Huxley seems to be more right in the long term, since Orwellian oppression is very visible, people work to fix it and eventually do. Not so for Huxly-an dystopia.
Yes.
> people work to fix it and eventually do.
No?
My understanding of Orwellian oppression is exactly that even though people are very aware that it exists, only a small minority of people care enough (or are personally harmed enough) to want to take actions change it.
Just look at modern day China. All but the most naive are aware of things like censorship and surveillance. Most have first-hand interactions with both. People joke about it all the time (being "invited for tea" or such and such news was "harmonized" a.k.a. censored). Some of the language has evolved to be almost not that different from what was envisioned in Newspeak.
And yet, the average person does not feel violated enough to actually do something about anything. It's much easier to just go with the flow and not do what the state doesn't like.
The problem is it requires a lot of people to make a difference. A single person or a small group protesting gets thrown into a reeducation camp for 20 years (if they are lucky). That's one of the reasons mass surveillance is so nefarious; you can't start to plan a mass assembly/protest to address grievances without being noticed beforehand and thrown into a reeducation camp for 20 years (if you are lucky). You can't even talk about grievances with more than a few other people in a dark closet somewhere.
In North Korea I suspect most everyone knows the propaganda is bullshit, but even a whisper of dissent will send the police knocking at your door. We aren't as bad as North Korea of course, but it sure smells similar.
Kafka is the one who really got it right. I've never felt a more realistic depiction of my life than The Trial.
Even when I was there 20 years ago, people had to hush whisper and look around to see who was listening when talking about the problems they were facing.
What's stopping you from saying what you think are the real reasons?
At least in 1984, oppression wins. It is a very bleak ending.
1984 makes a fairly strong point that this is not true.
The proles do not conceive of the fact that they are oppressed. Only the outer party can even think this, and at best its a muted response. Newspeak is about making it impossible to see or conceptualize oppression or injustice.
"Totalitarianism was Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the state controlled everyone through the infliction of pain and terror"
That sounds far closer to our current existence than BNW. Where are my bread and circuses? Circuses were shut down for much of the last two years, because of the need to fight an ever-shifting war against a terrifying virus ... a danger that cannot be directly perceived because almost everyone who gets it has mild symptoms and recover after a few days, but which rather, can only be truly perceived through the telescreen in our living rooms and the pronouncements of the ruling classes.
The parallels to 1984 are everywhere recent times, yet the majority cannot see them. Newspeak is in abundance. Policies change overnight and yet the Party claims that the policy was always the same, previously famous people get erased instantly the moment they object, and the population is trained to demand their own oppression, believing ultra-harsh conditions to be an expression of love.
But were the proles forced to use Newspeak? I thought they were singing folks songs and stuff...
The proles made up the majority of the population, but are almost invisible in the book, which leads to some odd Internet comments. The proles have zero political thought, and they live short lives of poverty. The proles are programmed to be interested in meaningless songs (produced by the versificator machine), meaningless persuits (such as lotteries), and other diversions. The proles do not speak newspeak, because they are not political. They certainly didn’t sing traditional folk songs (English aka ‘oldspeak’ is slowly abridged, removing all political words and nuances, and old literature is destroyed by rewriting it to remove all political nuance).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Nineteen_Eighty-F...
"The proles are free"
Newspeak was supposed to stamp out "bad" thoughts from members the party.