Huxley had a much clearer view of the future...sadly

Good to see you still here.
Cheers LibertyorDeath

spot on.

If you are on the bottom of the economic ladder you are in more of an Orwell world, if you are in the middle you get more of a mixture, if you are at the top you are in Huxley's world.

Synthesis! Well said.

And if you start to unplug from and challenge the Huxleyian (sp?) world, you'll soon discover the Orwellian world awaits you.

Exactly what popped into my head.

seriousness that only college students in the college coffee shop can manage.

Turned out, we should have factored in as well Clockwork Orange and every other dystopian vision of the future. And many things about all of them would have proven accurate sooner or later.

eom

Anyone up for a round of centrifugal bumble puppy?

Packing peanuts.

Well done!

“The heaviest restriction upon the freedom of public opinion is not the official censorship of a press, but the unofficial censorship by a press which exists not so much to express opinion as to manufacture it.”

Dorothy L. Sayers
1893-1957

British writer, essayist, playwright and translator.

Both Huxley and Orwell we're informed earlier on this topic through Russian novelist Yevgeny Zamyatin's, ''We'' a dystopian novel written in 1921, (an English translation of which was published in 1924).

It contains elements of both ideas of pain and pleasure used to control society and as the underlying plot to the reason for our undoing. And added to this one, is the sinister idea of casting the putrid seeds of our particular mania onto other planets via space conquest.

- Which was quite forward thinking for 1921, since we hadn't even been flying all that long. Turns out to be true as well......

K&R

A stick, a carrot, and a whole lot of surrealistic frequently deadly random shit.

Though even the splendid array of great jokes doesn't take off its deeply disturbing edge.

BNW is not just about a world where no-one wants to read a book; they've been conditioned to not want to do something solitary, like reading a book. The people don't go to 'passivity and egotism' through being given too much; what they have is carefully controlled to match what they been conditioned to want, and their conditioning is not towards egotism; they are conditioned to see themselves as a happy cog in the benevolent machine of what they are assured is the best possible society, and are carefully taught not to have an ego, or ambition. And there's not that much 'drowning of truth'; the world really is at peace, and controlled to stay that way, and everyone knows it.

I suppose you could say the in BNW the truth of the alternatives - a society with competition and suffering, triumph and disappointment, love and loss, and highs and lows - is covered up.

a way of saving us from ourselves?

'1984' is not meant as prediction but commentary on the current times, 1948. Orwell was personally under survailence when he was writing the book. Huxley is talking about a possible future, Orewell is talking about his impression of the present.

I feel like recommending to Huxley ardents the book by his widow Laura Huxley, 'This Timeless Moment'.

who do not succumb to the Huxleyian passive controls.

You are the winner. We now have a mix of "Brave New World" and "1984" and the mix varies from country to country. The United States leans toward "Brave New World", whereas a country like Iran or China leans towards "1984".

being told to describe an elephant. Each is led to a different part of the elephant and then told to describe what an elephant is. If we are to analogize this to that story; Orwell is at the trunk and Huxley is at the tail or vice versa...