[EveningStar]

ping

[Responsibility2nd]

Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World.

Went from Science Fiction to Democratic Operations and Instruction Manuals.

[jmcenanly]

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.

[muir_redwoods]

Brave New World does seem more likely than 1984, IMHO

[cripplecreek]

Yet Vonnegut may have been most accurate of all.

We’re living in the world of Harrison Bergeron nearly 60 years early.

[odawg]

I bought an old 1950s radio drama adaptation of “Brave New World” and it is very good. At the beginning of the show, Huxely says a few words. I remember two points: he wrote it as a warning and if he had written it now (1950s) he would not have placed it so far in the future.

[Don Corleone]

We are, as the saying goes,”Living the dream.”

[x]

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

Eton College wasn't your typical high school.

Whether the future would be more like Huxley's vision or Orwell's was long a subject for debate. It's still an open question. But a lot has fallen away. Much of each book seems more about its own time, rather than about ours or the future. And each looks exaggerated now. We may be going down the path Huxley feared (or less likely, the one Orwell dreaded), but so much will be different that we'll find it hard to recognize ourselves in his satire.

[dynachrome]

Your choice, it seems:

Soma

Victory Gin

[Zeneta]

Belief is a funny thing.

Belief is fluid and seems directly related to the willingness of each individual to explore, for themselves, what is truth.

Christians, over the years, got a bad rap when their only answer was to say “Because the Bible says so”, when challenged. While it may be true, it left them looking foolish in the eyes of so called, scientific reason.

It seems to my that things have come full circle.

Today, it is the atheist that resorts to authority while the Christian is asking them the questions. Questions about the science, the methods used and conclusions they promote.

Human nature remains the same.

There are some that accept authority and others that question authority.

[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..

[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.

[C19fan]

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