Huxley or Orwell? I pick Jagger.

[Ray9]

Mick Jagger says that “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might get what you need’. He should have kept going and said that if you persist in going after what you want at any price you might get what you deserve.

They made us read Orwell’s “1984” and Huxley’s “Brave New world” in school and we hated doing it because at 15 we had no idea what these authors were writing about. Oddly, though Huxley’s work followed Orwell’s, his consumerist dumbing down of society is coming first which sets up the totalitarian nightmare of the socialist cage suggested by Orwell.

Many people mistakenly connected Communism with “1984” but that is flawed by the fact that the Soviets imposed socialism on the people who did not choose it. If a reasonable reader blends the two dystopian novels it becomes apparent that if the people become stupid enough they will reject personal freedom and individual liberty on their own in favor of the glittery centralized “fairness” of socialism.

So a population preoccupied with a kind of Peter Pan/Harry Potter/Alice-in-Wonderland, Millennial intoxication will willingly vote away their freedoms making Soviet-style communism unnecessary at the early stages. Watch what they do with the Electoral College.

If the thought process and historical prospective of the people is sufficiently eroded through institutional propaganda and addictive distractions, the people can be led to the gates of totalitarianism without a whimper; advantage Huxley. But Orwell is holding his own waiting to make his move at the end of the race.

The good news is that the race is a marathon not a sprint; the bad news is that at this point in time the marathon is in the last mile and Orwell is gaining. Once the people have thrown away their personal sovereign rights for complete fairness the government will move in with national security surveillance measures to ensure total compliance. It will take steps to monitor the population and identify those whose statements reveal thoughts against the government that threaten the fairness of the plan.

Donald Trump’s election alerted the planners that the plan was faltering and the people were not yet dumb enough to hand over their freedoms. So Orwell is overtaking Huxley with investigations reminiscent of the East German Stasi. So who will win; Huxley or Orwell?

I’m going with Jagger.

 

[OldLady]

Mick Jagger says that “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might get what you need’. He should have kept going and said that if you persist in going after what you want at any price you might get what you deserve.

They made us read Orwell’s “1984” and Huxley’s “Brave New world” in school and we hated doing it because at 15 we had no idea what these authors were writing about. Oddly, though Huxley’s work followed Orwell’s, his consumerist dumbing down of society is coming first which sets up the totalitarian nightmare of the socialist cage suggested by Orwell.

Many people mistakenly connected Communism with “1984” but that is flawed by the fact that the Soviets imposed socialism on the people who did not choose it. If a reasonable reader blends the two dystopian novels it becomes apparent that if the people become stupid enough they will reject personal freedom and individual liberty on their own in favor of the glittery centralized “fairness” of socialism.

So a population preoccupied with a kind of Peter Pan/Harry Potter/Alice-in-Wonderland, Millennial intoxication will willingly vote away their freedoms making Soviet-style communism unnecessary at the early stages. Watch what they do with the Electoral College.

If the thought process and historical prospective of the people is sufficiently eroded through institutional propaganda and addictive distractions, the people can be led to the gates of totalitarianism without a whimper; advantage Huxley. But Orwell is holding his own waiting to make his move at the end of the race.

The good news is that the race is a marathon not a sprint; the bad news is that at this point in time the marathon is in the last mile and Orwell is gaining. Once the people have thrown away their personal sovereign rights for complete fairness the government will move in with national security surveillance measures to ensure total compliance. It will take steps to monitor the population and identify those whose statements reveal thoughts against the government that threaten the fairness of the plan.

Donald Trump’s election alerted the planners that the plan was faltering and the people were not yet dumb enough to hand over their freedoms. So Orwell is overtaking Huxley with investigations reminiscent of the East German Stasi. So who will win; Huxley or Orwell?

I’m going with Jagger.

It's true our technological and scientific advances have allowed a great deal more government "nose" into our business. How does anyone stop that, though? Do we insist the government not use computers? That police not use DNA evidence or data bases?

There are "security" cameras on most city sidewalks. On every toll booth. At major intersections. All looking at us. Our location can be tracked through GPS in our cell phones. Yet when there is an Amber Alert or a killer on the loose, we welcome those eyes. How do we roll back time, Ray?

 

[Billy_Kinetta]

I read "Nineteen Eighty-Four" unprompted at age 12. Being on the hot side of the Cold War, it certainly helped cement my attitude toward all things Marxist/totalitarian with its focus on predictive English socialism (INGSOC) and a Stalinist Soviet backdrop.

Funny that Europe went socialist almost as soon as the Iron Curtain came down. You cannot leave your home in London today without being observed by the machinations of the State. American cities are following suit.

Keep permitting this, and quite soon you really won't be able to turn it off. The State will move into your life, and then into your house. Beware those smart devices. They're listening.

 

[Oddball]

Mick Jagger says that “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might get what you need’. He should have kept going and said that if you persist in going after what you want at any price you might get what you deserve.

They made us read Orwell’s “1984” and Huxley’s “Brave New world” in school and we hated doing it because at 15 we had no idea what these authors were writing about. Oddly, though Huxley’s work followed Orwell’s, his consumerist dumbing down of society is coming first which sets up the totalitarian nightmare of the socialist cage suggested by Orwell.

Many people mistakenly connected Communism with “1984” but that is flawed by the fact that the Soviets imposed socialism on the people who did not choose it. If a reasonable reader blends the two dystopian novels it becomes apparent that if the people become stupid enough they will reject personal freedom and individual liberty on their own in favor of the glittery centralized “fairness” of socialism.

So a population preoccupied with a kind of Peter Pan/Harry Potter/Alice-in-Wonderland, Millennial intoxication will willingly vote away their freedoms making Soviet-style communism unnecessary at the early stages. Watch what they do with the Electoral College.

If the thought process and historical prospective of the people is sufficiently eroded through institutional propaganda and addictive distractions, the people can be led to the gates of totalitarianism without a whimper; advantage Huxley. But Orwell is holding his own waiting to make his move at the end of the race.

The good news is that the race is a marathon not a sprint; the bad news is that at this point in time the marathon is in the last mile and Orwell is gaining. Once the people have thrown away their personal sovereign rights for complete fairness the government will move in with national security surveillance measures to ensure total compliance. It will take steps to monitor the population and identify those whose statements reveal thoughts against the government that threaten the fairness of the plan.

Donald Trump’s election alerted the planners that the plan was faltering and the people were not yet dumb enough to hand over their freedoms. So Orwell is overtaking Huxley with investigations reminiscent of the East German Stasi. So who will win; Huxley or Orwell?

I’m going with Jagger.

Huxley postulated that we would become enslaved to that which we irrationally loved, while Orwell proposed that we would become enslaved to irrational hatred.

Both were right.

 

[OldLady]

Some of our students study The Giver and it's sequel Son which is less heavy handed but subtly the same. The impulse to "fix" things, make them better, alleviate suffering all came from the right place in the beginning but they went so far that people lost their ability to even think outside the box. Cool books, because you end up with the same questions without quite so much getting hammered over the head with torture and behaviorism gone wild.

 

[Tehon]

Funny that Europe went socialist almost as soon as the Iron Curtain came down. You cannot leave your home in London today without being observed by the machinations of the State. American cities are following suit.

You're on the right track, but you are focusing in the wrong place.