'miss' the olden days of constant strife, peril, religion that moulded those who survived into wise old men and women, their minds enriched by the fullness of life, but their bodies cold, wet, and illness-ridden from the lack of modern technology? Perhaps you miss the 'community' vibe of the 1950's. Or your own childhood. Or perhaps you dream of your own utopia. Am I close? I hope the point made in the above paragraph is self evident, but in case it's not, ask yourself how many of your alternative realities you've actually experienced, and how many are just ideas you've accrued with the blanks liberally filled in by educated guesses and imaginations. Try and find one that isn't. Got one? Good. Now let's plan. How would you - or anyone - transform the whole of society from what we have today to your new utopia? Plan it out. Perhaps government has to do something. Perhaps government has to go. You're almost certainly going to face dissent - perhaps some people need to face some hard realities for a short time, you know, in the transition period. Think like this for a while. I don't think it will be long before 1984 starts to take shape. Let's categorise society. Let's construct a hypothetical index in our minds that tracks intelligence/education/income in a single number (the actual equation isn't relevant). Assume it's normally distributed[0]. Let's also assume that the kind of person who sympathises with the article in this link is in the top 25% (far right quarter), so put yourself up there. Let's consider the bottom 55% - the kind of people whose chief pleasures in our Brave New World may be TV, alcohol, taking selfies, incorrect spelling in text messages, Facebook, Instagram, Candy Crush, etc. - they're not massively intellectual. Where exactly do these people (who I posit construct the majority of our actual society) fit in to your new utopia, assuming you managed the transition without creating 1984? Are they suddenly reading books, in a newfound passion for learning? Maybe they accept their place in their world, respectfully keeping quiet in reverence to their overlords, the intelligensia. Can you fit them in anywhere whilst maintaining the utopia? This thought experiment should be difficult by this point. I say it's impossible. If you are not in the bottom 55% of our hypothetical index, there is a great wealth of things out there to please you. Almost all activities are in reach of the average person now. You have books, the ability to travel, the internet, base jumping, mountaineering, arctic exploration, even space travel is expected to be affordable within most of our lifespans. You probably know this already, I guess you're probably happy enough with your own life and world. The discomfort you feel is with the rest of us 'out there', right? Society is reflective of its components. People will seek to maximise happiness and pleasure under given constraints. This has always been and will always be so. It is the essence of humanity. The simple truth is that the industrial and technical revolutions of late have loosened those constraints by many orders of magnitude, and now instead of dog-fighting, back-room card games, duels, 24-hour boozing, or whatever it was the bottom 55% used to do 'back in the day', they have other things. Like you, they are who they are: a conflagration of nature/nurture forces that amount to a personality. The difference is that instead of making use of all things available in the world to please you, you've chosen to spend your time sat on your high horse looking down on them, wishing they were different, so that the view from up there was a little nicer. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
merloen 13y ago
Another take on Huxley's dystopia (if you can call it that) is this: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal http://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal Much deeper and scarier than you'd expect given the setting.
lotsofcows 13y ago
Why is that whenever I read something like, "Most of us will read this and continue living our life exactly the same way as before …wake up", my immediate response is, "Fuck off, you patronising wanker"? I think it's probably the author's assumption that they're on to something new - a thought that doesn't recur over and over again: http://www.tor.com/images/stories/blogs/13_10/BadForYou-techno-panic-timeline.jpg http://www.tor.com/images/stories/blogs/13_10/BadForYou-tech...
- bigdubs 13y ago
  James May, of all people, has repeatedly held the position that things are getting better and not worse. I generally agree with this. It's important to be vigilant but a little optimism goes a long way as well.
FollowSteph3 13y ago
I find that every generation thinks this of the next. For example here's what the early 1800's thought of students using paper: http://i.imgur.com/Od2BB51.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Od2BB51.jpg These kinds of declaration have been going on for centuries. There will always be some people who waste their time and others that produce. You can't produce, even low brow media, without some active members of the population who have to first create it ;)
- trendoid 13y ago
  Its not just about creating, its also what these people are creating and whats the incentive to create? Do these creators ever think about the repercussions of their creations on the society? If your creation is not motivating people to create themselves or even making them learn something interesting, I am not sure if its the ideal creation.
  - FollowSteph3 13y ago
    It's a catch-22. You can't have content without creators, and if the content gets so bad that no one creates anymore, then you have no new content, which means you get more creators. It's an oscillation.
    - trendoid 13y ago
      I was actually addressing this line of yours : >There will always be some people who waste their time and others that produce. The people who are producing are creating content which encourages people to waste time. Producers will say 'we are just making what people want' but the problem is that most people don't know what they want. Its not like they watch 5-6 hours of TV and go to sleep feeling good about themselves. Producers will keep creating that since it equals shit loads of money but concomitantly it also ends up making majority of population less creative, less informed and more distracted.
frou_dh 13y ago
Something I found surprisingly infuriating lately is that on the YouTube app for iOS, you can be watching a video full-screen and, before the video is even finished, a thing slides up from the bottom about what it wants you to watch next. Fuck off! I'm still trying to watch the one video I elected to see and it's already trying to herd me down the attention deficit rathole.
- triangleman 13y ago
  YouTube app... for iOS... there's your problem right there.
  - frou_dh 13y ago
    I have no idea what you're talking about. My specific complaint aside, the dedicated app is far more responsive and reliable to use than the mobile site, as is often the case when there's a choice.
  - badman_ting 13y ago
    Thanks for posting!
teekert 13y ago
Lately I have kept repeating to myself: You can either spend your time consuming or you can spend your time creating. I have always felt guilty deep inside when watching something and not learning anything from it, I try to find that one thing, that small part of philosophy in a television series and use it as a motivation to watch (like the line: "We are the universe trying to figure itself out" and the stuff about humanity growing up in Babylon 5). But the feeling of uselessness kept creeping up. Recently I have just told myself flat out: Just make something, I felt increasingly restless while watching TV. And it feels good, I make lego contraptions with my son, I make leds blink with Python on my RPi(s). It feels good. I don't know why but ever since I was I kid I have felt this, very deeply and only in the last year have I actually expressed it in words. I have read 1984 and Brave new world in the last 3 years and they hit some sensitive spots for, must reads if you ask me.
- TDL 13y ago
  How are making lego contraptions & leds blink not amusement. Consuming is NOT evil, we consume food & water in order to survive. The mind needs rest just like the body does, there is nothing wrong with sitting back and watching the world (or tv) go by once in a while.
- CmonDev 13y ago
  "I make lego contraptions with my son, I make leds blink with Python on my RPi(s)." - just a different type of consumption. Unless you are building something conceptually new.
  - teekert 13y ago
    But it still qualifies as learning something new. Over time I'm building the basis for building something conceptually new. Perhaps this feeling is difficult to put in words, it feels very significant to me.
StavrosK 13y ago
I never understood why Brave New World is a dystopia. To me, it always seemed to be saying "yes, everyone's happy all the time, but our current values are marginalized!", which is just the appeal to tradition fallacy. Can someone please explain to me what's bad about everyone being happy all the time? "They aren't happy in ways that currently make us happy!" isn't a strong argument...
- onion2k 13y ago
  The people in BNW aren't happy per se. Anyone with a desire to do anything outside of the accepted norm is outcast. They have no freedom. They only really have the illusion of happiness. Whether that's enough is the fundamental question the book asks.
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    Hmm, it's been a while and I don't remember that. Who was cast out?
    - marcosdumay 13y ago
      The protagonist.
- malka 13y ago
  they are chemically happy yes, iirc, most (all ?) citizen use a drug named 'Soma'. I presume it would act like a benzodiazepine.
pmorici 13y ago
Two different means to the same end. Whats the old saying about Rome, "bread and circuses"?
onedev 13y ago
Man I couldn't even make it past all the comics without getting depressed and frustrated.
RankingMember 13y ago
In that it relates to information glut causing lost focus/awareness, this reminds me of the curse of the hyperlink in Wikipedia. I can start off reading about the early history of the Chevy 350 and end up reading about the Heaven's Gate cult an hour and a half later, wondering what the hell I sat down to do in the first place. I've come to learn that recording goals/making lists is key to being productive when there's so much other stuff vying for my attention and trying to throw me off course. I used to think I could just keep everything in my head, but that's just not worked.
Vektorweg 13y ago
Orwell is right. Humans can learn to "survive" in a free information age, but can't live freely in a observed environment.
ianbicking 13y ago
Seeing this Brave New World thing pop up again. OMG sheeple wake up! People have become passive, drowned in irrelevance! I find this line of discourse dehumanizing. "People" apparently includes everyone but the reader. Some would claim this is the conceit of such critique, a claim that only the reader sees the world for what it really is, the reader (and writer) are better than everyone else. But this kind of critique has gone on too long for me to feel this way – instead I think these critiques erase the reader, erase the idea of constructive engagement, they don't say "you, reader, are the smart one!" instead they say "you are stupid and purposeless, not even worthy of critique, instead I shall turn my eye to only the unnamed masses!" People need to stop talking about "people". Neil Postman should stop talking about "people". Have the guts to say who you are talking about. Or if more likely you are only talking about archetypes, step up and acknowledge the universal inapplicability of archetypes to real people, each of whom is better than your out-of-focus description. When you multiple out individuals into a group you don't get a teaming mass – maybe YOU can only appreciate those individuals as a teaming mass, but don't project the limits of your perception onto those individuals. Life is bigger than any one goddamned sci-fi story.
return0 13y ago
First world problems.
- angersock 13y ago
  Gilded cages are still cages.
guloizo 13y ago
Please respect the comic author and text author and stop reposting this. See: http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-Death.html http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourse...
arca_vorago 13y ago
I've seen this cartoon before, and honestly I think people are trying to pick either or (1984 or Brave New World), and are missing the more nuanced side of it. My simplified summary though, is this: Brave New World for the masses, and 1984 for anyone who wakes up and tries to change it. Also, that people talk about both authors works but neglect to discuss their British secret and not-so-secret society connections seems to create a sort of superficial aura of debate around the two. Frankly, the books only scratch the surface, but TPTB have done an excellent job at making any even potential association with the title "conspiracy theorist" a thing to be feared. (and plenty of the theorists themselves have helped in that cause)
angersock 13y ago
Waaaay back in highschool I read both 1984 and Brave New World (same weekend, even...come Monday I was extremely depressed), and came to a similar conclusion--because really, who wants to fight love? Given the modern drive for micro-optimizing every bit of one's life (looking at you, /4 Hour.*/) there is a much better dystopic story out there by Harlan Ellison: http://compositionawebb.pbworks.com/f/%5C%27Repent,+Harlequin!%5C%27+Said+the+Ticktockman+by+Harlan+Ellison.pdf http://compositionawebb.pbworks.com/f/%5C%27Repent,+Harlequi... And perhaps even more appropriately, given the themes of impersonally evil bureaucracy and supposed terrorism, the movie Brazil: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_%281985_film%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_%281985_film%29
ableal 13y ago
An even older (1960s, I think) clip featuring Marshall McLuhan, still rather relevant on the topic http://www.openculture.com/2010/04/marshall_mcluhan_the_world_is_a_global_village_.html http://www.openculture.com/2010/04/marshall_mcluhan_the_worl... The keywords here were "Individual man is out, tribal man is in".
crazygringo 13y ago
Doesn't practically every high schooler (in the U.S. at least) read both books, be assigned an essay to ask which one has happened, and then come to the conclusion that we're far more like Brave New World? As a foreword to a book, this isn't exactly original stuff. But there's also a counterpoint, which is that all the distraction, or the pleasure, or gossip, or whatever it is -- that's the stuff that it means to be human. We don't just mindlessly watch TV -- we talk about it with friends, joke about it, have fun with it. When a man comes home after a hard day of work, and wants to unwind by watching Celebrity Apprentice with his wife, I think sometimes people are a little to quick to judge. Everybody needs their 'guilty pleasures'. That doesn't mean that's all we are.
- cincinnatus 13y ago
  I'm afraid most are only exposed to 1984 and then reassure themselves we dodged that bullet.

226 points by akbarnama 13y ago

If you are interested in a rather in-depth examination of this line of thinking, I highly recommend Adam Curtis's 2002 documentary "The Century of the Self" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self

digitalengineer 13y ago
Here is the entire series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAD989035A4E8883D https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAD989035A4E8883D Edit: It's there alright, but it's blocked by the BBC. Sorry guys. It's on the interwebs but you'll have to do a quick look. I highly recommend it.
- andyjohnson0 13y ago
  Full copies of all four episodes are downloadable from archive.org at https://archive.org/details/AdamCurtis-TheCenturyOfTheSelf https://archive.org/details/AdamCurtis-TheCenturyOfTheSelf
andreaja 13y ago
And if you're interested in Adam Curtis, I recommend this parody/critique: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg Not saying that Curtis's documentaries are without merit, just lending a little context.

macrael 13y ago

What made Brave New World far more interesting to me than 1984 is that the bad guys in 1984 are really clearly bad guys who hide behind an impossibly thin veneer of public mindedness in order to live exactly as grandly as they want whereas in Brave New World the man at the top truly believes that he is a force for good in the world. His life is not a selfish one, not in the same way, he just believes that most people are happier living in his pleasure dome. He doesn't hate or fear the protagonist but instead he wants to help him by spiriting him away from the happy drugged masses to let him live out his life with the other people who don't want to live that way. It's an entirely different kind of conflict and much much more compelling.

timje1 13y ago
I agree, 1984 always seemed a bit 'Lord of the Rings' to me, with the dark lords scheming in their towers. Huxley presented a future in which the ruling class knows what the lower classes need to be happy, and set that up nicely. Everyone wins!
- teekert 13y ago
  Actually they create a lower class by adding alcohol into their incubation chambers. The rich/smart make them stupid. They make them cheap laborers like a dictator keeping the value of a currency low with respect to other countries.
  - eru 13y ago
    That always bugged me about the novel. On the one hand, they say that they can't have automation: they tried, and the lower castes got too bored. On the other hand, they need the lower castes as menial labours. Do away with the alcohol, and add robots, and you'll have a much nicer society.
    - macrael 13y ago
      Yeah, I felt like you could consider the novel without the class system and it would be more interesting.

jbb555 13y ago

We seem to have got both

nekopa 13y ago
I would take it a step further and say we have Orwell because we've fallen into Huxley.

ChristianMarks 13y ago

Now we have indications of the worst of both the Huxleyan and Orwellian dystopias: an Internet designed to exacerbate the proclivity toward hyperbolic discounting of the future, and runaway surveillance on a planetary scale.

sebastianconcpt 13y ago
yeah, I agree that we have signals of both. It's like the two guard rails of our runaway towards World State

swombat 13y ago

Anyone actually read that book? Would you recommend it?

lmm 13y ago
As an interesting piece of fiction? Yes. As moral philosophy? No.
- andyjohnson0 13y ago
  I'm fairly sure that @swombat is referring to Postman's book, not Huxley's.
dingfeng_quek 13y ago
I read the book (Amusing Ourselves to Death), and I would recommend it for these reasons: - It explores a contemporary topic of significance. Relevance will depend on your interests. I do think it's an essential perspective for analysing the impact of media on society, and since the impact has been huge and is still increasing, it's relevant to all kinds of public and policy decisions. - I haven't read any other works that discusses the topic in a similar perspective and in comparable or greater detail. I've come across few works on this topic. * Postman's later books and essays aren't anywhere close to this either. - It is dated, and talks about last century's media - however, it is even more applicable to this century's computers, games, and internet, which are much more "addictive".
da02 13y ago
Alan Kay recommended it. He kept bringing it up. I finally read it last week. It's awesome. I think you can apply what people did with the TV to how people use social media: a series of interruptions. Someone posted the pdf of the 20th anniv. edition. Google: Amusing Ourselves to Death pdf
- dingfeng_quek 13y ago
  It could be depressing as well, since the described effects correspond to the erosion of many important public institutions (like democratic governance). Seems like this decade is a good time for an update on this issue, now that entertainment technologies are ubiquitous and totally attention grabbing, and cognitive psychology gives it good scientific grounding.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

detcader 13y ago

I never finished 1984 but both seem to ignore the ultimate driving force behind both authoritarianism and consumerism that continues to rule the world, money and capitalism. In 1984, or at least this comic, power and violence seems to happen for their own sake, "power corrupting power", and similarly for Huxley's hedonism. The comic claims "Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity..." uh no, no one just gives us TV and distractions, they sell it to us. Maybe that's a shallow analysis, and if so, tell me: where is the aspect of capital in either work?

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
dalek_cannes 13y ago
> ultimate driving force behind both authoritarianism and consumerism that continues to rule the world, money and capitalism I would say the problem is any social structure that allows money to buy power, i.e. that allows the translation of economic power into political power (and vice versa). Either we should prevent that, or consider placing a cap on maximum per-capita economic power (preferably as a factor of the average, not unlike the Swiss proposal for CEO salaries). A person should be able to buy as many yachts, castles or private jets as he wants, but using his money to lobby, campaign or otherwise influence political process -- perhaps that should be severely limited? Civilization and technology today allows individual human beings to wield far higher concentrations of power than our psychology evolved to deal with. A good social system should cap it below the threshold where people go crazy (i.e. where our brains malfunction).
- m_mueller 13y ago
  As a Swiss and living within the Swiss political system I firmly believe that laws alone can never be enough to keep people from getting too much power. Instead, implementing and defending a democracy that actually deserves its name, as in a system where the majority of people keep the last say in the law making process, instead of just letting them delegate that right every few year, is what keeps the system stable and everyone in check. Besides the direct effect on the law, this has two positive effects that most people don't quite seem to grasp when arguing about direct vs. indirect democracy: - People tend to be more content with the laws they need to follow. Even if they lost on a vote its easier to accept in a system where its an actual majority behind it instead of just some removed cabal that you can only elect based on some pamphlet information every few years. - Politicians in such a system tend to think ahead in terms of what can and cannot be popular with the people. They do so not only for the election years (which don't have that great of an importance here, not only because of direct democracy but also because of the way our federal government is formed by all major parties) but whenever delicate issues are coming up. One example I'd attribute to this effect is our liberal online piracy laws and our seemingly better protected privacy. When we had our own small scale Snowden affair in the 80ies it blew up into a huge scandal leading to the resignation of a federal council member ('Fichenaffäre', http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_files_scandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_files_scandal).

bigs204 13y ago

What's sad is that the original author of the comic was forced to take it down due to request from Estate of Neil Postman's. You'd think their estate would want his ideas spread.

rikkus 13y ago

If you like your depressing stories in musical form, try listening to 'Amused to Death' by Roger Waters, inspired by the book. Great album. If you want to amuse yourself while listening, make sure you have your speakers set up so the stereo effect on the barking dog at the start sounds like it's coming from outside. Also make sure your system can cope with the sound of the bomb dropping.

hexasquid 13y ago
Apparently titled as a reference to the book.

mietek 13y ago

Better quality direct from the comic author: http://web.archive.org/web/20110411085435/http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-Death.html http://web.archive.org/web/20110411085435/http://www.recombi... Removed from his website on request of Neil Postman estate: http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/cartoon-blog/amusing-ourselves-to-death/ http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/cartoon-blog/amusing-ours...

mxfh 13y ago
as with any original content that is older than the average HN user memory threshold, which somewhere between 9 months and 3 years, there is also an old thread for it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=627476 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=627476 1687 days ago | 17 comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1554733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1554733 1259 days ago | 81 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4607098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4607098 461 days ago | 79 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5433283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5433283 289 days ago | 17 comments [EDIT] well, there at least 5 now, including this one.

mercer 13y ago

So here's a question that has been on my mind for a while. I regularly read articles on some aspect of our society that is distressing. Articles such as this one, as well as articles on 'consuming devices killing creativity', 'bite-sized articles keeping us from reading bigger material like books', 'our school system turning us into automatons', and so on. While I find myself agreeing with some of these articles based on my observation of myself and others, I can't help but wonder to what degree they actually apply to 'the larger population'. All these people mindlessly consuming memes on their devices could be creating something new instead. That's wasted potential. But would they in any other time period, faced with the societal dangers of those times, be any more creative? All these people reading bite-sized articles could be reading meatier material instead. Again, wasted potential. But there was a time were much of these people couldn't even read, or didn't have access to much information, so any reading and awareness of the world at large by chunks of the population is a win anyways. And before we had schools, didn't most people follow some other kind of pre-determined path that shaped them to function appropriately in their respective societies, losing potential in the process? Basically, when discussing these supposed problems, are they really problems, or do these things just fall short of what we can imagine, some potential that we project on the entire population (which is not a bad reason for discussing them, of course)? Isn't it the case that in any time period there are only smaller subsections of people who create, research, and/or people who are autodidacts that eschew a traditional education for something different? Would those of us who are amusing ourselves to death not simply do something else 'mindless' in previous generations?

dingfeng_quek 13y ago
Here's a partial answer: You gain some, you lose some, but in different things. There's a tradeoff, e.g. automatons can do things a lot faster/cheaper, at the expense of "creativity". The nature of society changes in a multi-dimensional way, so it's hard to say whether it has become more or less "mindless".
gtirloni 13y ago
If you think only about creating content, I think you have a very good argument. Historically, not everybody was fit/interested in creating. However, the underlying theme in these books seems to be one of freedom and our destiny. I don't think they focus much on creation but more on assessing reality and being able to change it. In the past, at least in my 3rd world country, people were much more interesting in politics, health, education, etc. Nowadays, most people are happy to be distracted so I fully agree with the author here. Over and over, political scandals abound, corruption is everywhere and made plain clear to anyone who wants to see it.. yet, I don't see anyone complaining as they did in the past. It seems we've reached a plateau and we're comfortable enough. Distracted enough perhaps. Perhaps the potential to create has kept the same, not very high, lots of wasted potential. But the potential to be angry/worried about things that matter seems to be going down the toilet lately. Just see how nobody besides IT people and the media cares about the NSA scandal.

sidcool 13y ago

What is the solution of this quandary?

kristofferR 13y ago
And what's the problem with it? I surely think a lot of popular culture is stupid/a waste of time, but as long as I (and others) have the freedom to freely chose more "fruitful" things to do with our time - then what's the big deal?
- VLM 13y ago
  "have the freedom to freely chose" Do you? All it takes is social and cultural ostracism? That seems a bit expensive for something that should be very cheap if not freely encouraged. Do you have the freedom to choose more fruitful housing architecture, or just a slightly different shade of beige? Can you marry whomever you please in any state you like? Can you teach your children your religion, or none at all, or will state sponsored schools tell them some creation myths are more equal that others? If there's one core value of all conformists, its trying to legislate their conformity, which is in direct opposition to your supposed freedom. This is aside from PR issues, the embrace extend extinguish model of civil liberties. We'll kill brown people and take their oil because they hate our freedumbs. Whoops, that was an epic fail. Well guess we don't need this "freedom" thing anymore. No problemo, "Survivor" is on tonight so its all good.
- normloman 13y ago
  You have less freedom than you think. Timesinks are addictive. We've all clicked on a link-bait headline, even though we knew it would waste our time, because the text was so enticing. And most can remember playing a boring video game longer than they wanted because they were distracted by some manipulative aspect of the game (need another level / badge / chicken on my farm). It's gotten so bad, people regularly refer to MMORPGS as "skinner-boxes." With effort, and focus, we all can give up today's addictive timesinks. But when we're assaulted by the timesinks on an hourly basis, it's not as easy as you think.
  - 13y ago

cooop 13y ago

Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931. Is anyone aware of the technologies or behaviours at the time that inspired the novel? I've always assumed (perhaps wrongly) that culture was very different then and have been always been curious as to how he came to his prediction.

hershel 13y ago
Maybe opium ? It was more loosely used before the 1926 law that created stronger controls.
VLM 13y ago
1920s flappers? Early nationwide radio networks and the related rise of radio coverage of sports and the original soap operas?
greenyoda 13y ago
The selective breeding of humans as "alphas", "betas", etc. may have been inspired by the eugenics movement[1], which had prominent supporters in the U.K. at the time (e.g., Winston Churchill).[2] Except that in the novel, instead of just getting rid of "inferior" people, they actively bred them into a servant caste. (After Hitler gave eugenics a bad name, it became much less respectable.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Supporters_and_critics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Supporters_and_critic...

clienthunter 13y ago

I don't think it's off-base to say that this is an attack on the current state of society - the oft-repeated wail that capitalism and the opportunities it has brought (including technology) has made us all a despicable group of hedonistic thrill seekers. This is universally construed as a bad thing. I have problems with this. In order to decide that something is bad, we need to have an idea of what is good. Where does that come from here? The past? Your imagination? Do you 'miss' the olden days of constant strife, peril, religion that moulded those who survived into wise old men and women, their minds enriched by the fullness of life, but their bodies cold, wet, and illness-ridden from the lack of modern technology? Perhaps you miss the 'community' vibe of the 1950's. Or your own childhood. Or perhaps you dream of your own utopia. Am I close? I hope the point made in the above paragraph is self evident, but in case it's not, ask yourself how many of your alternative realities you've actually experienced, and how many are just ideas you've accrued with the blanks liberally filled in by educated guesses and imaginations. Try and find one that isn't. Got one? Good. Now let's plan. How would you - or anyone - transform the whole of society from what we have today to your new utopia? Plan it out. Perhaps government has to do something. Perhaps government has to go. You're almost certainly going to face dissent - perhaps some people need to face some hard realities for a short time, you know, in the transition period. Think like this for a while. I don't think it will be long before 1984 starts to take shape. Let's categorise society. Let's construct a hypothetical index in our minds that tracks intelligence/education/income in a single number (the actual equation isn't relevant). Assume it's normally distributed[0]. Let's also assume that the kind of person who sympathises with the article in this link is in the top 25% (far right quarter), so put yourself up there. Let's consider the bottom 55% - the kind of people whose chief pleasures in our Brave New World may be TV, alcohol, taking selfies, incorrect spelling in text messages, Facebook, Instagram, Candy Crush, etc. - they're not massively intellectual. Where exactly do these people (who I posit construct the majority of our actual society) fit in to your new utopia, assuming you managed the transition without creating 1984? Are they suddenly reading books, in a newfound passion for learning? Maybe they accept their place in their world, respectfully keeping quiet in reverence to their overlords, the intelligensia. Can you fit them in anywhere whilst maintaining the utopia? This thought experiment should be difficult by this point. I say it's impossible. If you are not in the bottom 55% of our hypothetical index, there is a great wealth of things out there to please you. Almost all activities are in reach of the average person now. You have books, the ability to travel, the internet, base jumping, mountaineering, arctic exploration, even space travel is expected to be affordable within most of our lifespans. You probably know this already, I guess you're probably happy enough with your own life and world. The discomfort you feel is with the rest of us 'out there', right? Society is reflective of its components. People will seek to maximise happiness and pleasure under given constraints. This has always been and will always be so. It is the essence of humanity. The simple truth is that the industrial and technical revolutions of late have loosened those constraints by many orders of magnitude, and now instead of dog-fighting, back-room card games, duels, 24-hour boozing, or whatever it was the bottom 55% used to do 'back in the day', they have other things. Like you, they are who they are: a conflagration of nature/nurture forces that amount to a personality. The difference is that instead of making use of all things available in the world to please you, you've chosen to spend your time sat on your high horse looking down on them, wishing they were different, so that the view from up there was a little nicer. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution

merloen 13y ago

Another take on Huxley's dystopia (if you can call it that) is this: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal http://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal Much deeper and scarier than you'd expect given the setting.

lotsofcows 13y ago

Why is that whenever I read something like, "Most of us will read this and continue living our life exactly the same way as before …wake up", my immediate response is, "Fuck off, you patronising wanker"? I think it's probably the author's assumption that they're on to something new - a thought that doesn't recur over and over again: http://www.tor.com/images/stories/blogs/13_10/BadForYou-techno-panic-timeline.jpg http://www.tor.com/images/stories/blogs/13_10/BadForYou-tech...

bigdubs 13y ago
James May, of all people, has repeatedly held the position that things are getting better and not worse. I generally agree with this. It's important to be vigilant but a little optimism goes a long way as well.

FollowSteph3 13y ago

I find that every generation thinks this of the next. For example here's what the early 1800's thought of students using paper: http://i.imgur.com/Od2BB51.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Od2BB51.jpg These kinds of declaration have been going on for centuries. There will always be some people who waste their time and others that produce. You can't produce, even low brow media, without some active members of the population who have to first create it ;)

trendoid 13y ago
Its not just about creating, its also what these people are creating and whats the incentive to create? Do these creators ever think about the repercussions of their creations on the society? If your creation is not motivating people to create themselves or even making them learn something interesting, I am not sure if its the ideal creation.
- FollowSteph3 13y ago
  It's a catch-22. You can't have content without creators, and if the content gets so bad that no one creates anymore, then you have no new content, which means you get more creators. It's an oscillation.
  - trendoid 13y ago
    I was actually addressing this line of yours : >There will always be some people who waste their time and others that produce. The people who are producing are creating content which encourages people to waste time. Producers will say 'we are just making what people want' but the problem is that most people don't know what they want. Its not like they watch 5-6 hours of TV and go to sleep feeling good about themselves. Producers will keep creating that since it equals shit loads of money but concomitantly it also ends up making majority of population less creative, less informed and more distracted.

frou_dh 13y ago

Something I found surprisingly infuriating lately is that on the YouTube app for iOS, you can be watching a video full-screen and, before the video is even finished, a thing slides up from the bottom about what it wants you to watch next. Fuck off! I'm still trying to watch the one video I elected to see and it's already trying to herd me down the attention deficit rathole.

triangleman 13y ago
YouTube app... for iOS... there's your problem right there.
- frou_dh 13y ago
  I have no idea what you're talking about. My specific complaint aside, the dedicated app is far more responsive and reliable to use than the mobile site, as is often the case when there's a choice.
- badman_ting 13y ago
  Thanks for posting!

teekert 13y ago

Lately I have kept repeating to myself: You can either spend your time consuming or you can spend your time creating. I have always felt guilty deep inside when watching something and not learning anything from it, I try to find that one thing, that small part of philosophy in a television series and use it as a motivation to watch (like the line: "We are the universe trying to figure itself out" and the stuff about humanity growing up in Babylon 5). But the feeling of uselessness kept creeping up. Recently I have just told myself flat out: Just make something, I felt increasingly restless while watching TV. And it feels good, I make lego contraptions with my son, I make leds blink with Python on my RPi(s). It feels good. I don't know why but ever since I was I kid I have felt this, very deeply and only in the last year have I actually expressed it in words. I have read 1984 and Brave new world in the last 3 years and they hit some sensitive spots for, must reads if you ask me.

TDL 13y ago
How are making lego contraptions & leds blink not amusement. Consuming is NOT evil, we consume food & water in order to survive. The mind needs rest just like the body does, there is nothing wrong with sitting back and watching the world (or tv) go by once in a while.
CmonDev 13y ago
"I make lego contraptions with my son, I make leds blink with Python on my RPi(s)." - just a different type of consumption. Unless you are building something conceptually new.
- teekert 13y ago
  But it still qualifies as learning something new. Over time I'm building the basis for building something conceptually new. Perhaps this feeling is difficult to put in words, it feels very significant to me.

StavrosK 13y ago

I never understood why Brave New World is a dystopia. To me, it always seemed to be saying "yes, everyone's happy all the time, but our current values are marginalized!", which is just the appeal to tradition fallacy. Can someone please explain to me what's bad about everyone being happy all the time? "They aren't happy in ways that currently make us happy!" isn't a strong argument...

onion2k 13y ago
The people in BNW aren't happy per se. Anyone with a desire to do anything outside of the accepted norm is outcast. They have no freedom. They only really have the illusion of happiness. Whether that's enough is the fundamental question the book asks.
- StavrosK 13y ago
  Hmm, it's been a while and I don't remember that. Who was cast out?
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    The protagonist.
malka 13y ago
they are chemically happy yes, iirc, most (all ?) citizen use a drug named 'Soma'. I presume it would act like a benzodiazepine.

pmorici 13y ago

Two different means to the same end. Whats the old saying about Rome, "bread and circuses"?

onedev 13y ago

Man I couldn't even make it past all the comics without getting depressed and frustrated.

RankingMember 13y ago

In that it relates to information glut causing lost focus/awareness, this reminds me of the curse of the hyperlink in Wikipedia. I can start off reading about the early history of the Chevy 350 and end up reading about the Heaven's Gate cult an hour and a half later, wondering what the hell I sat down to do in the first place. I've come to learn that recording goals/making lists is key to being productive when there's so much other stuff vying for my attention and trying to throw me off course. I used to think I could just keep everything in my head, but that's just not worked.

Vektorweg 13y ago

Orwell is right. Humans can learn to "survive" in a free information age, but can't live freely in a observed environment.

ianbicking 13y ago

Seeing this Brave New World thing pop up again. OMG sheeple wake up! People have become passive, drowned in irrelevance! I find this line of discourse dehumanizing. "People" apparently includes everyone but the reader. Some would claim this is the conceit of such critique, a claim that only the reader sees the world for what it really is, the reader (and writer) are better than everyone else. But this kind of critique has gone on too long for me to feel this way – instead I think these critiques erase the reader, erase the idea of constructive engagement, they don't say "you, reader, are the smart one!" instead they say "you are stupid and purposeless, not even worthy of critique, instead I shall turn my eye to only the unnamed masses!" People need to stop talking about "people". Neil Postman should stop talking about "people". Have the guts to say who you are talking about. Or if more likely you are only talking about archetypes, step up and acknowledge the universal inapplicability of archetypes to real people, each of whom is better than your out-of-focus description. When you multiple out individuals into a group you don't get a teaming mass – maybe YOU can only appreciate those individuals as a teaming mass, but don't project the limits of your perception onto those individuals. Life is bigger than any one goddamned sci-fi story.

return0 13y ago

First world problems.

angersock 13y ago
Gilded cages are still cages.

guloizo 13y ago

Please respect the comic author and text author and stop reposting this. See: http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-Death.html http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourse...

arca_vorago 13y ago

I've seen this cartoon before, and honestly I think people are trying to pick either or (1984 or Brave New World), and are missing the more nuanced side of it. My simplified summary though, is this: Brave New World for the masses, and 1984 for anyone who wakes up and tries to change it. Also, that people talk about both authors works but neglect to discuss their British secret and not-so-secret society connections seems to create a sort of superficial aura of debate around the two. Frankly, the books only scratch the surface, but TPTB have done an excellent job at making any even potential association with the title "conspiracy theorist" a thing to be feared. (and plenty of the theorists themselves have helped in that cause)

angersock 13y ago

Waaaay back in highschool I read both 1984 and Brave New World (same weekend, even...come Monday I was extremely depressed), and came to a similar conclusion--because really, who wants to fight love? Given the modern drive for micro-optimizing every bit of one's life (looking at you, /4 Hour.*/) there is a much better dystopic story out there by Harlan Ellison: http://compositionawebb.pbworks.com/f/%5C%27Repent,+Harlequin!%5C%27+Said+the+Ticktockman+by+Harlan+Ellison.pdf http://compositionawebb.pbworks.com/f/%5C%27Repent,+Harlequi... And perhaps even more appropriately, given the themes of impersonally evil bureaucracy and supposed terrorism, the movie Brazil: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_%281985_film%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_%281985_film%29

ableal 13y ago

An even older (1960s, I think) clip featuring Marshall McLuhan, still rather relevant on the topic http://www.openculture.com/2010/04/marshall_mcluhan_the_world_is_a_global_village_.html http://www.openculture.com/2010/04/marshall_mcluhan_the_worl... The keywords here were "Individual man is out, tribal man is in".

crazygringo 13y ago

Doesn't practically every high schooler (in the U.S. at least) read both books, be assigned an essay to ask which one has happened, and then come to the conclusion that we're far more like Brave New World? As a foreword to a book, this isn't exactly original stuff. But there's also a counterpoint, which is that all the distraction, or the pleasure, or gossip, or whatever it is -- that's the stuff that it means to be human. We don't just mindlessly watch TV -- we talk about it with friends, joke about it, have fun with it. When a man comes home after a hard day of work, and wants to unwind by watching Celebrity Apprentice with his wife, I think sometimes people are a little to quick to judge. Everybody needs their 'guilty pleasures'. That doesn't mean that's all we are.

cincinnatus 13y ago
I'm afraid most are only exposed to 1984 and then reassure themselves we dodged that bullet.