Huxley to Orwell: My Hellish Vision of the Future is Better Than Yours (1949)

Open Culture ^ | March 17, 2015 | Jonathan Crow

[EveningStar]

In 1949, George Orwell received a curious letter from his former high school French teacher.

Orwell had just published his groundbreaking book Nineteen Eighty-Four, which received glowing reviews from just about every corner of the English-speaking world. His French teacher, as it happens, was none other than Aldous Huxley who taught at Eton for a spell before writing Brave New World (1931), the other great 20th century dystopian novel.

[cripplecreek]

Harrison Bergeron (2081) short movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4-hEfqpxIg#t=10

[Zeneta]

And whether you like the music or not,

Jim Morrison addressed ALL of these issues.

Addressed them for those willing to take the time and actually LISTEN.

the doors An American Prayer 1978 Full Album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMTjFaU9p0w

[COBOL2Java]

Orwell’ s characters were well aware that things could be better, but we’re just afraid to mention it. In Huxley’ s novel, most of the characters were happy with the society they lived in, being bred and conditioned for it like goldfish in a bowl.

Huxley's characters sound like today's low-information voters. Give them their EBT cards and they're happy.

[Zeneta]

“Indians scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding

Ghost’s crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind”

“Peace frog”

[kvanbrunt2]

agreed. weights on the dancer. loved vonnegut.

[mrsmith]

Great site!

Huxley’s concern in his letter about ‘mesmerism’ has proven to be the most prescient.
Marketing is such an exact science now we are freedomless in the public square..

[uglybiker]

Th' absolute cheapest way ta get it in ma belly!

[jmcenanly]

Our point of view character,John Savage, hung himself at the end. He was a man like us, born, not decanted. His response would have been ours.

[varyouga]

It’s a mixture of elements from both IMO

Promoting a dumbed-down culture of sex and drugs to give an illusion of freedom. While a background surveillance state keeps outliers in line.

[newfreep]

“The future’s uncertain and the end is always near”

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience."

Orwell's vision was in direct response to what he saw was going on in the Soviet Union. And truly, that type of future was existing at the time he wrote it. However, I have to agree with Huxley. If you look at Western Europe and increasingly our own country, you will find the socialist democracy model becoming more prevalent. The government provides you with everything and makes you happy. We learn this in school now and are being conditioned early on. School lunches (and sometimes breakfast and dinner), need I say more.

Funny thing is, Orwell was a socialist and supported the socialists/communists in the Spainish Civil War.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"And didn’t Brave New World have a somewhat happier ending?"

How is 1984 not a happy ending? Winston learned to love Big Brother, is that not happy? :-)

[C19fan]

I am so glad I read Huxley in HS. Looking at what is going on today the man was a prophet.

[SunkenCiv]

Huxley was a little full of himself.

Nineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell
(from chapter 17) [dead link]

On a scarlet-draped platform an orator of the Inner Party, a small lean man with disproportionately long arms and a large bald skull over which a few lank locks straggled, was haranguing the crowd. A little Rumpelstiltskin figure, contorted with hatred, he gripped the neck of the microphone with one hand while the other, enormous at the end of a bony arm, clawed the air menacingly above his head. His voice, made metallic by the amplifiers, boomed forth an endless catalogue of atrocities, massacres, deportations, lootings, rapings, torture of prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying propaganda, unjust aggressions, broken treaties. It was almost impossible to listen to him without being first convinced and then maddened. At every few moments the fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was drowned by a wild beast-like roaring that rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats. The most savage yells of all came from the schoolchildren. The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker's hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage ! The agents of Goldstein had been at work ! There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot. The Spies performed prodigies of activity in clambering over the rooftops and cutting the streamers that fluttered from the chimneys. But within two or three minutes it was all over. The orator, still gripping the neck of the microphone, his shoulders hunched forward, his free hand clawing at the air, had gone straight on with his speech. One minute more, and the feral roars of rage were again bursting from the crowd. The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed.

The thing that impressed Winston in looking back was that the speaker had switched from one line to the other actually in midsentence, not only without a pause, but without even breaking the syntax... Oceania was at war with Eastasia : Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete.