Aldous Huxley was prophetic in Brave New
World, even more so than George Orwell in
1984.
- We are a consumer
culture. We buy bulk, spend more time waiting in lines on Black Friday than
volunteering at the shelters and soup kitchens. - It is a
world state of sorts, a global media. We are not born in tubes, but we are connected by
them (TV and internet). - We are hooked on soma. There is
no suffering any longer. Every pain is alleviated, whether it be spiritual, physical,
or emotional. We are spoiled rotten. - Joel Osteen's
Lakewood Church, for example, has a 40,000 member congregation that contributes $1
million in weekly collections, and a television audience mails in another $20 million
annually. His positive-minded sermons and self-help books (Your Best Life
Now) offer mantras and not apologies for wealth: "I believe God wants us to
prosper" and "God wants winners, not whiners." Dude is sipping and selling
soma. - We are obsessed with sports and soma. Soma can be
anything that helps us escape our problems, but they've come to be the current
pharmacology dependency that we've developed. People pop more pills than they read
pages of the book on a daily basis. - With the portable
Nintendo DS and cell phone craze, our kids are more connected to loud noises and shocks
than they are books and nature.
After all, Neil
Postman says,
readability="11">
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.
readability="12">
What Orwell feared were those who would ban
books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there
would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of
information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to
passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley
feared that truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would
become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied
with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal
bumblepuppy.
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