Amusing Ourselves to Death Quotes (showing 1-30 of 85)
“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
Curious how the media handles numbers. I guess they were bad at math and so had to settle for journalism. First it was a thousand weapons. Then it dwindled down to 300 or so in steps. 300 to include, apparently, nail clippers. 1200 RSVP’d by FB as I recall. The thread yesterday said police expected 200. As I recall by 2 PM or so over 500 and growing. But this story tries to say one hundred. (I know it says 100 met to go there, etc. but you gotta read carefully to get that and from the excerpt it isn’t clear the author ever says, “where they joined a thousand” or whatever.